Nothing really outstanding, but it’s a first for me posting a website on luxury items (maybe i just can’t afford this kind of stuff !? ). They did however a really nice work on the video, with an almost documentary film on the second part of the site, with the watchmakers history since Anthony LeCoultre and the manufacturing process, directed by Thibault Castan. And they got the embeddable video right (via DailyMotion), which you know, i find ridiculously obvious. Check below:
The newest release of Flash Player 9 Update 3 comes with a companion website: Adobe Flash On. To fully experience it, it’s advisable to install the latest plugin version, easily accessible with an upgrade option (or choose the standart mode).
On screen, you can choose amongst a shuffle of video thumbnails, with a HD option delivering a full-screen experience on high resolution, powered by the new H.264 codec.
The Flash Player Update 3brings some impressive features (that i’ve pointed before), such as new H.264/HE-AAC video codecs and a performance boost.
Now all I need is some generous bandwidth and some fiber-optic connection to fire my cable company and store the TV for good. I’ll stick with the projector for series and good movies.
This month i became a fan of two great brands: Miro and Mixx.
Miro is the free, open source internet tv player, formerly known as Democracy Player, and hell yeah, way better than Joost.
What’s most remarkable is that my average daily tv consumption dropped from 1 hour a day to practically nothing after having installed Miro. Now i’m addicted to internet tv channels such as Ze Frank show, Wired Science, Ted Talks or UbuWeb, besides my YouTube subscriptions.
If you already use Miro, let me know of you favorite channels.
With features like instant video search for major online video websites, lots of HD channels, access to independent media and support for BitTorrent, Miro has become the iTunes of video.
Mixx is Digg done right. With a beautiful web design, the whole service just feels nice. You have your own mixx, with selected tags appearing upfront, and best of all, a twitter-like feature so we can follow other users.
When you bookmark, you can set to multiple tags (unlike digg) and define a location. This way, anyone an subscribe to either topic or location, a great way to get niche updates.
The unique selling proposition for Mixx is the opportunity to filter those digg spammers and subscribe only to users or topics that actually deliver great content.
It’s kind of peculiar to notice that these two brands make extensive use of the colors red and orange. Perhaps the next magenta and cyan for the web have just been found.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Many of you might remember the Nike advert with Ronaldinho, where he repeatdly shoot balls at the bar. Well, Nike is hitting again, this time with the Sanchez boyz and their search fo “the most deadly accurate player in the universe”. Go ahead and check their target practice with Wayne Rooney.
At nikefootbal.com, you can follow the Sanchez tour with other players, and they even gave a quick jump to Portugal, altough I was expecing to see Cristiano Ronaldo and not Thorsten Frings !!!! Some serious geographical confusion at Nike headquarters (or at Wieden+Kennedy), specially when their current signature “Joga Bonito” in portuguese.
Of course, they didn’t forget the CGM side of things, and provided a downloadable target so you could practice and then upload your video to “The Shooting Gallery”, where videos can be ranked.
Too bad a embed code or permalink wasn’t provided so videos (and the campaign) could be easily promoted by fans. I really don’t understand why this is forgotten again and again with
CGM contests, being actually easy to implement. Specially when there are really fun videos at the gallery, with some of them almost so unbelievable as the one from Ronaldinho.
