Fine web design at Michelle Hunziker’s Official Website. Parallax scroll, Mootols transitions and exquisite art direction. The model/tv hostess is good for the eyes also.
Designed by the italian studio ScozzeseDesign, which has also other ones worthy of notice: Alessia Marcuzzi, Dalbello sky boots or Pelican Hotel. Oh, and the site of some guy you’ve probably heard named Andrea Boccelli.
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Dreams do come true. At least that’s what the Barbarian Group set out to do for Pepcid Max and JWT, transmiting the sweet dream feeling after a peaceful night’s sleep with Pecid Max.
Max My Dream is based on world dream research, analyzing your input to produce a personalized dream movie with illustrations and sounds.
With 140 characters, i’ve dreamt that a a butterfly took me to Paris or the warm sand of the beach feels like cotton.
It’s not just another variant of Subservient Chicken, but a one year’s work that included features ranging from natural language processing to hundreds of illustrated items and animations. Yes, and that even includes celebrities, like dreaming that Robert De Niro was talking to me.
If you’re having trouble sleeping today, try Max My Dream. Or Pepcid.
Source: Barbarian Group blog
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The beginning of this decade witnessed the Mass Customization trend, of which are prime examples TV shows like Pimp My Ride or marketing campaigns such as Zune Originals, thus trying to embed personal beliefs into mass consumption goods and services.
On the web, this trend was assimilated by popular websites like MySpace or Yahoo allowing customized homepages where registered users could setup their own layouts and snack-sized information blocks. On MySpace, this feature reflected a desire for self expression, even if the features and technology were rather limited. The liberal customization eventually caused the downfall of MySpaces popularity, a rococo of visual design and high signal/noise ratio not very friendly to ensure loyalty amongst visitors and seduce newcomers to the service.
Personal aggregators become popular around 2005 with the launch of Netvibes, later followed by iGoogle, structured around the key concepts of data syndication and widgets. Similar models emerged such as PopURLs, which led do Guy Kawasakis internet newstand AllTop.com, that act more as filters than customizable services.
From 2008 on, with the growth of lifestreaming services (Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook), social profiles become themselves information filters, both personal (social recommendation) and public (e.g. CNNs @breakingnews), with users shifting their media consumption habits to where their friends were.
Personal aggregators at the time had almost no social features, targeted for a tech savvy audience, who used them as a start page but choosing to read information on Google Reader or dedicated apps and services (caveat: this is mostly anedoctal evidence gathered from my circle of friends and some web analytics data, being my blog one of the default subscriptions on Netvibes for portuguese users).
Referrals from Netvibes to this blog
Google trends for Netvibes, PageFlakes and PopURLs
With the launch of OpenSocial and skins, iGoogle tried to innovate, but this space reached maturity, and as with most technologies, were now witnessing the decay. Users started to choose a different kind of aggregation and knowledge management services, based on different platforms such as Tweetdeck (desktop) or Instapaper (mobile). Social filtering also kicks in with web services like Digg, Reddit or the more recent Paper.li.
If things look harsh for personal aggregators, it doesnt help that RSS subscription isnt in a good shape either, not being understood/used by the early and late majority. It should suffice as evidence the shutdown of one of the most popular subscription services, Bloglines. Information consumption shifted from push to pull, and were in the real time age.
The biggest challenge facing personal aggregators is to limit themselves to a classic customization and not a true, valuable personalization: focusing on the superficial (colors, layout, widgets) and not the essntial (information filtering, personal recommendation). While customization is easy to achieve with current technology (cookies, personal settings), personalization is a whole different game. Some notable exceptions come from Google: Priority Inbox on Gmail or More blogs like this on Google Reader are only possible thanks to network effects, by aggregating behaviors of millions of consumers and learning from daily habits.
Photo by Jinho Jung, under a CC license
The way i see it, for personal aggregators to survive, they need to evolve from classic Lego to Mindstorms.
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With the new Formula One season starting, McLaren rolled out a new website developed by Pirata London, giving a glimpse of the backstage action, with a live video stream handling almost 200,000 people in a day.
The whole aesthetic spans throughout the website which becomes a live dahsboard, with some web engineering powered by jQuery, @font-face embedding and a custom CMS running on a nginx webserver. Besides, the visuals are a nice escape from a testosterone drive automobile industry.
Other highlights include a dedicated mobile website, a fan community an lots of (light)boxes 
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Never thought Alicia Keys would sing a song for me, but here she is:
Well, not really. But it was really surprising the seamless personal experience delivered by MySpace, BBH and Domani Studios (which are becoming one of my new favorite interactive companies).
But better than the tech wizardry behind the thing is the “LOVEABLE MAGIC”, as @FranHazeldine calls it:
With the Myspace Fan Videos, the magic isnt in the tech. Its in the moment when 50 Cent hangs a picture of you on his wall, or Alicia Keys sings you a song. Sure the magic is tech-fuelled, but its the twisted cultural content, the playful reference to things I love or hate, that really makes it. Tech is the means, not a magical end in itself.
