“the Flyfire project sets out to explore the capabilities of this display system by using a large number of self-organizing micro helicopters. Each helicopter contains small LEDs and acts as a smart pixel. Through precisely controlled movements, the helicopters perform elaborate and synchronized motions and form an elastic display surface for any desired scenario.”

Ok then.

flyfire

A neat little digital crossover activity monitoring device that rewards you for… activity. Aimed at the kids, Switch2health makes these little coloured bands with a small insertable device/pedometer that generates a unique code which you then punch back into the site to redeem your points/rewards. Great! It will also give you a smiley or a frowny based on your current activity. Russell writes a great little thing about it here… where I may or may not have pinched the pics from…

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

A testament to how effective this interactive piece is from Intel is whether you feel like touching your computer screen when you’re watching it…

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/2010/01/intel_1.php

Direct You Tube link:

Intel InfoScape Double HD Touchscreen Internet Experience

Not only was he EOTY (employee of the year 2009) he’s also the only person from outside of the creative department to do his own white agency home page... Nice work MB.

a message from ‘dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity’ 

http://dorkbot.org

I want to invite you all to an exciting event taking place at the Powerhouse Museum at the end of this month. Over the weekend of Jan 29-31 forty game designers, developers and artists will volunteer to be locked away in the basement of the PHM and not allowed out until they have made a game! 

That’s right: its Game Jam Sydney, part of the Global Game Jam that is
taking place simultaneously in over 100 locations around the world. It’s 48 hours of intensive game development with an aim to produce innovative and exciting new games. It’s also part of the Powerhouse’s “80’s Gamer Weekend”so there will also be talks and presentations by some veterans of the Australian game industry, and some up-and-coming indy designers.

To find out more, visit http://www.gamejamsydney.com/

Spread the word!

 

 

SPECIAL REQUEST: We will need some tech-savvy people to volunteer as network administration for the event. Do you have familiarity with running a LAN of 40-50 computers? We’d like to hear from you. Even if you can’t make the whole 48 hours, having you to help with setting/packing up or being on call for some of the time would be really valuable.

Contact: dorkbotsyd-blabber@dorkbot.org

Google and Apple both unveiled key mobile initiatives yesterday, underscoring the collision path the two companies are on, and how long-term, video is poised to benefit from their battle.

First, as you no doubt already know, Google introduced the Nexus One, an Android-powered smartphone that it is selling directly to consumers. It is Google’s first foray into consumer devices and many more products sure to follow. Meanwhile, Apple, in a rare significantly-sized deal, acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company, for around $300 million. Quattro represents Apple’s first real push into advertising, an important shift from its traditional iTunes-driven paid media model.

With its own device, Google is primarily looking to compete against Apple’s iPhone, which has practically owned the U.S. smartphone market since its introduction 2 years ago. And Apple, with a toehold in the exploding mobile advertising market, is positioning itself to disrupt Google’s planned dominance of mobile advertising through its pending $750 million AdMob acquisition. If Apple were to make additional acquisitions, particularly in the online video advertising space, that would further strengthen its position.

Mobile video is poised to be a real winner in the Google vs. Apple face-off. At a minimum, the two companies’ considerable marketing spending (plus those of competitors Palm, RIM, Nokia and others) will mean smartphones in millions more consumers’ hands, dramatically expanding the video-ready universe. In addition, the experience of watching mobile video will just keep getting better. For example, the Nexus One’s screen resolution (480×800) surpasses the iPhone’s (320×480), which only means Apple will need to up the ante even further with its next generation. The range of video applications is sure to surge as more and more players stake out their ground.

Importantly, because there are no powerful incumbent distributors in mobile video – as there are in the living room, with cable/satellite/telco – I believe there is more flexibility in how premium video can be distributed to smartphones. Until recently mobile was an “on-deck” world where everything had to be approved and carried by the wireless carrier. But mobile is quickly evolving to take on open Internet-like characteristics, where applications and services are not gatekeeped by a distributor. In short, mobile looks to be more like online distribution than traditional video distribution. As power in mobile shifts to players like Apple and Google, it should also be a wake-up call to the FCC, whose planned wireless carrier-focused net neutrality paradigm already looks out of date.

