As if it wasn’t enough that CP+B grabbed Brooke Shields for their VW Routan Campaign, they partnered with Oddcast to create RoutanBabyMaker.
On this genetic online mashup, with careful attention to interactive details (loved the buttons), the user is invited to upload mom and dad’s photos to envision how their baby would be.
A simple but great use of this technology, and spot on at the van’s target audience. That’s how interactive briefs should be interpreted – ask not what can technology can do for your campaign, but what the campaign can do for technology.
Head over to www.fly-a-balloon.be
Don’t resize your browser.
Watch what happens.
One of the best examples on how to use the browser and web technologies as a creative medium. Simple javascript effects and carefully synced video can do wonders for your interactive experiences.
Following the SOTW (site of the week), a Video Of The Week. Despite all the social media buzz, some people might not be aware of a groundbreaking moment for the web technologies. Meet Ubiquity:
At least in Portugal. They better not be, since Craigslist has just opened their portuguese version and Google is starting to take local search and location based services more seriously in Portugal.
Anyway, PAI (Portuguese Internet Yellow Pages) released a new set of features that are so web 2.0 that they even have round corners and gradients. Here’s what we can do now:
Ratings and Comments
Now users can leave their ratings and comments, supposedly to improve the service quality. I wonder how long will it take until spammers and ruthless SEOs start flooding the system.
Maps
Nice one. Not Google maps, but at least they know the local market, so a tailored experience might be enough to convince portuguese users. The service is provided by Local Matters.
Search Widget
You can take the search service and embed it in your site as a widget. Unlike Google custom search, no revenue is distributed to publishers.
Things are eating up, and after web 1.5, it seems that some portuguese services are entering the 2.0 bandgwagon. Better late than never. Someday we might even ditch Microsoft government agreements and choose reliable OSS solutions (I wish …).
Meanwhile, all minor efforts are welcome. Nice work, PAI and Truvo.
Last year, Aral asked his blog readers to promote the mysterious new brand. Shame on me for not having posted a badge before, but as i knew Aral’s work was mostly in the Flash arena, i was expecting something like a framework or some new Open Source project. But this blows my mind. It’s a huge one man effort, and skyrockets my respect for Aral as a true SOURCE OF INSPIRATION.
The sessions will be available to attendees for a period of six months, and later released under a Creative Commons license. It will take advantage of existing networks to get full community involvement (yeah, i follow you on Twitter, Aral).
And get inspired with this list of confirmed speakers:
The newest update on Google’s free analytics package has now support for Portuguese. As with English US-UK, we’re also used to this double localization, one for Brazillians and other for Portuguese, so it’s good news for us Europeans to have a dashboard in our mother language.
You can select it from the Language pulldown menu on the Analytics Settings–>My Account page.
While webmasters and data strategists are fine with the English interface, it will be useful to Portuguese clients that aren’t familiar with most of the terminology. For someone who spent 3 hours yesterday explaining the dashboard and main features, i surely welcome this addition.
Speaking of the other Google Analytics updates, you might want to update your code to the new ga.js javascript include and take advantage of the latest functionalities, like the one that allows the tracking of ecommerce transactions.
In one of those “duhh” moments, i became aware of a new feature on the New York Times. It happened while reading the priceless piece about Radiohead, and incidentally double-clicking a word. Surprise, surprise, a new window opened with a reference search on the highlighted word.
The feature is powered by Answers.com, although i’d love to see a Wikipedia powered one (perhaps with a Greasemonkey script ?).
In web design, it’s a best practice to gracefully conceal power-user features, and this one is a really useful life hack, specially if you’re used to Firefox’s context menu search. Take note of this simple and effective idea, and if your site has specialized or dense content you can use it as a cross-reference shortcut to provide enhanced interactivity and semantic help.
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.
Last week i was amused with a drinking challenge, with one shot for each time that “2.0″ was spoken. While the other challengers were all geeks, i suddenly realized that we have to let go of this naming. And web designers are also starting to get fed up, as pointed out by Elliot Jay.
Sure we have a problem, but is anyone trying to figure out a solution ? My 2 cents would be to to look at the edges to find new paths to creativity. Art, interactive installations, local events or underground culture seem to be the most promising exit strategy to this 2.0 thing.
With everyone doing and looking the same, the web is starting to look kind of dull. And before you start rumbling, i know this site’s design is all about the 2.0 trend, but i’ve been working on a new template, avoiding rounded corners or gradients.