Tech magic is out. Loveable magic is in.
Details like the reflection of your Facebook profile pic in the glossy piano surface on Alicia Key’s video show that the magic is beyond tech and is more about making it simple, collaborative and easy to share.
Create your own video at http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo
Source: BBH-Labs
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If there’s one place where creativity excels is on a blank canvas. You “just” have to figure out what to make of it.
Fashion brand Land’s End is here to help with a new website developed by EVB, taking full advantage of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to help you unleash creativity. Altough they should have used a password anti-pattern with Twitter like OAuth (there’s no way i’m sticking my Twitter password on a brand website) the Facebook Connect showed me just how my friends are the new paintbrush.
Oh, and they sell clothes too.
And just in case you didn’t notice the writing on my painting, Portugal’s main Online Advertising Award is up for voting at http://premios.sapo.pt/.
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The third movie of Richard Kelly (@JRichardKelly) of Donnie Darko fame premieres tomorrow, with some promising visuals in the trailer (even if the first reviews aren’t that promising).
And one thing i love about the fantastic genre is the extra care establishing their internet presence. With The Box website, i was particularly impressed with the visuals (and no, it was not about Cameron Diaz) and the masterful aural experience.
Along with the typical sections (downloads, cast, trailers, etc) i’m starting to detect some ARG inspiration integrated in movie websites, by launching some satellite experiences, in this case a teaser website at YouAreTheExperiment.com and even a comic book.
But why do i really blog this? Because my favorite band is doing the movie score along with their Final Fantasy (@OwenPallett) peers. No wonder i loved the audio on the website.
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Yes, the Internet is wonderful and all that stuff, but sometimes we do indulge ourselves with a good sofa evening, watching a film on TV.
To celebrate this escape from the smaller mobile and laptop screens, the Image Freedom movement was launched a few days ago.
You can find lots of video testimonials of people playing around this idea, with channels on Vimeo and YouTube feeding the large video experience on the website.
And just a few minutes ago, LG launched the product website at liberteaimagem.com, a full 3D experience, showcasing the borderless concept of the LG SL9000 model, the new high contrast LED with ultra slim design.
Go ahead, give the site a spin (literally) and check the gallery for some nice product footage. And maybe, just maybe, you’re free to choose LG when getting the new TV model for your living room.
So, if sometimes i don’t update this blog that often, then perhaps it’s because I’m actually working on stuff like this. Enjoy.
Credits:
Agency: Fulllsix Portugal
Creative Director: Rui Vieira
Interactive Design: Daniel Teixeira, Victor Afonso
Copywriter: Claudia Ribeiro
Web Strategy: Armando Alves
Account Management: Ricardo Costa, Sofia Delfim
Guerrilla marketing : Torke
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The fine crew at Odopod are spoiling me with good stuff, as if Odosketch wasn’t enough.
Yesterday, i found via @lilmissjen, former colleague and now promising blogger, that Odopod and the NYC think tank Undercurrent (Hi Mike and Bud) launched a new site for DonQ, a six generation Puerto Rican distilled rum.
So what’s so special about rum? Well, of course one of the best reasons a guy would care about it instead of plain old beer are THE LADIES.
At DonQ’s Lady Data, one can find the how the female mind works:
(and dozens of other questions related to sex, style, success, night-life, mr. manners, wordly wise and dude 101).
It’s like the holy grail of the bachelors (or data porn for the metrosexual in you). And now i know i don’t have a chance with Jen, as she’s not much into bald guys.
Have a peek into the profiles, filter by criteria, get to know the answers and suggest your topic. Add to that integration with Foursquare, smart presences on Facebook and Twitter, and rum does increase your chance to get lucky. Respectfully and responsibly, with a female perspective.
Oh, and the rum bottles looks tasty also.
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Many countries around the world have been implementing smoking bans as public health policy. In Brazil, the state of São Paulo has issued last month a ban on indoor smoking, with the usual controversy amongst citizens.
Instead of taking sides, ad agency Fischer and digitial agency PIX, elaborated the installation “The Smoking Plant”, where 2 plants on a glass case where placed side by side, but with one of the sunflowers exposed to cigarette smoke. The whole experiment was live on the Internet during the past 2 weeks, with the results shown on the video below:
During the 97 cigars smoked, the project updated the progress on Twitter and created a great amount interaction with users, offering also a screensaver to follow the experiment from the desktop.
Many thanks to Carlos Merigo, for hastily providing the video subtitled in English.
Credits
Agency: Fischer America
Interactive: PIX
Production: D3 Estudio
Film: Conspiração Filmes
Cross-posted to Osocio.org