Digital culture
Virtual Homeless
I was walking through the city the other night and came across a really interesting interactive installation that was a projection being shown on the side of a building of a homeless man laying on the ground. After a little while a message pops up asking you to move the virtual homeless person via a text message. Intrigued I sent the text message, a door appeared and the man got up and went through it. I then got a text message to my iPhone with a code I could use to donate to Pathways to Housing.
A little research revealed that it was created by Sarkissian Mason for Pathways to Housing in response to the fact that they saw a growing number of charitable donations were being made via mobile text codes after they redesigned their web site.The projections will appear on New York buildings through March and you can get location details on Pathway to Housing’s Facebook page.
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Nikon moves one step closer to Minority Report
I don’t know anyone who didn’t want Tom Cruise’s virtual desk in movie Minority Report and the new Nikon Cool Pix web site has us one step closer to that dream. The site uses your web cam to let you explore and manipulate your photo libraries on the site with gestures like what you would use on their Cool Pix camera which amazing just like the ones you use on your iPhone. You can experience the demo with some sample photos here. The element that isn’t pictured here and is probably the coolest executions are that in addition to the Web site they also put the technology into ad units and for use on other sites like Flickr through a simple bookmark. It’s a really nice tie-in from the product to the interactive experience that lets you experience something on the camera without ever having one.
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Square Finally Gets Mobile Sales Right
There have been a lot of iPhone apps trying to get mobile sales right but I think that Square may have finally really gotten it right. Their solution is a combination application and small hardware card reader that fits in your iPhone audio jack. It is really well thought out, simple to use and you just have to watch the video to see how cool it is. On top of that their demo video may be the best product intro video I have ever seen.
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MySpace U.K. Makes Music with Facebook
Johnathan Hills and the guys over at Domani Studio have not been resting on their shiny new FWA of the year win and have been busy with the recently launched site for MySpace U.K.. The site turns to either Facebook Connect, you read that right, or the new MySpace version of Connect called MySpaceID to allow users to create personalized videos with major music stars like 50 cent, Alicia Keys and Lostprophets. It’s honestly one of the best external uses of Facebook content I have ever seen as your profile photo is seamlessly integrated into the videos that were all shot specifically for the site to be able to create the effect. It os funny to login, choose some of the video clips and then call a friend over to see their reaction. Now is MySpace could just figure out a way to make their actual site as cool as this experience…
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Skittles.com Ends Social Media Experiment
Less than a year after Skittles launched their social media centric clone of Modernista.com they have re-designed the site yet again. This new version again looks to go against traditional conventions by foregoing navigation in favor of a long scrolling web page. I found it surprising that in spite of the page length there is very little content and even less interaction available. There are some photos include a clown in an astronaut suite, links to their Twiiter accounts and a YouTube video but that is pretty much it. Wrigley’s also launched a new microsite called ShareSkittles.com where you can upload video to a randomly paired interactive montage of two people sharing Skittles.
Though the content is light it looks to create a strong interactive platform for the brand that looks to make much better use of the medium than what we saw with the previous generation of work. It is also worth noting that this work is the first to come out of Wrigley’s new roster of digital agencies after they replaced Tribal DDB, Agency.com and Digitas with Firstborn, Big Spaceship and EVB. The three agencies collaborated on the Skittles work, with Big Spaceship handling Skittles.com, Firstborn building ShareSkittles.com and EVB doing their soon to be launched Facebook campaign.
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Use Facebook to tune your hetero-dar
It’s said that to find out who someone really is you should look at their friends. Stockholm Pride used that thought as the foundation for their new site that focuses on heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of homosexuals, bisexuals and transpersons by gauging how “hetero” you are by analyzing your Facebook friends. The number is generated by giving the site access to your Facebook account and then it takes a minute to go through all your friends and give you a hetro percentage. It is also interesting because when you number is generated you can also see all the hetro percentages of your friends.
After going through the experience and getting my percentage I was left feeling that the site could have been a lot more impactful and effective if it would have exposed the logic and stereotypes that were used to generate the percentages. The promise of the site was to deal with the heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of gay society but telling me I am 59% heterosexual without the context how that stereotype was created makes the number feel hollow. It’s only effective if I am so prejudiced that the mere suggestion of not being 100% heterosexual would effect me. So while the use of Facebook data is new and unique, something as simple as a report card style breakdown would have given me some insight and enlightened and that would have been much more effective. I hope they grow and revise this foundation to make it more hard hitting because then I think it will really turn into something special and effective.
