Tron Legacy Trailer

Can’t wait for this, simply awesome:

Watch it in full screen HD for super extra high quality shininess.

Also an interesting read via /Film: TRON Legacy Teaser Trailer.

AdNews opens up greater access to website content

We noticed a few months ago a small but significant change to the AdNews website. Given this has not been publicised we thought it would be worth posting: All registered users for AdNews emails appear to be able to access full stories inside their site simply by clicking links from within the AdNews daily email bulletin. This is a neat bypass to the paid subscription required for the same stories on the website. 

Most people visiting the AdNews website in the past will know that content has been inaccessible for non-subscribers including registered users (you had to have a physical subscription, or repeatedly register for limited access to view the content). The email subscription seems to be a valid workaround.

Another interesting point is that the email link url contains the word BETA would usually indicate other changes in development. We did hear a rumour that posts on their site would be open for comments soon. Perhaps if AdNews read this they could post a comment here and let us know

AdNews email registration can be found here.

You can finally get into Adnews content by signing up for email.

Update: I called AdNews about the post and they confirmed it is a legitimate way to access their content.

Posted by @eunmac

Best Buy Crowdsourcing staff expertise to answer Tweets

It’s a simple concept from Best Buy. Customers ask questions on Twitter about products… Question sent to chosen staff member who has opted in for the subject matter… Staff member answers on Twitter.

Of course the beauty of Twitter is you get to see what people are asking as well. At time of writing the last question submitted was “Why does my dog keep leaving a poopy in front of my room.” Be interesting to see how they reply to that one.

http://twitter.com/Twelpforcehttp://twitter.com/Twelpforce

Sample of questions sent to Best Buy Twelpforce
(Note: I just copied and pasted whatever was on screen at the time (last 15 Qs) as a live sample, they have not been selected)

KaggyFriggle: @twelpforce Why does my dog keep leaving a poopy in front of my room? 8 minutes ago

csturner89: @TWELPFORCE I have a laptop with a T2060 processor and 2 gig ram.. i want something better in the 500 range what would you have? 31 minutes ago

jamiah93: @TWELPFORCE So does touch-screen depend completely on the monitor or does the computer itself has anything to do with it? 37 minutes ago

pwebbiz: @twelpforce Looking for netbook recommendations. Something for business on the go use. 41 minutes ago

NakedBoyNews: Doing a story on cell phones. Advice: Whats better LG Dare or LG enV Touch? and is the enV Touch just the LG Voyager? @twelpforce 42 minutes ago

NakedBoyNews: Doing a stpry on cell phones. Advice: Whats better LG Dare or LG enV Touch? and is the enV Touch just the LG Voyager? @twelpforce 42 minutes ago

pwebbiz: @twelpforce @agent3012 Thanks for helping me solve a week long problem! #twelpforce is great! 50 minutes ago

queen90018: @TWELPFORCE Maybe a free incentive with purchase, but not a $10.00 with a $500.00 that’s extreme in this economy. 54 minutes ago

CherryKitten68: @twelpforce I’m looking for a car radio for under $200 w/ ipood and bluetoof 4 my ’95 honda chivic 54 minutes ago

ohsqrrlgrrl: @twelpforce need a cheap cell phone plan contract with sim card capabilities for internat’l and nat’l use. ideas? about 1 hour ago

ayylaurenn: @TWELPFORCE which laptop has the fastest processor? about 1 hour ago

xDeathReaperx: @TwelpForce Do you have a MacBook? about 1 hour ago

nunonunonuno: @twelpforce How many HD SLRs are out there. Can you help. about 1 hour ago

CappyT1982: @TWELPFORCE To join twelpforce do we need to cut off your head with a sword thus quicking oursleves, or is it when one of you bites us? about 2 hours ago

bernierjohn: @twelpforce TIP If you’re reading this and wondering when you should jump in, read WIKI first, and get going! Don’t be afraid to fail… about 2 hours ago

HT http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=b92d638e
Posted by @eunmac

Why visual communication works for getting ideas to stick in our brains

“What is it about animation, graphics, illustrations, that create meaning?”