While there have been recent rumbles about Apple doing something with subscription video for the living room, instead the company likely has more latitude in mobile to go well beyond the pay-per-use iTunes model, especially if it can also bring in advertising. Meanwhile, by having its own device and operating system, Google is optimizing the YouTube mobile experience. As this YouTube blog post points out, the Nexus One is an improved way to search, view and upload YouTube videos. With YouTube enjoying such benefits not just on Nexus One, but on all Android phones, YouTube becomes an even more valuable partner for premium content providers looking to generate mobile usage.

Google and Apple will be jousting for years to come in the mobile space. The opportunities for growth for both companies are sizable. I fully expect that video is a going to be an increasingly important part of the battle.

You may have seen a lot of the 87 things in this presentation… but it’s great to see them all in one place.

(From Adnews March 13th 2009)

How is 2009 shaping up for digital agencies?

Bring it on!

More and more companies are now realising the power of digital as a key business driver. In this environment, can companies afford to choose a generalist over an expert?

Our promise to clients – Better, Faster, Cheaper, Flexible – has never been more on the money than right now.

What’s more, our ability to deliver against these pillars is in stark contrast to some of our larger integrated agency competitors.

We have seen from the fully integrated agencies’ claim after claim, restructure after restructure and senior hire after senior hire, that, if you scratch the surface, they are the same old mainstream agency with digital tacked on…..animating print ads, TVCs online.

Unless every ounce of your agency’s DNA is digital, you are behind the curve and subsequently your clients are chasing not leading.

Technology is no longer just that guy in the corner playing Dungeons and Dragons, it is the gateway between business, marketing, customers and prospects. Your agency must live and breathe technology, developing the best solutions, aware of all innovations and, equally, the limitations. This is the pedigree of digital agencies, minimising risk, saving time and money, creating innovative solutions and improving speed to market.

Digital creates rivers of data, and you can sink or swim in this data. It comes in real time, wave after wave of information. Digital agencies are accustomed to this immediacy of information, turning on the taps, filtering and optimising the work. Data sits across all departments. It is no longer about post analysis – it provides insight, it informs and it enlightens.

Interaction is so much more than just a click or a person voting on their favourite viral piece. Interaction is a way of thinking beyond the traditional; broadcast/reaction, cause/effect – it is about capture and engagement. Digital agencies grab the interaction possibilities; taking a great idea and making it live and breathe online.

As digital finally lives up to the promises extolled for years, clients should expect more than just window dressing. 2009 could well prove the year that truly steels the future of digital agencies, the year that sets the direction for years to come.

As I said at the outset, 2009 bring it on!!

For more information contact:
Craig Galvin – Executive Director, Partner, the white agency

It’s a really nice example of a quick to produce/cost effective solution that leverages different social media sites, all linked together through a really simple primary navigation/promo space box that floats in the top left corner of each section/site you navigate to.

Their ‘homepage’ and ‘products’ pages are actually their www.wikipedia.org page, their ‘chatter’ section of the site is the brand’s twitter page, the ‘friends’ section of the site links through to their Facebook fan-page, and their ‘media’ section links through to their YouTube & Flickr pages.

This is a fantastic approach that intelligently leverages existing consumer and brand generated content, bringing together communities of brand advocates.

_

It’s another great example of brands needing to be increasingly brave and letting go of some control, as true brand ownership shifts to sit with consumers. Skittles recognises that they can only participate in these conversations.

It’s a huge step for a brand – nice one Team Skittles!

