Mike and morpher got it right.
Blends for the hand part.

My idea for the text/liquid issue is: (see attached video, and Maya 4.5 scene file)

Excuse the playblast. I just used point particles instead of blobbys to make my point (no pun intended)

Make your text and make it a goal for lots of blobby particles.

Run the sim till they adhere to the text surface.

Then, set initial state for selected particles.

Then, add a gravity, turbulence, and drag to taste, and attach it to your particles.

Turn off visibility for your text, or shade it with 100% transparency.

Add a collision "Floor" surface, and make the particles collide with the floor.

Run the sim again, and you should be able to tweak it to look, and act like liquid sliding off the text object, and forming into a puddle on the floor.

Then fade from that puddle, to the blend shot of the hand like Mike said

Use a standard chrome shader on your blobbys as a start

See file below as an idea for reference.