I’m feeling rather lazy to write a decent post, so here’s a load of links:

• TV goes “down the rabbit hole“. That is,
  

  CSI:New York is now in Second Life.

  
  Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfXb6zb6Upc

• Global social networks outlook by comscore. Or why the world doesn’t revolve around US.

• Financial Markets 101

  
  Source:Marc Andreessen

• Lufthansa launched RumorTravels, where you can play around with traditional prejudices on countries. Hmmm, the rumors arena is getting a bit crowded after Guy Kawasaky’s venture?
• Mixa, one more retro gadget.
  
  
• Fireblogging: or why Twitter isn’t useless.

• Nico Market, the new website for tobacco lovers.

  Just don’t take the headline serious, since it’s a dark humor European no smoking campaign.
  

• The new Pet Shop Boys video is using QR codes

And just in case i’m still feeling lazy on Monday, i can always use the services of The Excused Absence Network.

Lucky bastards these folks. Four groups of friends started a journey from Tarifa (Spain) to Murmansk (Russia) with no idea whatsoever of their track and only with 1.400Euros on their pockets.

The 12 spanish backpackers are documenting their journey of a lifetime on blogs (Group Uno, Dos, Tres, Quatro), sharing their experiences and allowing others to comment to help them along.

One of the journey videos, uploaded by Group One

With one of my friends doing the same kind of trip on his own (hope you’re doing well Pedro), i wish he could send updates so often as these groups. Blogs are becoming one of the favorite ways to keep connected, thanks to today’s easy publishing of video and text. Although this trip is co-sponsored by Bacardi, i believe that the tourism industry (in Portugal the most) would greatly benefit if they started to provide digital platforms so their clients could share their holiday memories.

URL: www.murmanskroutebacardi.com
Client: Bacardi
Agency: Seisgrados

To refresh our daily creativity, it’s always helpful to have a different perspective, such as to change our online video diet. Here are some fine selected resources that are guaranteed to ignite your creative sparkle.

Some of the videos are really worth keeping for future reference, so get the Firefox extensions DownloadThemAll and DownloadHelper to easily save them.

1. The mother lode: Archive.org

   

   If you care to browse for a while and ignore the game trailers you can bum into the original 1932 Nosferatu, The Kid with Charlie Chaplin, What To Do In A Zombie Attack or something more surrealistic such as Un Chien Andalou by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. As many of the movies have keywords and descriptions, it’s easier to find a movie on a particular subject.

2. A daily dose of entertainment:Videos with Bibi

   

   From Brazil, a premium selection of movies available on the web. Recent additions include It’s a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins or Sicko by Michael Moore.

3. Curating the web: SpecialTen.Tv

   

   One of my favorites, with several awarded short movies and with careful chosen content (heck, they even feature Arcade Fire) . Warning: be generous on the bandwidth.

4. Ideas worth viewing: Ted Talks

   

   Each year the world’s most brilliant minds gather at Monterey, inviting speakers such as Al Gore, Richard Branson, Steven Levitt, Steven Pinker and many others discussing themes ranging from Technology to Global Issues. The videos are later posted live, but with such passion from the speakers it’s as if we were there.

5. Concrete Video poetry: UbuWeb

   

   There’s more at UbuWeb than meets the eye, so when you land on the film section you could spend days wondering around the video works of acknowledged directors or artists such as Orson Welles, Dziga Vertov, Marcel Duchamp or Ginsberg.

6. The cream of the crop: Motionographer

   

   A digest in motion design and animation, where you can find works by renowned studios such as Blur, Lobo, Imaginary Forces or Psyop. And even if a picture is worth a thousand words, they also have great content.

7. DIY video hackers: MakeTV

   

   The video podcast of MakeZine, it’s a somewhere between a video tutorial channel and a crazy professor showroom.
   Learn how to program in Arduino, make a ring out of a coin or build a Grocery Propelled Vehicle on a Weekend Project .Pretty cool if you ask me.