Do you Poken? Now this might seem a little bit cutsey and there might be an easier way to do this… but still. Little RFID chips in these toys swap social networking information (or any contact details) when you Hi-Five them, you then plug them into your computer device thing and manage the level of engagement you want to have with that person. You could do it other ways sure, but the interaction seems nice. Grown up applications to come. Via: Springwise

Full of inspiration and food for thought of what is and what will be, it is definitely worth a watch

But, if you don’t have a spare hour up your sleeve, we have prepared the 60 sec snapshot for you

Virtual Identity

You are no longer really in control of your digital destiny. Aggregating tools and the move from search to findability, your digital identity is not only made up of what you have created for people to see (active collaborations) but also what you have done (passive collaborations). Something you may want to remember when you next consider time you look for yourself on Hot or Not.

For the voyuerists amongst us, there is My First Tweet which looks at people’s first week of using Twitter and gives us a window into how people start using new digital channels - who tests the waters & who dives in head first.

And for the digital show ponies amongst us – lifestreaming. Check out Storytlr – a tool which aggregates all your social media activities

The analog & digital worlds

Once considered warring parties where ultimately in a battle for supremacy, digital would come up trumps, we are now seeing them coming together and beautiful things are happening.

Take the Wii or Guitarhero – these let us to interact with the digital world in an analog way – it makes sense to our engrained behaviors and as creatures of comfort, it was always destined for love at first swing / strum.

Mobile internet

The mobile web is finally taking off and it is succeeding by pulling the web apart, apps let us find exactly what we need, when we need it – whether that is a recommendation for the best pizza with 100m and how to get there or something cool to watch while we are waiting for the bus.

A little while ago we completed a small project called “CBA Webolution Phase 1″which meant we did a quick refresh of the personal banking section of a new up and coming bank who you may of heard of before, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, anyone? No? Didn’t think so. Anyway they seemed to like the pixel polishing we did for them so they asked us to work on another project called “CBA Webolution Phase 2″ No problems, easy, should knock that one off on a Monday morning before lunchtime. Right?

(Puts joke aside)

Seriously now. Wow. 12 months later and several lifetimes of work have been lovingly poured into the redevelopment of CBA’s Business and Corporate banking sections. And it shows. Top, top work from all those in the agency who touched this project with extra hat tips to Matt, Kathleen, Ellie, Mike, Fabulous, Luke, Jamie, Penn… and (thank god for blogs as I will have to update this list several times). I hope everyone involved feels all warm and tingly, because it really is a massive achievement. Well done guys!

Now this is something remarkable, MTV is getting back into (gasp) MUSIC, by posting every music video in its archive. Looks like the “Hulu halo” is finally making its way into the music video business.

The good part for all web/blog-o-philes? They are embeddable too! So now, when you blog and you make a David Bowie music video reference, you can embedd it… In High Quality!

See it all go down here: http://www.mtvmusic.com/

Now the only thing that I missed is the possibility to create a playlist… How can we party without one?

The iTunes App store where you can download/buy new apps for your iPhone has turned into a boonaza for small time developers who armed with good idea now have platform that can propel them in supedevstardom . And along with the fame comes the money, small time success stories are talking about profits of $250, 000 in two months. The full story from Wired.

Mark Pesce’s keynote at WebDirections South

If a picture paints a thousand words, you’ve just absorbed a million, the equivalent of one-and-a-half Bibles. That’s the way it is, these days. Nothing is small, nothing discrete, nothing bite-sized. Instead, we get the fire hose, 24 x 7, a world in which connection and community have become so colonized by intensity and amplification that nearly nothing feels average anymore.

His key points:

• what happens when we break free from Dunbar’s Number
• the most useful tool any of us could have, moving forward into this future, is a social contextualizer
• the rise of Anarcho-syndicalism, a system with no hierarchy, no bosses, no secrets, no politics
• we behave like crowds when we really ought to be organizing like a community.

Mark’s been kind enough to share the transcript.

Is NCF the next missing link?

Wiki: Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimetre (around 4 inches) distance.

