video – Page 13 – crackunit.com

World of Warcraft vs The Proclaimers

I didn’t think I’d ever post anything about The Proclaimers on here. But then I didn’t think I’d ever laugh out loud at a World of Warcraft video on YouTube either…

Daft Hands

You have to give it a minute or so before it gets going, but have patience, it’s worth it. It’s just really simple and charming, but a great bit of technique and something someone’s obviously put a lot of work into.

I can see it getting copied and used and abused a bit like that classic Dylan thing with the throwaway bits of paper (my memory seems to think it’s some kind of video for Subterranean Homesick Blues, but surely they didn’t have pop videos back then, did they?).

Chemical Brothers ‘Shop’ in London

Not sure quite how I feel about this. I like it. But I’m not sure it’s a very good use of money. I’m trying to make it a better use of their money by blogging about it.

The Chemical Brothers have taken over a disused shopfront to promote the launch of their new album ‘We Are the Night’. It’s basically just a shopfront with a screen in it showing a video. And you can also text in to get sent some mobile goodies. And you’re supposed to be able to turn on bluetooth to get sent a free download. Which I tried. But nothing seemed to come. Which was a shame.

I’ve used Google’s nifty MyMaps feature to create: Google Map that shows exactly where it is (in case you care).

The 2012 Mashup Olympics

Thanks Cookie.

Update: Weds 13th – the video is ‘unavailable’. “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Limited”. They aren’t liking mashups then. Oh well…

Prank Call

Prank calls are sometimes just a bit rubbish, they’re just too easy. But this one made me laugh out loud. There’s no video just sound.

Kate Moss for TopShop

A new Poke project (nothing to do with me really): Kate Moss for TopShop. I like the fact it mixes up old style web stuff with flash video and things. It’s all a bit ‘fashion’ for me, but I still quite like it.

Plus you know it’s going to get visited about a trillion times just because Ms Moss is involved.

http://www.katemosstopshop.com

Searchmash (from Google)

I think I’ve found the perfect search engine. Or pretty close anyway. It’s SearchMash.

If you look at the T&Cs it’s a product of Google Inc. If you do a search you get Google-like results. Apart from a couple of handy little differences.

You get some handy extras (you can search images, blogs, videos and wikipedia from the same page without reloading).
You can also jump to the next page of results without having to wait for the page to reload.
There’s no ads! It took me a while to realise that the ads were missing, but then I realised that was how they made the space for all the other lovely extras.

Interesting to see how someone like Google is ‘sandboxing’ even this level of minor innovation. Keeping it a safe distance from the core business. I hope it doesn’t go changing. But I bet it will. Try it now in case it does.

10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 2

OK, you have to know some stuff to put things on the Internet, but not that much. Just look at the people in 80% of YouTube videos, do they look like they know how to do complicated computer stuff? Or use a VCR? Or open a tin? In spite of this the girl on the left and her friends have had over 12m views of their video clip.

Basically if you have an idea, good or bad, you can make it happen online. There’s not that many people who can stop you. You really can just do ‘interesting’ things – globalrichlist.com and cock-a-doodle.co.uk are 2 projects that we’ve done just for the hell of it (with a degree, however small, of social conscience).

Of course you can still do those things and not work in a digital agency, you could work anywhere. But imagine how much fun it would be to have that kind of creative freedom, every day, in your job.

10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising

Photo borrowed from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurelfan/46008873/

I started writing this list of 10 things after I chaired a debate at the D&AD about ‘Consumers In Control’ which basically turned into a mass venting of frustrations from people working in both digital and traditional advertising. It’s obvious that there’s lots of conflicting opinions and lots of repressed anger.

Originally I’d written this as one big long monster post. But I think it works better as a series – it means that people can comment on each point individually and I can be attacked point-by-point rather than in one big monster onslaught. I do welcome any comments positive or negative, but this isn’t supposed to be deliberately inflammatory, honest.

I’m going to release them roughly one-a-day.

A couple of caveats, hopefully to pre-empt any real hatred that this might inspire:

Firstly. I’m going to have to put forward my definition of ‘digital’. As it stands digital is a bit of a duff word to describe what we do, as Richard says when he talks about ‘not getting digital’:

When they say ‘digital’ do they mean that they embrace digital means of communicating information? Funny but I am struggling to find some non-digital means of communication.

He’s absolutely right. Almost everything is digital which is why it’s so difficult to get this point across.

So let me clarify. The digital world I love is all about:

Interaction – 2-way or more.
Things that connect stuff together – whether it’s people talking to people, people talking to machines (so the machines can give them services or information in return), machines talking to other machines (in order to make the stuff they know more powerful).
Environments – in the olden days of online lots of people used to talk about online as if it was a bunch of spaces, hence the language or architects, sitemaps, chatrooms, etc.
Digitisation – taking things that can be turned into zeros and ones and pumping them down wires in ways that make them more interesting than they were before. Youtube did with video. Napster and podcasting have done with audio. Flickr and photos. Skype & Voice. Maps. Directories. And I don’t think anyone can miss the effect that the web has had on text.

Secondly, it’s worth stating this is all opinion. My opinion. Born out of my experiences. Really I should have called this “10 reasons why I’m happier working in a digital agency than an advertising agency, and who gives a shit what I think anyway”. But that’s hardly snappy is it?

Oh well, here comes reason one…