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Is Apple’s snubbing Flash all about money or a sign of things to come?
Before the Apple press conference was over yesterday this image of a broken plug-in icon where Flash content should have been displayed was flying around the internet showing and the debate over why Apple refuses to put Flash technology on the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad was reignited again. So what’s the real story behind all of this?
We have all heard the company line from Apple that they have not included Flash because they want to keep the platform stable and that is threatened by Flash because it is a resource hog and a security risk – which are both true. The problem is that it’s a convenient truth because the reality is that Apple could work with Adobe to fix the problem but it’s in their best best business interest to keep Flash off their platforms. Flash represents a risk to their substantial revenue generated from people buying TV shows, movies, apps and games through iTunes. It would threaten their development community as the appetite for those paid apps and games would shrink. So while everyone points to Apple as the creative thought leader the reality is that they are just like any big business where a threat to their bottom line is takes priority over everything.
No one paying attention yesterday even started to believe Steve Jobs when he said things like “The iPad is the best browsing experience you will ever have.. better than a laptop” after seeing that broken plug-in icon. You can’t make a statement like that when you are going to exclude 70% of online games, 75% of video on the web and millions of other sites from that browsing experience. You can’t make that statement after you just made fun of Netbooks for being useless but they support Flash content.
All of that being said this isn’t a love letter to Adobe and a complete condemnation of Apple. They have have forced a conversation a lot of designers and developers have had for a while now that Flash is in trouble. It has really languished since Adobe purchased it most of the changes coming in the form of useless filters and changes to the coding language but real strides to move the platform forward. The Web experience is moving more and more onto mobile devices and HTML 5 looking to take a good sides bite out stranglehold on the ability to create rich experience. Flash is struggling for the answer to how it will be part of this new future. Last year Adobe launched the Open Screen Project with more than 50 partners to get Flash and Adobe technology working across all platforms and devices. It sounded good but they haven’t shown any breakthroughs and it leaves me feeling that it was more of a PR stunt to show how everyone is working with them but Apple.
For me the bottom line is that their are faults and flaws on both sides of the isle.
For Apple we will agree that Flash is a flawed technology but millions of people create or consume Flash sites every day and that makes it a standard online technology we want on a device like the iPad. In the past we have been willing to somewhat forgive the exlcusion of Flash on the iPhone and iPod Touch because on those devices they are used to having a mobile device browsing experience where they get lighter versions of sites and paired back content. But with the iPad experience you are moving from that small mobile device screen and mindset to a laptop like experience and that changes all the expectations of what the device will do. The compromise of no Flash content is no longer acceptable and you can’t hide behind the company line anymore. For many people, including me, it’s a deal breaker that’s going to keep a $729 iPad off your bottom line because you’re protecting $1.99 apps. To me that’s just bad math.
For Adobe you need to evolve your platform and respond to the challenge because Apple is imposing their will on you and they have changed the game with the iPhone. When I consult with any business that gets retail traffic I tell them to stay away from Flash because with the number of searches being done from an iPhone you don’t want to risk business customers not accessing your content but being able to get your competitors non-Flash content and winning out. As designers you have to give us a solution we can work with or we will be forced to walk away from you because we have chose the success of our customers over nostalgia and platform penetration numbers.
For the rest of us another author said it better than I can when he wrote about this subject “We know some things are bad – quarterpounders, cigarettes, Jack Daniels and Flash animations – but we choose to consume them because the rewards frequently outweigh the risks.” Like with all products we vote with our wallets and we have a choice. Buy the device and accept the fact that Apple is restricting your choice and content or don’t and show them that we will like companies who take a creative leadership role just not at the cost of reshaping the online world solely for their bottom line.