Information designer Tom Wujec looks at how the brain processes ideas and points out three guidelines for conveying ideas. Three guidelines that happen to completely validate the realm of visual communication.

1. Make ideas clear by visualizing them
2. Make them interactive
3. Make them persistent

Follow the interactive transcript here on TED.com…

@iclazie

A robot that can keep a beat

We blog about robots quite a bit. Here’s one that finds objects it can turn into drums, beats the object, records the sound and then plays with it until it gets bored.

Amazing.

(As far as drumming goes it’s almost as cool as this: http://amnesiablog.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/best-product-demonstration-ever-m/ )

The Share.tv video is from a while back. It’s an interview of creator Frits Lyneborg of letsmakerobots.com.

Interesting thoughts on AI.

@iclazie

Viral Wedding Video increases music sales.

10 million viral Wedding views in a week on Youtube  can do wonders for music sales, even if you’re Chris Brown languishing in a career low point (here). Neilsen points out (here) that Brown’s track Forever from 2008 was nowhere to be seen until this week, but is now in the top 10 for the US and Australia. The only possible reason being the Viral Wedding video which has a link to the track on iTunes. It raises some interesting points on the usage rights. Several people here pointed out that many similar videos have had the audio stripped by YouTube for copyright violation, yet this is a clear case of win-win for everyone involved. A clear indication to the Music industry that a social media model for music sales exists.

Posted by @eunmac

 
Click image above to watch the video
 

The wooden Ruler 2.0

The ruler is one of those everyday things we use and never really think about it twice. This is how it works and that’s it.

2 designers with the support of udk industrial design department designed the “Electronic Ruler”. It is a concept that measures the length of drawn lines no matter where on the ruler you start and stop drawing. It can also measure the distance between 2 points, add the value of different lines and change its scale.

To make it even cooler they placed a set of LEDs under a thin strip of wood-like material that displays the digits.

found here

Vote for Jeremy’s photo in the Bing Summer Travel Photo Contest

Man of many talents, jack of all trades, our very own Captain Creative, Jeremy is in the running to win a Bing home page photo contest.

Help him get there by voting and see this amazing lightning shot grace the front of Bing.

http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/top_photos?_fb_q=1

Do it now!!!

@iclazie

Things Your Kids May Never Know About

Now that I am a dad I get drawn to different types of topics that never really interested me.

So I came across this one and it made me sad because it’s so true.

Being a geek myself I enjoyed reading about the “good old” days and i made it my mission to at least teach my child about all the great gadgets from the past.

here are my top 10 that i hope our children will remember because we tell them about it.

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something
2. Sending that film away to be processed
3. The scream of a modem connecting
4. 5- and 3-inch floppies
   
5. Screens being just green (or orange) on black
6. Phone books and Yellow Pages
7. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something
8. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
9. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door
10. Finding out information from an encyclopedia – times before Google and Bing

There are plenty more here

Awesome but bizarre buildings

All over the world there are people that need to be unique and they show it with their houses.

here are my favourites from this article:

The Basket House – USA

The Egyptian House – USA

The Shoe House – South Africa

The Lopsided House – Japan

a Dome house in good old Australia

can I have the Penthouse in this Russian beauty please

and there are more here.

Flickr flogging Getty Images. Urrr… Did anyone spot that one?

I hadn’t noticed until today that Flickr had jumped deep into bed with Getty Images. Apparently the deal happened in March (here). The odd thing is you can’t seem to opt out of searching for Getty Image content without doing an advanced search.

Although the drop down above gives you the appearance that you can search two libraries, Getty results will show up under either option.Here’s an example: This is a search of everyone’s uploads – but I still get Getty content.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=++faded++350D++Hungary++Szeged++2007 

 

Personally I’d like an option in the dropdown which allowed Creative Commons only. For now the only way not to find Getty content whilst searching is to do an Advanced search and tick THIS box:

Somehow the news seems to have largely slipped under the social media news radar but I suspect that there may some fairly polarised opinions on this.

