benhamin

Questionable title I know (perhaps you can suggest something better?). But I had to intro this great pic/ad with something. I wonder if Philips are the light bulb choice for Star Wars fans.

Found on FFFFOUND.

I’ve exhausted my ‘booster can’ already, mainly down to the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing… just clicked away on the arrows. Unsure when the booster gets replenished, but I need some speed.. got a long way to go to win this race.

So far I’ve been across some odd blogs, mainly on gardening, don’t know if that’s a secondary objective from Orange or what.

Again I think this is an outstanding idea. I’m flying across the web, being pushed from participating site to participating site, which is a laugh… its like a weird StumbleUpon hybrid with orange balloon animals.

Time to fly.

Just found a balloon of a Racoon on Faris Yakob’s blog. Clicking through I discovered this upcoming campaign for Orange in the UK.

Poke are responsible [again]. They keep turning out great work for Orange and this looks like another online masterpiece.

What I’ve gleaned from a brief play is, its a balloon race across the internet! What does this actually mean though?

Well it seems that you participate in two ways;
1. As a site owner, embeding code (see floating Racoon bottom left of this page) to track passing balloons (aka site visitors)
2. A balloon owner, whom by visiting participating sites (like this one, and Faris’) can increase their balloon miles. I’d imagine that a media buy on major sites will feature banners that track ‘balloon miles’ too, so you can crank up your mileage.

Why participate? The balloon that flies the furthest wins an £18,000 holiday to Ibiza for themselves and 7 mates - plus other stuff, probably phones. Plus the fact that the idea is brilliant and you simply want to see how far you can go - wouldn’t you?

I’m facinated to see how this is actually going to rollout… page to page, site to site. Below is the personal widget you get once you get your balloon. This can be installed on everything from a social profile on Facebook, to your very own blog. I chose a Racoon, ultimately this is a far cooler animal than a dolphin, camel (or the other one). But I guess my ‘balloon miles’ will be recorded here for all to see… fingers crossed.

Get yourself a balloon and lets race!

Quick post… had to share.

Check our man on the ground; Thaddeus Maximus’s photostream here

The bike actually works, visit Max Knight design to see it in action.

Addictive TV give the Iron Man movie their particular style of remix mashup bootleg that they’re famous for.

I know that New Line Cinema got them to mixup Shoot Em Up and Snakes On A Plane [below]. But I wonder if Paramount commissioned them to do Iron Man?

Of course the marketers wet dream is that you get a ‘user generated reaction’. Your audience takes the initiative to cut-and-paste-and-remix your content creating something more real than the art directed client approved version. Those clips then go viral and become the media for your film. That said commissioning a crew like Addictive TV takes it to a whole new level and hopefully throws down the gauntlet for other creatives to have fun with the clips…

I want to see great content like this becoming the trailer for the film in the first place, rather than being an extention or addition to the usual formats.

Discovered via BigShinyThing blog.

Addictive TV MySpace page and Wikipedia explanation.

The In Rainbows ongoing release/re-use continues to amaze me… The singles from the album become a vehicle for all types of communication benefiting everyone involved from remixing to this re-work of ‘All I Need’ for MTV Exit shown here.

The split screen shows a day in the life of two kids, in such different worlds; one in the comfort of a typical western home and school, the other woken with a kick and set to work in a factory. Makes you realise how fortunate we are to be able to nurture and grow our children in relative comfort and safety. The clip raises awareness of the issue of child exploitation and human trafficking that needs our attention and support.

The idea was from Sydney agency Colman Rasic Carrasco. The video was created by Revolver Film, the left-had split screen was filmed at my partners little boys school, right here in sunny old Sydney.

Lets hope more bands see the value in letting their songs be used for good. The power and the reach of this collaboration will no doubt be astounding.

Hilarious real-world sketch on the realities of connecting to people you weren’t really friends with in the first place.

I totally relate to this. Hardly using FaceBook anymore, in fact, it outright annoys me most of the time. It has no relevance now I’ve got over the honeymoon of connecting to everyone I knew. Maybe if I did a cull of people that were picked up in the initial frenzy it would become more relevant again… but its just painful and time consuming to housekeep your account.

The sketch was created by the Idiots of Ants.

Big fan of data exploration and what better social network to explore that the stream of conciousness that twitter empowers and delivers. Twistori is a project that explores twitter comments by instances of the words ‘I; love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. In much the same way that Johnathan Harris’s We Feel Fine does, but with blogs. Choose the word you want to explore by then sit back and laugh, sigh and wonder as the ‘tweets’ appear.

Big phat link to PSFK for the news.

iPhone unpacking

Originally uploaded by ntr23.

It wasn’t me guvnor.. it was the Lego men!

Comedy photoset of Lego men unpacking a new iPhone - and then swapping the SIM. Well everyone does, don’t they?

Its taken me forever to watch this TED clip, so its no doubt old news to everyone else. Johnny Lee, a human interaction researcher, show’s how the Wii remote can be adapted, at minimal cost, to become a 3d interface for learning and inventive game play.

I like the fact that he’s got a massive following on YouTube, due to sharing his findings, it just goes to show that video is opening up so many new possibilities - for a researcher it must be a dream come true. Here’s his original posting;

Visit, Johnny’s project page to adapt your own Wii.

The Wii is so dextrous in what it is to what its done. Not only has it reinvented gaming, by leaving the PS3 and Xbox for the hardcore, its platform and hardware seem to be open for interpretation and extention by anyone with an imagination.

More than a games machine. I have a friend that works in healthcare and they use a Wii to keep the oldies flexible. I’ve also heard of doctors practising surgery with the controller (it helps to run-through the procedure). The possibilities seem endless. I’m going to keep an eye out for ‘interesting uses of the Wii’, if you come by any do let me know.

I’m off to buy a Wii… all this talk is no good without action.

Quick post: Google Earth 4.3 (beta) is now available, not only with more advanced 3d photo-realistic renderings of notable cities and builiding but with the ablility to simulate sunrise to sunset, with the aptly named ‘Sunlight’ feature. Watch this video to get a view..

Tags: google, google earth, innovation, inspiration, sunlight, sunrise

So here it is the first video example on flickr. I’ve been neglecting my image output of late, so I cant think when I’ll have a video to share. But its good to know that I can keep them all in one place.

I already want a photo showreel with music and cheesy transitions…

Will watch with interest.

Chris Brogan just highlighted this video post from Gary Vaynerchuk.

The post in my mind captures what the Cluetrain predicted back in 1999, ‘the end of business as usual’. Today, our lives are transparent and on show through the social services that we choose to surround ourselves with, whether its flickr that tells it in pictures, twitter in 140 characters and Qik in realtime streaming video. We’re open to the world, our friends and family.

Its just logical for us to expect companies and brands to behave in the same way and not hide behind advertising, marketing and PR, but embrace the chance to have a relationship, the chance to have a dialogue.

Gary’s got the words and the way - so probably best you watch the clip.