Via: Where’s my Jetpack?

So if you google “Australia” the first three results will be… the Australian Government,
Australia’s Wikipedia entry and then this site…

That would be Australia.com… for Tourism Australia. As in the site people all around the world go to when thinking about popping down under for a little poke around or that massive transforming voyage of self discovery to experience the vast majestic beauty that is Terra Australis, New Holland… Oz

Or you may have come across it searching for some little movie that may have just come out starring that little red headed girl from BMX bandits and that Wolverine dude. Anyway…

Continuing our theme of undertaking some of the biggest site launches in the country this year (trumpet blown) we have another high profile project that should leave everyone involved with it, walking a little taller this week. And if that wasn’t enough how about throwing in the design and build of Tourism Australia’s media site as well. Are these people robots?

No they’re not, just a swell bunch of talented, hard working clever people.

Hat Tip to: Fiona, Heath, Daniel, Duncan Pete V, Cearns, Mr David Carson esq and Mike Barry*

The photo below sums up the whole “vibe” of the project.

* I’m sure more peeps were on this… tell me…

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!

Gizmodo has been doing a great weekly wrap up of the latest and greatest iPhone apps released that week.
Like Bryan Enos Bloom or the trippy RJDJ, or how could you go past the instant rimshot/cricket soundbite generator. Seriously, people are buying this stuff. Except maybe the last one… it’s free.

Boom-tish.

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?

For the entourage fans. You know the show Jonny Drama is famous for ‘Viking quest’? Well here’s Viking Quest the game. Keep in mind this show does not and has never existed, but all done in the interest of engaging more fans in the story. There’s even a link to buy the non-existent 6-disc dvd set.

PS: Check out the warning copy @ the bottom of the page

How internet famous are you? Type in your name and find out.
Go here then scroll down.

Via: The American Copywriter Boys

Sounds dull. Isn’t. From the man that brought us Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

This stock licenced image ( a $5-10 fee) , an illustration by Yiying Lu, is the image you see when Twitter is down. It is called the “Fail Whale” and has moved as a meme into early adopter culture in a big way:

Wikipeda currently redirects searches to find information to the Fail Whale to the Twitter entry. Sensitive!

Using Compete.com, Garry Jenkin looked at Twitter’s analytics and saw that in April users had increased 42% and over 1,000% for the year. That’s some big time uptake.

BuzzFeed has a mass of links to follow including these:

• Fail Whale, the Fan Club- failwhale.com
• Fail Whale, the Gear- zazzle.com
• Fail Whale on Wikipedia
• What Twitter Users Are Saying -summize.com

Is the whale an endangered species? The Guardian’s article last week”Twitter searches for the next step” mentions that “now might be a good time to grab one, before the fail whale swims out of sight for good.”

And really does it matter? Does it matter that a new technology is fragile and falls over through massive uptake? You can only be let down by something that you have already given your expectations to…

It reminds me of a great quote from the late great Randy Pausch:

When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

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.