Kinda like a mash-up between a RFID Chip and a smart card but a little bit smarter than that. Locally Telstra and NAB have been working with it to develop contactless mobile payments (here). You know buy some “stuff” at the “supermarket” and instead of using your “plastic” to “pay” for it, you just “swipe” your “phone” past their “thing” and hey-ho you’ve just “paid” for it. Now it can go a little bit further than this as people have been using the technology in smart posters, so the user just waves their phone past the poster and “holy-digital-content-delivery-system-Batman”

Hat Tip: Rubbishcorp

Introducing Ubiquity for Firefox, and experiment in connecting the Web with language. labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Ubiquity’s goals are to:

Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)

Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)

Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.

Extend the browser functionality easily

This is Part 1 of Aurora, a concept video created by Adaptive Path in partnership with Mozilla Labs. It sets out to define a plausible vision of how technology, the browser, and the Web might evolve in the future by depicting that experience in a variety of real-world contexts.

The release of Aurora is part of the launch of Mozilla Labs’ browser concept series, an ongoing initiative to encourage designers and developers to contribute their own visions of the future of the browser and the Web. Over the next couple of weeks, they’ll be releasing more video segments, as well as background material showing just what went into imagining the future of the Web and translating that into a video.

A great presentation from Iain Tate, on how the band Radiohead have such effective and relevant experiences online that they have taken him from being someone who disliked Radiohead into being someone who may not love them, but certainly likes the idea of them. His ultimate point being that this is the outcome that a lot of brands want out of the online experience, but to do this you really have to experiment with the medium and to a large extent re-invent the medium regularly. This means you really have to do new things and not wait until you see someone else doing it first successfully before feeling comfortable about doing it. Remember they only give out medals for bravery.

Apparently Lego are already using this as digital POS.
You can have 3D objects and or video playing in the same space.
Mmmm…

>>>>>Large Kittens Below<<<<<

UNIQLOCK

By PROJECTOR For UNIQLO
It’s a fusion of dance video routines, time signal music and clock utility, so the description on the entry says. But it’s more than that. It’s a brand and it’s collective agencies who have for the last little while produced some amazing work with such an articulate digital focus. If the GAP was born a decade or two later and had some imagination this is who they could be. But won’t. They also have a solid grip on the widgetisation of your brand and where it can take you, or more importantly where people can take you.

NON-STOP FERNANDO

By LEAN MEAN FIGHTING MACHINE For EMIRATES
Audacious idea. Have this Brazil nut gabber on for the time it takes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paulo. Lean Mean Fighting Machine also takes out Interactive Agency of the Year beating out Crispin Porter + Bogusky, all this with a staff of only 20 proves that they really are.

PET SHOP BOYS – INTEGRAL

QR codes, QR codes, QR codes… Now even a Pet Shop Boys film clip has got em’ but with a little twist. The QR codes appear throughout the clip embedded in a pixel animation. So when you pause on a frame (there are over 100 of them in the clip) and point your phone at them you’ll be taken to civil liberties/social rights sites that provide more information on the songs moral message. Neat.

ORANGE UNLIMITED

By POKE For Orange
Good things should never end. Just like the site. Which didn’t, the more you scrolled it just kept on going. Full of whimsy (break out the toffee) and instantly embeddable sized bits and pieces to take away for later not to mention FREE THINGS hidden in the site. The awards for this thing seen to be unlimited as well so far…Cannes Cyber Lion Silver > Webby Awards – People’s Voice Award > Art Directors Club of New York – Silver > One Show Interactive – Silver > The Clio Awards – Bronze > IAB Creative Showcase – Grand Prix > IAB Creative Showcase December 07 > FWA – Site of the Month > D&AD – Nomination > Design Week – Commendation > Creative Circle Certificate… enough.
Yet it doesn’t seem to be enough for these guys, their latest effort play balloonacy looks set to capture the collective attention of the internet again. The results they must have for some of their sites must be staggering. BTW check out the interior designed toilets from the London office.

