Pringles Gold Cyber Lion winner: "Can Hands"

Liking this odd take on a banner concept from Bridge Worldwide. Happy to see something like this win a big award.

Check it out…

(Interesting to note you never actually click away from the banner!)

Coolest Record Player ever

Up to now this is only a concept, but if they ever get this to work I am so going to dig out my old records and get me one of these.

This is how it should work:

The record player uses a carrier and dock outfitted with a magnetic and auto-calibrating control system which carries the LP into thin air as it is playing music. A self-running record player shaped in the form of a red sphere, contains a needle, amplifier and speaker, spins around the record, bringing the music to life.

It was inspired by the Vinyl Killer which you can see here in action:

If they ever get this on the market, I will so get one.

found here.

New way to get softdrink

Saw this new Coke Machine – thought it was amazing – check it out!

I wonder how far you could push this from a personalised perspective? or from a visual perspective when not in use?!

Chris Anderson’s new book, ‘Free’, rife* with…plagiarism

Apparently, Chris Anderson thinks everything should be free. Footnotes citing large portions of quotes were culled from the Wired editor’s new book, Free, and even though attribution for other sources were included throughout the book, those from Wikipedia were not.

Obviously, Anderson is maintaining his plagiarism was completely unintentional and has issued an apology alongside his publisher, and has promised to amend this situation (albeit online). It’s a little bit unfortunate, given the topic he’s ultimately discussing in this book.

The Twitter Experiment

Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom. She had heard of Twitter…

You choose the view

This interactive video clip for Children Collide’s “Chosen Armies” is seriously cool.

It allows you to control the angle you view using your mouse, giving you individual control of content.

The clip, possibly “the worlds first  360 degree interactive panoramic music video”,  was directed by Toby Angwin of Soup Kitchen Films (@soupkitchen), and was filmed with a vertically mounted Red One Camera with special panoramic lens.

Check it out and immerse yourself in a unique music experience.

Did I also mention I really like the song?

Money.

Welcome to aspiration Tuesday.
Here’s some over the top-ness to make you green with envy. I was going to write some witty stuff to go with this post but really, you just want to look at the pictures and the numbers – I know that.

The USA’s most expensive homes.

Inside the worlds first BILLION dollar home. Seriously.

 

The world’s most luxurious airlines

The top 10 most pricey cars ever

It’s nice to dream, right?

Best Game Controller ever

What ever happened to VR games? I liked the idea of being in the game and do what I had to do to get the job done.

Anyway – this guy below called his invention the PC VR Game Gun. Its a toy gun with an LCD screen attached to it, a Gyration Air Mouse mounted on top, which allows for some full, seemingly responsive motion-tracking in any PC game. He also ripped apart a gamepad and wired it up to the trigger in the gun.

There is also a wireless option of the gun as you can see in the 2nd video.

Check out the videos

Banksy versus Bristol Museum

You’ve seen Banksy take over the streets, now it’s a museum:

 

VRaw – Too good to be true

V Energy Drink is a brand that has got the social media thing right. Well, almost.

VRaw is a branded site that has found a relevant way to communicate with consumers, namely, through offering value.
Essentially, it’s a branded blog that gives people the chance to find where they fit in the most creative companies in Australia, offering internships with the very best in Fashion, Graphic Design, Music, TV, Advertising and Gaming, as well as access to unique content like music videos and artist remixes.

The thing that I like is that there is no ‘sell’, with barely any information about the drink itself. Instead, people engage with the brand through following their exclusive offers and original content uploads. As such, VRaw provide value to consumers (including me) in a creative way, and in turn, become socially relevant – my friend, not a company.

Or so I thought.

Having been a fan of this site from early on, I was quite disappointed to discover their latest video post of interviews with the “VRaw head honchos” explaining the campaign. From the company babble about the ‘essence of the brand’ and ‘being a catalyst for energy’, to the the fake ‘behind the scenes’-type footage, the whole thing reeks of corporate PR.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel they’ve lost their friendly credibility. I can only hope new content uploads will dilute this post and I can continue being ‘mates with the brand’.

What do you think of corporate messages in social media? Do they pop the bubble of friendliness?

Posted by Gavin Chimes

[See comments for VRaw's response]

<a href="http://www.tizag.com/" target="_blank" >Tizag Home</a>

A ‘social experiment’ in Sims 3

I don’t mean social as in social and media. I mean Robin Burkinshaw, a game design student from the UK is using Sims 3 to play a homeless family. Alice and Kev – The Story of being Homeless in Sims 3, documents the life and times of a Father and Daughter who live in an abandoned park. Aside from the fact that Robin is using this game to see how close to real life it actually is and even raise money for charities that help the homeless people, it’s fascinating to see how people are adding to the story and giving some insight into real life.

For example here’s a thread where people are commenting on the fact that Alice has a mobile phone

Gentleman Jim: Where did she get that phone from?