8. RIP: The Show with Ze Frank

   

   One of the first “weblebreties”, the man really knows how to entertain. Having seen him live, my best compliment would be to regard Ze as the “Buster Keaton of the web”.

9. The real fun: Comedy Central

   

   South Park, Daily Show with John Stewart, Sarah Silverman. ‘Nugh said.

So, what’s your excuse for still watching home made videos on YouTube?

Al Gore’s Internet TV project is launching their new beta version at beta.current.com, with new features that should keep them a close competitor to Joost but also Youtube.
The biggest change seems to be (one more) social network, with the option to connect to other users with similar tastes or share your uploaded content with friends.

The beta version still lacks some of the quality content of parent site Current.tv such as Google Current, but with the ability to build a network of friends and a crowdsourcing community filter, it stands as one of the most serious competitors to YouTube, and a much safer harbor to brands.

One of the most interesting features on current.com are viewpoints, a place where users can record (via webcam) their opinion on topics such as climate change, stem cells or Iraq. Talk about digital democracy :)
CurrentTV strategy of filtering the best content but providing the community the tools to foster creativity might be just the right way to go in today’s video overloaded landscape. Let’s hope they manage to blend it right with the parent site.

Nice to know that portuguese brands are spreading some link love to from national bloggers. Rather than the usual top 100 blogs, the portuguese brewery, is awarding the best portuguese blog with €3000.

From the site:
“Super Bock Super Blog Awards are a tribute to you and all those who celebrate every day the portuguese language and the freedom of speech, helping to create a new Internet, a Web 2.0. Let’s make our own blog party in Portugal, awarding the importance of this (…) platform”.

“With this initiative, Super Bock intends to promote the best Blogs, and invite all portuguese to be part of our national online identity”

There’s not much of a chance for me to win, since they only allow portuguese written blogs. Go figure.
Anyway, if you’re a portuguese blogger, go ahead and register your blog.

Scarcity is always a straight way to get your campaign a boost. Or so they think at Amazon.de, where they plan to release the german version of “Harry Potter and the deathly hallows” the next 27th.

Instead of lining up at the stores perhaps there’s a better way: open up a huge bookshelf on the Internet, where the user can reserve their “own” Harry Potter book, even weeks before the official release.

You can choose and customize your own book on the virtual shelf, with the exact position of he book being saved, so you can remember were you left your books (i wish i could say the same with real books).

Credits:

• Site: www.hp-buecherregal.de
• Client: Amazon.de
• Web agency: Web Guerillas

Andre Brunetta worked with Euro 4D Digital London and brought to life a new Papervision3D powered website for Peugeot 308.

We’re starting to see a trend towards Papervision experiences, adding a third dimension to creative concepts. Time to dump shockwave and other cumbersome plugins.

Fashion & clothing companies are using the web to escape from the limitations of beauty magazines and their fatigued classic glamour ads. Great sites such as Diesel or Issey Myake are amongst the finest examples of web design in this category, but usually we are bound to US or global brands, so it was interesting to find Apartment.com.com, developed by CuartoPiso from Colombia.

Each new collection has a brand new hotsite, with illustrations that spawn somewhere from Peter Gabriel to the world of TV series “Carnivale“. Even the corporate website has a wicked brit punk feeling !

This work awarded Cuarto Piso with Lapis de Acero, giving more visibility to the company that brought to life the website of renowned illustrator Catalina Estrada.

It’s been a long time since dancing babies had prime time in interactive marketing. JWT France and interactive agency 5emeGauche did his best on a integrated campaign for Wilkinson, bringing the kids to the spotlight again with Fight For Kisses.

With a funny blockbuster style intro movie, the site has a remarkable approach to advergaming, allowing users to download a full game (produced by Ginger Studios) where our GI-Baby can kick some ***. A huge 99 MB download nonetheless, but no pain, no gain (pun intended).

As if a free game wasn’t enough, the brand gives you a chance to win several prizes when you get a high score. Gosh, traditional advertising is in serious trouble if interactive marketing continues to deliver this kind of rich experiences.