This from today’s ‘The London Paper’:
Yup that’s about the size of it…
And entries to the Tiddlywinks championships have been down this year, researchers blame YouTube.
Month: September 2007
Cravendale Do a Very Very Good Thing
W+K London and Unit9 have made a really brilliant thing. It’s part multi-player interactive game/muckabout. Part UGC. Part video editor…
It follows on from the really nice Cravendale ads that are on TV. You can see them on YouTube here. I’ve always liked them, but this is a rare thing. An online extension that really does extend and build on the creative and allows people to get involved.
It steers clear of lots of the usual traps that people might fall into. And does a lot of things amazingly well:
- It’s completely intuitive.
- Rather than starting from a point of deep interaction it gets people involved at a very simple level. Put in your name and start moving about. Easy.
- Then you can get deeper and deeper into the world (if you fancy it). Get friends in. Edit multiple clips. Etc.
- The attention to detail is phenomenal.
- The routes through the different interaction paths are nice.
A piece of work I’m genuinely envious of. Nice one. I’m sure it’ll be picking up the odd award or two…
Fosters Do a Bad Thing
I clicked on a banner today. I probably click on 2/3 a month. I’ve no idea if this is low or high or average. I’ve never seen any stats about the number of banners that the average person clicks on. Has anyone else?
Anyway, I digress.
Here’s the ad I clicked on.
It’s probably not that hard to guess why I clicked on it: the promise of 4 free lagers. Now I guessed I’d have to submit some details or something so that I could get a coupon on suchlike. I was prepared for that.
I wasn’t prepared for this:
A user generated competition where I can upload cool vidz of my mates mucking about. Woo hoo! UGC at it’s very lamest. AND NO FREE LAGER! No mention of free lager. Not even a ‘sorry all the free lager is gone’. Just nothing.
That made me a bit cross. It’s the kind of thing that gives online advertising a bad name ;-)
I Love Beer and Rap
I quite like beer and I can listen to rap for a bit. But these guys are obviously more passionate about the two than me. (From above a graffiti gallery/shop called RareKind in Brighton)
My Stereo Thoughts On FaceBook
I’ve got lots of thoughts about FaceBook, some positive some negative. And I was trying to come up with a way to encapsulate it all. I sort of think I have, but there might be some holes in my analogy…
For me, this is FaceBook:
It’s like one of those ‘integrated midi systems’. Basically it’s an all-in-one music system. Lots of features and easy to use straight out of the box. The sound quality might be a bit rubbish and if it goes wrong you have to bin the whole lot. Plus options to extend it or customise it are limited (there’s no way to open the box, but you could put stickers on it or use input jacks on the back).
Doing something similar to facebook by glueing together lots of Web 2.0 type apps. E.g. a WordPress Blog with Last.fm, Flickr, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc. Is much more like putting together a hi-fi separates system.
Is much harder to get up and running. It takes much longer to plan your system. Sometimes it’ll work great, other times it won’t. And you might need to get help from a geek / expert to get the most out of it. But when it works it’ll be fantastic, and you can swap bits in and out to make sure its future-proof. And you can tinker with it to your heart’s content.
But separates are more geeky. And people do get obsessive. And in hi-fi land, just like web land, some people enjoy the putting together of the system almost more than they enjoy playing it.
Comparing FaceBook to a midi hi-fi is not intended as a slur. It is like a very good midi hi-fi. And just as midi systems are a good way for people to start enjoying music perhaps FaceBook has a similar role…
What do you reckon?
Brighton Chip Shop
Anthropologists could figure out a lot about Brighton just by looking at this chippy window. It’s all breakbeats (old skool rave, drum and bass, coldcut and breaks), with an odd rock thing in there too. And of course there’s a small dose of Tai Chi for good measure.
Internet Now Working
Yeah, that’s what they say… I don’t think it’s strictly true though.
I always liked with Tim Berners-Lee’s quote about the Internet always being “a little bit broken”. (Read more at The Cluetrain Manifesto – it’s in the bit about the character of the web).
Super Supermarkets
Normally I’m a bit hurried or hassled going around the supermarket, but on Saturday I decided to have a bit of a wander and look around the shelves to see what caught my eye. I even bought some of the things I thought were interesting. Here they are.
I’ll start with something I liked just because it looked lovely. It’s a classic bit of packaging that was just too nice not to have in the cupboard.
Next comes a limited edition product…
I don’t know if I want my beans bigger? Maybe I’d like them smaller? But any kind of Baked Bean innovation is good in my book.
After that I spotted these Chupa Chip Relax lollipops – they’re really small and in a box about the size of a pack of fags.
But it’s only when you flip the box that you realise that they’re lollys to help you stop smoking. They’ve even got an NHS stamp on them. They say:
“Chupa Chups Relax can replace the hand to mouth action lost when stopping smoking”
Which reads almost like if you stop smoking you get some kind of arm paralysis. But I’m sure that’s not the point.
And I’ve saved the best for last…
“Make mine a Builders” – a new tea brand. Which actually has lots of buildery stuff on the box, including this:
So they’re donating money to help people get into building. And helping you to find good builders.
But if you visit www.makemineabuilders.com you’ll see that it’s not just a box decoration thing. They actually worked with builders to formulate a blend of tea – and one that brews in 20s, so you get more time for teabreaks… It looks like the product is the brainchild of Elmwood Design. I don’t know why I like it, I just do.
Starbucks Bring Drinks To Your Laptop
This from their wi-fi login page:
It’s a nice thought…
I Love Unlikely Internet Heroes
I always feel a bit lame blogging stuff that’s been on BoingBoing, but I couldn’t resist Ronald Jenkees. Read their post for more details.