Some links:
www.flickr.com/help/gettyimages
http://rising.blackstar.com/getty-flickr-and-the-land-of-really-really-bad-ideas.html

Posted by @eunmac

Keyboard Cat + Three Wolf Moon = Awesome

Three Wolf Moon is the most amazing shirt ever made, obviously. A shirt of unprecedented awesomeness that grants power, virility, “eternal life and the ability to displace time and space.”

OXEN is a two-headed design monster consisting of Shawn Harris and Emilee Seymour. A monster that decided to blend the World’s Most Awesome Shirt™ with the world’s most famous feline embodiment of schadenfreude, Keyboard Cat.

Behold the glory of Three Keyboard Cat Moon from Threadless.

 

Quoth Threadless:

Thank you, series of tubes for giving us "Three Keyboard Cat Moon." Once there were two separate Internet memes: Keyboard Cat – the loveable slapstick video closer, and Three Wolf Moon – the tee that launched a thousand satirical comments.

Now, you’ve morphed them together on Threadless via a design duo called OXEN to create a tee of historical proportions. In a matter of days, it’s become Threadless’ highest score ever, most votes ever, and most "I’d Buy It’s" ever. This tee is so ridiculous and amazing that we’re printing it now before the end of our scoring period!

Ironic jokes are just a fraction of what makes Threadless such an amazing place, and we thank you for weaving those tubes together to create the artistic diversity of our community.

Have at it!

- @bradyohalloran

Lessons in bad Social Media Disaster Management from Chris Brown.

The comment below under Chris Brown’s new YouTube video says it all. Whilst Chris attempts to use social media channels to apologise for his recent crimes the comment picks up and alerts others to the fact that Chris is clearly reading from a script. Best use of social media, especially in times where an audience needs to trust what you’re saying requires a level authenticity. If you plan to use social media for disaster management your audience will generally respond better if the presentation is spontaneous, unedited, unscripted, warts n’all included. In this instance Chris Brown has committed several sins: The video is over produced, he’s wearing designer clothing (further distancing himself from real people), the clip has been edited, eye contact with the camera is poor. The result is that he fails to connect on a human level with his audience. His apology appears contrived and the mass volume of responses fails to respond as he probably would have liked, the majority rejecting what they see. 

Watch the Jet Blue clip at the bottom. It’s a good example of ‘how to’ handle a disaster using social media.

 
Above – users are quick to notice that Chris is reading from a script, and many comment that this likely to have been written by someone else.

The result

David Neeleman (ex CEO of Jet Blue) shows how to apologise in a more genuine manner. Unscripted, rough edges, word stumbles, continued eye contact, make this a more believable message for the audience.

Posted by @eunmac

Facebook. Why it’s the Daddy of Social Media.

There’s been so much hype about social media in the last 12 months but beyond the hype lies some fascinating data. Twitter has been grabbing a lot of the media headlines, but it is important to keep some perspective around the relative scales of the social sites and in particular the continued growth of Facebook.

 
Above: Facebook dominates search trends. Whilst most rank sites by UBs and UVs, Facebook is the #1 site in the world in terms of time spent and search volume.

In 2008, Facebook did the unthinkable and overtook Google and YouTube for trending search volume. Since then it has continued its climb relentlessly. To put a relative scale on the graph above it is interesting to compare it with the spikes caused by Obama during election and inauguration. You quickly get the idea. Facebook has become a giant and shows no sign of slowing at present. In Australia over 5 million users spend an average of over 4 hours on the site each month, (compare that with less than an hour with Google).

