This Sunday, the biggest and greatest Hollywood stars will gather at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the 85th Academy Awards. Over the last 85 years, the film industry’s biggest event has experienced its fair share of ups and downs despite meticulous minute-by-minute planning.

Sometimes putting together a room full of Hollywood stars is a recipe for drama — and not the entertaining kind. It could mean dealing with inflated celebrity egos, like when James Cameron accepted his second Oscar for Titanic at the Academy Awards in 1998 and declared himself “king of the world,” quoting his film’s own protagonist. It could mean gritting through four hours of lackluster hosts who miss the mark completely like 2011′s hosting duo, James Franco and Anne Hathaway, who were called “spectacularly bad” despite being generally well-liked actors.

Other times, however, the planning is worth every sleepless hour and things come together in a way to make the event a shining success that is praised for years to come. Take for instance Billy Crystal’s first-time hosting success that led to another eight appearances as Academy Awards host. Bob Hope also successfully hosted or co-hosted the Academy Awards for fourteen years, and “the king of late night” Johnny Carson was given the reins as host multiple times.

Clearly what the success of the Oscars comes down to, in large part, is having an entertaining host who can roll with the punches and keep time without the help of a strict script.

That brings us to this year’s host, Seth MacFarlane, who is best known for the creation of Family Guy, a satirical and oftentimes crude cartoon, and its spin-offs. This may be the reason that many people would underestimate or entirely overlook Seth MacFarlane when it comes to Hollywood appearances that demand elegance.

Despite the baser humor we’re exposed to on Family Guy and his knack for wildly inappropriate puns, in the past few years Seth MacFarlane has become more respected in the industry for his comedic style and keen eye for a worthwhile production. In other words: the man knows humor and how to deliver. When it comes to celebrities who can stay afloat off-script, MacFarlane could potentially be perfect for the job. Unfortunately it’ll be impossible to know how his stage presence holds up until the big show Sunday evening.

If you’re looking for information about the 85th (or previous) Academy Awards, be sure to consult the BOTW Directory — your ultimate resource for meaningful guidance on the web. Whether you’re interested in the red carpet fashion, nominees and winner predictions, or just want to find more opinions about whether or not MacFarlane has what it takes to host, Best of the Web can direct you to blogs, online magazines, and other websites completely dedicated to this Sunday night & Hollywood’s biggest annual event.

Congratulations! After much discussion about the Mayan calendar coming to an end and the planet Earth and all her inhabitants meeting their doom, it seems that humankind has survived yet another apocalypse. If you were one of the gullible few who expected to meet their maker or face hordes of zombies or see the sun explode last Friday, don’t feel too embarrassed (or let down)! Apocalypses are predicted on a near annual basis nowadays, and we’ve got a gut feeling another prediction is on the horizon.

But for those of you who were not expecting to face the rapture or some other global catastrophe one week ago, lives carry on as normal into the New Year. Whether your plans involve cramming into the overcrowded Times Square in the Big Apple, hitting the bars, hosting a party, or simply getting cozy in front of the television with a glass of wine and that special someone to kiss when the clock strikes midnight, you can find fun ideas for ringing in the new year from Best of the Web.

If you’re playing host in the final minutes of 2012, you can find party planning advice, cheap New Year’s decorations, and deliciously festive recipes on sites featured in the directory. There you’ll even discover fun activities such as themed arts & crafts projects to keep young ones entertained until the ball drops, if they can stay awake for it. Even if you don’t have big plans for celebrating the start of another year, you can satisfy all your curiosities about New Year traditions through the resources offered by Best of the Web.

Don’t worry, last-minute shoppers: you are not alone. Every year, on the night before Christmas, shopping centers and strip malls are flooded by an influx of frantic holiday customers eager to cross the final items off their gift lists.

This year, if you’re having trouble finding the perfect gift for someone special, turn to the consumer resources featured in Best of the Web. From the latest coupons & discounts for online retailers to creative ideas for the frugal gifter, the BOTW Directories can help guide you to a happy holiday painlessly.

If it’s overnight delivery you need, look no further. There are countless retailers listed with the BOTW seal of approval guaranteeing deliveries by Christmas. Trying to give a lot of gifts with a little spending cash? Find sites exclusively offering seasonal discount codes, or crafty ways to give thoughtful gifts without spending a dime.

Or if you’re one of the lucky few who doesn’t need to scramble for gifts in the last days before the holiday, there’s no need to wait for the rest of your family to put the finishing touches on holiday preparations. Blogs featuring the retelling of past holidays or the surge in charitable activity during the season will keep your spirits bright & help pass the time before the real festivities begin.

Whether this weekend consists of frantically finishing your holiday to-do list or just looking for ways to spread the holiday cheer, you can rely on Best of the Web to safely guide you through the long weekend.

Happy holidays from all of us at Best of the Web!

If you ask individual users — not brands — on Google+ what their favorite feature of the social platform is, they’re likely to praise its ability to automatically upload of photos & videos from their cell phones, to be shared at the user’s convenience.

Last week, Facebook launched their newest feature for user photos — which had been available to a select few users since August — in order to match the convenience of the same utility on Google+. The availability of this feature across all 800 million active profiles is uncertain, but users will have to manually enable Photo Sync after they are granted access to it.

Users can activate Photo Sync from the Photos tab of their Facebook mobile application, and tap the “Sync” button. According to Facebook, users will be able to store approximately 2GB of photos before needing to share them or clear space. Since photo sharing is one of the most popular uses for Facebook, and the platform has such a large population, users expect that Photo Sync will quickly overshadow Google+’s once innovative feature.

It’s not breaking news that the Facebook mobile applications were in desperate need for an overhaul across all platforms. This week, Facebook released the newest version of its app for the iPhone. Despite the update’s success, Android users are still left impatiently waiting for a more functional version of Facebook on their devices.

The biggest issue with the older (or for Android users, current) version of this application was loading time. Mobile users would attempt to open a Facebook chat message thread, a photo, or even their notifications list only to be met with a continuously loading spinner. Other hiccups along the path to smoother functionality include: inaccurate notifications (for instance, showing new messages when there are none); a delay between when messages are sent and received; a lack of cohesiveness when navigating from the news feed to viewing comments and details of individual posts; no un-friend option; no access to the Administrative panel on managed pages.

The aforementioned issues were just a few of the ones mentioned when the development team of Facebook for Android went to Reddit just over a year ago to ask its users how they could improve the platform. To this day, very few of the problems Android users face with this application have been resolved; however, with the recent release of the improved iPhone app (written in native code as opposed to HTML5), there is a renewed sense of optimism for its Android presence.

Due to the sub-par performance of the Android app, Facebook is requesting that its employees use only Android devices in order to effectively troubleshoot, brainstorm, and produce constructive feedback when faced with the day-to-day issues its users experience. Facebook blogger Jonathan Dann wrote that the social network is clearly shifting its focus for the development of mobile products, and although he does not make any direct statements about the future of the Android application, technology commentators seem confident that it will see its makeover soon.