BFD BUILDER

By CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY For DOMINOS
You build the pizza, you save the pizza, you order the pizza and then you track it all the way to your front door (almost). Now I’m glad this won, because it’s a utility. You know, something you can use, and through its usefulness it becomes a really good ad/brand promise. Smells like the olden days.

SEE SOMETHING. FEEL SOMETHING

By SOAP CREATIVE for FOXTEL
You know the one, where you’re inside the telly, watching people watching you. Getting all emotional.
Nice work from the local Soaperheros.

GET OUT AND PLAY

By FARFAR for NOKIA
Great simple game play, wonderful stop motion and superlative production values.

THE KEY TO RESERVA

By JWT SPAIN For FREIXENET CARTA NEVADA RESERVA
Really it’s a long form TVC featuring Martin Scorsese. Beautifully produced tho’

SIMPSONIZEME

By CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY For DOMINOS
40 million people had a go of this thing. Brilliant take away content.

GET IT STRAIGHT

By JUNG VON MATT for BOSCH
One of the many motion sensor entries. I think this one was the best as it’s useful to boot. The others weren’t bad though.

READ A BOOK AT WORK

By COLENSO BBDO for NEW ZEALAND BOOK COUNCIL
Beautifully simple idea. The fullscreen site looks like the generic windows desktop, yet it’s not, it’s the minisite for the New Zealand Book Council where you can read books (short stories, poetry etc) at work as the content appears as wonderfully terrible powerpoint slides.

TITANIUM

MILLION

By DROGA5 for THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Now this is really something, a program whereby kids in New York High schools are given specially built phones that function as learning devices during school hours (teachers can send out assignments etc) and all the normal distracting features are turned off. After school hours all the calling/txting features are turned back on and it’s just a regular phone again, other than that the credits etc are then linked to student performance, so it’s incentive based as well. Sure there are brands involved in this but it really is for the greater good. It’s these type of ideas that really belong in the Titanium category, not just campaigns that don’t fit in any category because they defy the genre, but for ideas that rise above advertising itself.

It reminds me of this idea and that’s not a bad thing.

Ahhh…

That said, this is advertising and it’s hard to go past a good beer ad. Really you have to see this, it’s amazing.
It’s what this whole content thing should be about. The Speights Great Beer Delivery.

The extremely entertaining Mark Pesce presenting at the Next Wave festival.

More of his thinking on the 3.4 billionth phone, his MAD twitter army and a social experience of the China earthquake.

Next week is adbusters Mental Detox Week. Here’s how they describe it. The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult – yet also how life-changing – a week spent unplugged can really be.

Mmm… sounds tough, but worth the experiment.

1. Simplicity: make it quick & easy;
2. Participation: get people involved;
3. Personalisation: let people make it their own;
4. Unexpected: surprise people;
5. Humor/Entertainment: evoke an emotion;
6. Distribution: use ALL media to tell a story;
7. Communities: make the consumer your marketer;
8. Portability: weave your content into their digital life.

Digital Marketing Worst Practices:

1. Lengthy introductions: get to the point or users moves on;
2. Overcomplicating: more technology isn’t always better; know your audience;
3. Replication of traditional ads: consumers are savvy and avoid disruptive ads
4. Expecting people care about your brand: if you don’t bring a bottle of wine to the party,
you won’t be invited back;
5. Forcing your brand: consumers are in control, so let them come to you.

Via: Contagious Magazine

I read recently that we seem to be increasingly outsourcing parts of our brain. So here is a little digital helper in that process. See a little detail online and think hey I’d like to remember later… offline. Well step back from that post-it-note. Instead, just click on that little beamme.info icon, enter your mob number and voom  that recipe (insert small detail) has just been sent to your phone. No one keeps the number and it’s free for the user. Neat huh? beamme.info