Facebook Stats July 2009 (via Facebook):

International Usage

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

General Growth

More than 250 million active users

More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

User Engagement

Average user has 120 friends on the site

More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)

More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day

More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications

More than 1 billion photos uploaded to the site each month

More than 10 million videos uploaded each month

More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

More than 2.5 million events created each month

More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site

Mobile

There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

 

Posted by @eunmac

Twitter costs Bruno millions, but saves thousands from 81 minutes of appalling gay rhetoric

Bruno in Sydney. Photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning claiming Twitter cost Bruno millions of dollars at the box office got me thinking again about the power of social media.

The article reported an impressive single-day debut on the Saturday of the opening weekend. By Sunday, ticket sales  has dropped 39% – thanks, in part, to the flood of negative reviews which cropped up on Twitter.

While I’m sure this scares most marketers, to consumers, this is a godsend. I was one of the few that decided to see Bruno despite the reviews from my Tweeps and well, that’s 81 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. But thanks to Twitter reviews, thousands (potentially) have been saved.

We all know this is nothing new. People have always voiced their opinions about products and services; what social media has done is speed up the process and amplify the opinions, be they positive or negative.

Looking at this example, the trick with social media is really quite simple. If you want people to say good things about your product online, make sure the product is good to start with. Sugarcoating will only go so far.

@AngGraham

Taking pictures with an invisible flash

2 guys at the New York University created a camera that takes photos with an invisible flash of infrared and ultraviolet light.

The results have an odd colour balance that looks like a view through a night-vision scope.

 

So the camera takes a flash-free photograph of the same scene quickly after the dark flash image.

and software is used to combine the sharp detail from the first image with the natural colours from the second image

There are still some issues with materials that absorb UV or IR light, but I think it is a great first step and I can see this technology integrated in loads of different ways.

Cool business card

We have been talking about Augmented Reality for quite some time and we gave some pretty cool examples here and here and here.

So this guy came up with another use for it that is actually really practical and is nearly as cool as our Surface business cards here 

It’s pretty cool – well done. you can check out his blog here

Augmented Un-reality: Living Sasquatch

“Feed Your Wild Side” as a tag line for beef jerky takes on new meaning when webcams, a PDF download and some creative users collide.

Print the footprint which orients Sasquatch, then move him around as the camera rolls. He’ll perform a number of moves as you direct him via the website.

No idea why the front door takes so long to load, but otherwise great idea and execution. Evidence of what it takes to make this kind of idea fly these days.

http://livingsasquatch.com/ 

@iclazie

Web fonts – where are we? Untangling the tangle

This post from I Love Typography explains how close designers may be to practical solutions for total typography freedom for editable text in web pages.

One solution discussed is TypeKit, a subscription based font licensing system.

Interesting read for web designers and font nerds. @iclazie

The Mystery of Kevin Rudd’s/Kyle & Jackie O’s new Twitter followers. Solved

We were wondering how Kevin Rudd had managed to gather over 100,000 new Twitter followers in under 10 days. It was a bit of a mystery because as you can see, on the 6th of July something strange happened following a very consistent pattern of Twitter growth for a user. In fact the pattern below is something normally associated with people who are manipulating their follower count (see this article).

 

Where did they all come from?
So what happened? The answer is actually quite simple. Twitter just added the @kevinRuddpm and @kyleandjackieo accounts to be amongst the exclusive 241 twitter accounts in the world that are “recommended”. See this article on “Who Twitter Loves the Most”. Anyone new to Twitter will potentially be given Rudders account as a suggested account. It’s free and very valuable promotion for him.

Here’s an article on what getting on this list means (here) – and it is controversial, many have remarked that the spots are unfair. Jason Calicanis offered to pay $250,000 (here) to be on the list citing the spot as the next “superbowl ad”.

One might argue Twitter has provided Rudders an unfair advantage for any future elections, but hey… that’s a story for someone else to take up!

Update: Julian Cole pointed out to me via Twitter that this may also seems explain why http://twitter.com/kyleandjackieo had a massive leap during the same period. This would debunk the SMH article claiming Kyle and Jackie O have been buying followers: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/kyle-and-jackie-o-accused-of-faking-followers-on-twitter-20090707-dbie.html

 

Posted by @eunmac