Joel: Hah, it comes with every sim in the game. Let just say for the stories sake she found it on the ground? hah

Elaine: Having a cellphone is also actually pretty true-to-life. I work at a shelter, which means our families are functionally homeless, if not actually right off the street.
Unlike six or seven years ago, these days, almost all our clients have cells; that means it’s 100% easier for them to stay safe, keep in contact with family, make appointments, get job calls, and generally rebuild their lives.

MED: I also work at a shelter and I can attest to cell-phones being true to life for functionally homeless people. With companies selling a monthly non contractual service for $30.00 bucks and better yet, pay as you go phones for $15.00 with ten minutes of service built in, it’s easy for anyone with a candy selling or windshield wiping business to keep a phone.

There are some people who think that this is part of a campaign although I don’t see it myself. Genius if it is, but very dumb if someone is pretending it isn’t. It’s getting some good traction and well worth following to see whether it really takes off.

Start from the beginning here and follow the life and times of Alice and Kev.

@carlmoggy

Twitter for tactical promotions

An email chain going around Razorfish employees this morning revealed a huge number of companies using Twitter to promote special deals. Whether it is creating a new sales channel (eg Dell), giving a little back to your fans (eg Zappos) or building brand awareness (eg Squarespace), it seems that Twitter is being used more and more for tactical promotions not just long term brand strategies.

Here are a few we’re aware of. I’m sure there are plenty more, so feel free to add yours to the comments and we’ll update the list.

Australia

http://twitter.com/hp_touchsmart (1,315 followers) – competition to win PC notebooks finished last week

http://twitter.com/iSpyLevis (724 followers) – find the @iSpyLevis Twitterer in a public place to win a pair of jean. Clues released in the form of location Twitpics

http://twitter.com/jetstarairways (1,516 followers) – an eDM sale for 5 cent fares for members only went wrong when Jetstar members tried to access the website in the 2 hour window and couldn’t. They expressed their unhappiness via Twitter and blog posts. The result was a more active Twitter account (they started following people back) and a special Twitter only sale – 1,000 flights for 1c.

International (mainly US)

http://twitter.com/DellOutlet (642,742 followers) – has hit 2 million dollars of revenue through Twitter alone. UPDATE: make that $3 million

http://twitter.com/Squarespace (29,291 followers): a web publishing firm giving away vouchers towards an iPhone randomly to people who tweet #squarespace.

http://twitter.com/Zappos (747,937 followers): Tony Hsieh of Zappos gives a free pair of shoes to a random follower every so often.

http://www.twitter.com/JetBlue: gave 10% off all flights between 7 and 31 March to Twitter followers and reached their goal of 100,000 followers

And a whole lot of other examples thanks to our Razorfish colleagues

Amazon:
http://twitter.com/amazondeals

Banana Republic:
http://twitter.com/brofficial

Sonic:
http://twitter.com/sonicdrive_in

Funjet Vacations:
http://twitter.com/funjetvacations

Tablet Hotels:
http://twitter.com/TabletHotels

Walmart:
http://walmartstores.com/twitter/
http://twitter.com/WalmartSpecials

Moosejaw:
http://twitter.com/moosejawmadness

Netflix:
http://twitter.com/netflix

Orbitz:
http://twitter.com/Orbitz

Luxor Hotel:
http://twitter.com/LuxorLV

Marriott:
http://twitter.com/marriottintl

Cheapflights.com:
http://twitter.com/CheapflightsCom

DunkinDonuts:
http://twitter.com/dunkindonuts

Ticketmaster:
http://twitter.com/Ticketmaster
http://twitter.com/Ticketmaster101
http://twtapps.com/blog/2009/04/06/ticketmaster-uses-twtqpon-to-manage-their-twitter-discounts/

United Airlines- twares:
http://twitter.com/unitedairlines
http://mashable.com/2009/05/21/twares/

Whole Foods:
http://twitter.com/wholefoods
http://twitter.com/wholefoodsnyc

Travelocity:
http://twitter.com/travelocity

Six Flags:
http://twitter.com/sixflags

Backcountry.com:
http://twitter.com/SteepandCheap

CouponTweet:
http://twitter.com/CouponTweet

@AngGraham

Social media ROI calculators – a step in the right direction, or missing the point altogether?

Last week Dragon Search released the first social media ROI calculator – well, the first we’ve seen anyway. What you do is plug in all the values of your social campaign and the calculator does the rest.

A snapshot of the calculator in question

The problem with this of course is that it misses some pretty crucial elements like sentiment shift and the number of fans or followers accrued (lead generation/CRM), which will be hard to capture in a format like this.

I also have to say that some of the criteria had me stumped eg ‘value of posts’, because a) how do you put a dollar value on a comment posted about your brand online? and b) should you?

While it is good to see someone adding a little formula to the madness that is social media, it makes me wonder: is this a step in the right direction or is it missing the point of social media altogether?