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Social media content compose Grammy nominated artists
I can say with almost complete certainty that the launch of a new awards show Web site has never created the least bit of interest on my part until today and the launch of the Grammy Awards new site WereAllFans.com. The site creates pseudo photo mosaics of 11 featured artists from Dave Matthews to Beyonce out of YouTube, Twitter and Flickr content that was tagged with each of the artists. Each image only borrows from the photo mosaic aesthetic but is more of a semi-transparent image imposed over top of all of the content. Putting the social media content into this format takes it from the thing we have started to overlook because it is so ubiquitous on every site to an interesting and compelling experience that makes it fun to explore. You can look at all the content at once or narrow it down to just site through the simple control interface at the bottom of the page. ‘Join the Conversation’ lets you sign into any of the sites and post your own content with the correct tags so that your content will appear on the site for your favorite artist.
The other half of the site is the The Fanbuzz Visualizer that is a real time data visualization that monitors the daily and total social media buzz for each of the Grammy nominated artists. This experience isn’t nearly as well done as the social media mosaics as I found it littered with technical and design problems. I started with Today’s Posts and was only able to drag and scroll down the 3D list once in 10 tries. Frustrated with that experience I switched over to Total Posts that changes the view to a 2D list and I found that I could click and drag to scroll the content. That relief was quickly replaced by a new frustration as I found that if I kept my browser window in it’s normal more vertical shape the artists and the results were cut off to the point where I couldn’t read a lot of it. After some exploring I realized I had to change the window to a more horizontal shape and that would force the content to zoom back so I could read it. So while it would have been nice to see the same level of innovation and polish put into both halves of the site, the social media content mosaics make it worth checking out.
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Domino’s Turnaround builds up then destroys their pizza and brand
By now you have probably seen the new Domino’s Pizza campaign from Crispin Porter called The Pizza Turnaround where Domino’s monitored consumer comments about the brand on social media channels and according to this feedback they created new pizza recipes. Crispin did a great job with the TV spots and a slightly longer form documentary because it makes you want to give Dominos another chance. My wife who is a serious foodie even turned to me on the couch the other night after one of the spots aired and said ‘I always hated Dominos but after that I would give them another chance.’ The advertising did everything you could have asked of it because it changed people’s opinions and created an intent for them to act on it. Pop the champaign, make room on the trophy wall and tell the client to increase the advertising budget because we have a winner… or do we?
I went to the campaign site today to dig around a little more before I wrote this post about how successful the campaign has been when that feeling and my intent to actually try the new Domino’s came crashing down around me. On PizzaTurnaround.com you find the previously mentioned documentary, one news story and a Twitter feed that displays tweets with the tag #newpizza running down the right hand column. As you start to read down the column you quickly see that people’s love seemingly only extends to the campaign as I did not see one positive comment from anyone who actually tried the pizza. The first four found Tweets I read were “Tried the new Dominos pizza….. In my mind, collossal fail.”, “Meh it was ok…”, “im not feeling the new crust. i miss the old dominos.” and “not so great. Since when did “add more garlic/butter” = make things better?! Blech.”. That noise you hear is my intent to try the new product exiting stage left.
Using social media to give brand transparency to consumers can be a powerful tool but it has be used carefully and thought out to work correctly. In this case you are asking consumers to give your brand another chance and your advertising delivers that intent but it is a tenuous opportunity. From the time when you create that intent until the time when it gets paid off you can’t have any bumps in the road because the bond to the brand isn’t that strong yet. These Tweets are big bumps that are going to break that bond and kill the opportunity. I don’t know why this site didn’t take it’s cues from the video it was supposed to support and MAKE IT A TWO WAY DIALOG! Your video said you were listening to consumers and you were responding so why did that stop once the campaign launched? It makes the video feel like just an advertising stunt and that the brand really isn’t listening. You have a chance here to be transparent and let people post their thoughts BUT Domino’s has to be part of the conversation. They have to address these comments and not let them destroy what they are trying to build. It is the only way this is going to go from a quick fix to a real long term solution that will restore their business.
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Peeking Into Netflix Queues
There is an interesting article in the New York Times today that uses Google Maps based data visualizations to show neighborhood by neighborhood Netflix rental patterns in 12 major U.S. cities. For the selected city you can roll around the map to see the most rented movie by zip code or sort them by most rented, alphabetical or meta score and then use the slider to go through the 50 movies listed. In looking at New York you see interesting trends on some movies like Mad Men that is almost exclusively concentrated in Manhattan, Obsessed that was concentrated in Brooklyn and New Jersey and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was seen by everyone everywhere.
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