Great news: finally Interactive Advertising Bureau Portugal kicks off, with an ambitious installing committee .

Ricardo from Elemento Digital did most of the hard work (along with Alain Heureux, from IAB Europe) and got great feedback from the major Portuguese online media players, that are finally agreeing on the urgent need of a reliable institution heading the interactive marketing industry.

In the next few months, IAB Portugal intends to discuss the main goals and business plan, inviting all the players to the table (remember my comment?).
So, if you’re in Portugal and concerned about the future of advertising, have your say at IABPortugal.com.

How about some gaming as a Friday time waster? Well, there’s always the new site from 2Advanced for LucasArts: The Force Unleashed.

Most gamers are all excited by this Star Wars release, that promises some kick-ass physics engine and might even attract not-so-serious gamers, like me. As for the site, lots of video and i guess some Perlin Noise actionscript for the menu fx, something like Ricardo Cabello (mr. Doobs) is doing here.

One thing that always pisses me off is why game/movie websites don’t usually have social features (embed videos, social bookmarking, etc). It sucks seeing a great trailer (above) and then have to look it up on YouTube to embed. Besides, a great opportunity is lost to track their content and interact with their audience with a branded media player.

Interactive design is no longer geek talk, with a MoMa exhibit there to prove it. Yugop (aka Yugo Nakamura), a long time interactive visionary, produced the Elastic Mind website, where you can find interactive inspiration for the next decade, by innovators from the past decade. That simple.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

From maps to origamis, mashups or sensory design, it’s like the living encyclopedia of interactive design.
The website features even more works than the gallery exhibit, with photos, videos and description on each project. Ben Fry, Philips Research Labs, GRL and, of course, Jonathan Harries, are all there. There’s a search feature if you can’t find them.
If only NY wasn’t across the ocean …

Several online campaigns have been around in the last few months that used sensorial immersive experiences worth of notice.
In this blog, you’ve seen the ones by Porsche and Arcade Fire, and now 2 more, hand picked from partner blog Osocio.org, to sharpen your senses:

* UPDATE (17/03/08): apparently DoTheTest is a ripoff, with no credit given to original author.

Do the test

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

A witty mind hack and web sensorial campaign by Transport for London, aiming to reduce the number of cyclists that are hurt on London’s roads.
According to the campaign press release, researchers at Harvard University played this trick on some unsuspecting people and over 50 per cent failed to spot the change. This selective blindness is possibly the reason why motorists collide with cyclists.

Check also another video piece from Transport for London, that also plays on mind hacks.

Red Cross Hørselstest

http://www.horselstest.no/english/

This one is creating quite a buzz (pun intended), but you’ll need to have headphones to fully experience it.

Come on, give it a try. And listen carefully.
It’s more important than you might think.

Just two links i ⁽¹⁾ would like to share with you.

The first is a website done by Trevor Harman, and it features a cool concept: What would you do with that extra day every four years.

it’s Project leap year so go out there and say what you’d do with an extra 24 hours.

For the second link i’d advise you to get some 3D glasses and if you are a flash developer with a special taste for Papervision you have the source included.

It’s done by Ben Stucki a Flex Consultant you can read more in his blog and get the source for the project there too .

This is a guest post by Hugo Matinho, our new Flash Developer at Draftfcb Portugal. You can check his blog or follow him on Twitter.

After a levitating a light bulb, Jeff Lieberman teams up with Dan Paluska to conjure another digital beauty, with their Absolute Quartet robotic music machine, with a companion website at AbsolutMachines.com.

Check the video for a ball launching, internet connected, melody maker, robotic composer, operated by you and three robots.

Doesn’t it reminds you of Bjork?

The musical installation is on display at New York, but if you want to experience more musical wackiness, then head to the website sponsored by Absolute, with one big question in mind: “In a absolut world, would machines be creative?”

Besides Absolut Quartet, you can also interact with Absolut Choir, where 22 choir members react to the words you type, with your “joint performance” submitted by email. The installation is on display at Stockholm.

This is the TRUE INTERACTIVITY.

Tip by DigitalExperience

Here goes one more online political marketing post. Pro-Obama, of course.

As if it wasn’t enough that BarackObama.com rocks, will.i.am teamed up with agency Syrup and builded a site where Obama supporters can join in to momentum.

The same way the video came to life, the website is counting on crowdsourcing and UGC, by uploading photos with name and location into the music video, or tagging their Flickr photos with “hopeactchange”, and create a mosaic visualization.

Yes We Can.

Flugtag Flight Lab is a immersive Papervision experience, developed by LessRain for Red Bull.

You get to hack your plane in a virtual hangar, cutting, painting and applying you own patterns. In the end, you flap your wings to control your creation in a 3D environment.

Red Bull gives you wings!

I’ve said previously that convergence is becoming mainstream, and we often see new applications being brought from the web to our physical spaces, as connectivity becomes ordinary.

Wable is one of these projects, streaming the feeds from Plazo, Flickr, Last.fm and del.icio.us, visualizing

the changes of your web identity over time and create a physical link between your virtual and real identity (…) The interface consists of both a physical table and a web application. This direct feedback from your web identity is customizable and can be connected to any RSS feed”

.

The project was developed by Physical Interaction Lab, using Arduino, a ethernet connection and 4 small motors.

Source: information aesthetics