@AngGraham

Amazing App Store hyperwall

Soo cool – a live feed wall of over 3000 popular iPhone apps pulsating each time an app is downloaded.

Check it out!

& make sure you watch the videos.

 

Vivid Sydney, Sydney’s Festival of Music, Light and Ideas

Better late than never – vividsydney.com

Vivid Sydney, developed by Events NSW in partnership with the City Of Sydney, will be the biggest international music and light festival in the Southern Hemisphere. It will showcase the city as a major creative hub in the Asia-Pacific region, celebrating the diversity of Sydney’s creative industries.
Vivid Sydney features four exciting new events:
- Luminous
- Smart Light Sydney
- Creative Sydney
- Fire Water

Social grows more measurable by the day

For those of us working in social media, we’re often posed with questions about exactly how measurable projects run in this space are, and how this correlates to more traditional analytics like those in traditional and (traditional) digital media.

We’re now seeing guidelines released from the IAB around social media metrics and social advertising best practices, which will hopefully get the ball rolling in standardized reporting for clients and campaigns in this space — something I know our team here has been working on a lot in the past year or so.

Another notable release is the Social Marketing Playbook by the folks at 360i – a free 56-page PDF featuring articles by social media mainstays like Pete Cashmore, Jeremiah Owyang and Jeff Pulver – outlining how social has transformed the marketing landscape, how it will continue to do so, and how brands can harness this power for themselves. This one’s a great read, and one choice quote from page four has stuck with me: “Covering your ears is not a viable strategy.”

Whether brands like it or not, and whether its measured or not, social media conversations, blog posts and tweets will continue to be generated. Even if brands don’t want to jump in boots and all into the social media sphere, it helps to be at least listening to some of the conversations taking place. Monitoring brand chat via things like Monitter and Google Alerts are a quick and useful diagnostic.

While it’s still a long way to go before we figure out things like sentiment and influence analysis, and geographic segmentation, I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction. It’s a very exciting landscape we’re working in.

THE most dedicated piece of consumer generated content ever. Age time lapse 17 yrs in the making.

“Incredible dedication” – the only way to describe Dan Hanna who for the last 17 years has religiously taken 2 images of himself every day using a home made rig. Before you watch, just remember this started long before digital cameras were around…

Here’s the rig below, which Dan carried with him, even on holidays.

The rig dismantled below – you can see how Dan rotates himself by about 1 degree every day, so a full year means one complete rotation.

Read a lot more about the project here.
http://www.danhanna.com/aging_project/p.html

It’s a great read. Thank you Dan for sharing – it really is an amazing piece of work.

The Key Features of Social Media and Networking Sites

Smashing Magazine comes though again with a brilliantly in-depth article about the user interface design of social networking sites and what makes them good user experiences.

They’ve chunked them down to 9 key points:

1. Simple Interface Is The Key

2. Prominent and Functional Search

3. Prominent Call-To-Action-Buttons

4. Calm Separation of Elements

5. Treat text as User Interface

6. Simple and Usable Forms

7. Real-Time Updates

8. Word-Of-Mouth-Advertising and Personalization

9. User-Centric User Interface

The article is a must read for any web designers or social media gurus, its very in-depth and definitely one to bookmark and pass on.

Read it here

 

*note: image by Kleinmania

Where Are All the Fish?

In the past 50 years, per capita fish consumption has almost doubled, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. They measure (i guess in a round-a-bout way) how many of each species is caught each year.

Good Magazine has produced this awesome (looking) chart to represent the depleting numbers of our most mouth watering sea dwellers.

Unfortunately though, a pretty graph isn’t necessarily an accurate one. The article on Good Magazine has sparked some rather fierce debate as to not only the data charts accuracy but whether the info should be displayed like that at all!

Read through the comments at the source to learn more… i don’t know… something smells… off.

The article at Good Magazine

EA Dante’s Inferno Protest. Fake promotional stunt or just honest social media?

Update – this campaign has been confirmed as a FAKE (here)

I spotted a tweet (here) from @danteteam a few minutes ago which is the Twitter account for the new game Dante’s Inferno (here). The game is said to be controversial, so I was quite interested when they tweeted an image of people protesting about the game.

Now I can’t quite figure this out. There are also a lot of images on the official Facebook page (here). It’s either a marketing stunt set up for E3 (yes the protestors look a little stereotyped) or a brand being very honest allowing very anti-brand statements to be published freely through social channels. Maybe no news is bad news when promoting a controversial product but I wouldn’t think ‘Electronic Anti-Christ’ would be something EA would actively sponsor.

If this was not a PR stunt then this is the first time I can think of that a brand has shown a negative image of itself using its own social channels.

Update:
Article with most comments saying it’s fake (here)
Article saying it’s all true (here) and (here)

Anyone have any comments/thoughts/witness? Leave a comment!