How do things work? Why don't things work? Why does anybody need this gizmo? Tech questions (with answers) you may have already been asked at Thanksgiving, and certainly will be asked when you return later in December.  

Brands often fail to grasp the potential of YouTube, says YouTube's head of brand propositions Derek Scrobie, because they think within the constraints of the typical TV commercial. “It’s strange that brands lack confidence around content because in the last 10 years they have managed to excite us about products – like shampoo – that we really shouldn’t have been excited about. But they have been constrained by the existing formats,” he said alluding to the 30-second TV spot.

AOL Brand Group CEO and all-around content expert Susan Lyne sat down for an interview with AllThingsD's Kara Swisher at the Paley Center in Los Angeles. What followed was an interesting take on a diverse portfolio of content channels.  

Spill Games report on trends for 2014 sees big growth. Interesting stats: Of the 700 million global online gamers, 46% are women, it's big in emerging markets (in Turkey, 70% of Internet users play games) and most users are affluent.

Google's YouTube will help TED showcase the most imaginative and creative video ads through its YouTube unit. The awards, in their fourth year, are presented in March by the group that puts on TED Conferences (Technology, Education, Design)

Journey rocker Neal Schon is tying the knot with Real-Housewife-turned-White-House-gate-crasher Michaele Salahi and the Dec. 15 nuptials will be filmed and available for viewing live on pay-per-view for $14.95. The big day is dubbed the "Winter Wonderland Wedding and Music Event." Gees.

Amazon's Japanese content providers include production and distributing houses Shochiku Co. and Toho Co. as well as broadcasters NHK and Fuji Television Network. Rentals start at 100 yen.

Five months after it announced AOL Live, the online publisher still hasn't delivered. and the exec in charge has left. It makes one wonder  Does "live" have a future online?    

Best Buy is asking its customers to create Vines on Black Friday of the shopping scenes inside their stores. That means they're betting there aren't any nasty moments to capture.

There's a battle over technology video standards that that pits proponents of open source VP9 (Mozilla Firefox and Chrome) against patent pending (Microsoft, Apple) proponents of a more established H 265 standard. It was the big issue at a California conference last week.