Random Culture

Webby Award Winners: Now With Mobile!

Yes, the 12th annual Webby Awards winners have been announced. You can see the complete list here.

One of the great new categories that's been added is mobile. Here are a couple notable items:

• Cosmo Mobile: m.cosmopolitan.com
  Includes fake calls to ditch a date, places to hang out and more.
• Dr. Pepper: http://www.drpepper.com/matchcaps
  An iPhone game, Matchcaps
• New York Times Real Estate Listings: http://m.nytimes.com/re
  Functional, but interesting
• Chase SMS Banking: http://www.chase.com/mobile
  The future of banking, for sure

It's cool to see mobile starting to come into it's own as a medium.

Tostitos: NOLAF

Great site from Tostitos, the NOLAF website (National Organization For Legislation Against Fun) is a funny site that uses full screen video to its fullest. Worth checking out. Designed by Mekanism and Element 79.

Why Sh%t Matters to Design

Great outtake from the PSFK conference in New York, featuring Allan Chochinov from Core77. While he's coming at things from an industrial design perspective, these are clearly words of wisdom that anyone working in a creative field can take heed of.

Link via Fresh Creation.

Quick Links: May 1, 2008

Arnold's R&D Lab
Great article from Creativity on Arnold's new in-house innovation department.

Top 100 Public Intellectuals
I guess it's a cross between thinkers and talking heads... you've probably seen more than a few of these guys and gals on cable news networks.

Starbucks' Customer Ideas
They solicited customers for ideas about how to improve the business, and you can read all of them here!

Nike Soccer: The Next Level

Awesome video for Nike Soccer, directed by Guy Ritchie.

Blog Video Comments

It's too bad I don't have a WordPress blog, because the folks at TechCrunch just announced something exciting! The ability to leave video comments on their complete blog family. The video comments are powered by Seesmic, and you can see examples on this comment thread at TechCrunch. Watch an overview of the offering here:

I can't think of a cooler way for blogging to really move to a "conversation", as it brings a much more personal aspect to the contributions of readers to the discussion.

Quick Links: April 20, 2008

The CW Pulls TV Show from Web
This is a colossal blunder from the CW. In a bid to increase TV ratings, they're forcing the show "Gossip Girl", which already has a large online following, to only air on TV. What do you think their Internet savvy teen audience will think of this? [via YPulse]

New York 2.0: Subway Crush
Great site for single New Yorkers who crush on someone in the Subway, but don't have the will to say hello.

10 Services to Send Text Messages Online
Great list of sites that allow you to send text messages without a phone.

TiVo Redesign

After starting work at the end of last year, the agency I work for (Click Here, the interactive arm of The Richards Group) has just launched a redesigned TiVo.com. It's an honor to work on such a great product and with a great client. Our team here at the agency, as well as the client-side team worked very hard... kudos to everyone!

How To Create Great Interactive Agency "Reels"

I've been having some conversations lately about interactive agencies creating reels, just like offline agencies. Reels have the potential to be much more powerful when pitching your agency than clicking through screenshots of the sites you've created. Here are a couple examples of interactive agency reels:

• AKQA
• Cobra Creative
• Reflex Interactive

I think all are great examples of showcasing interactive work in a more dynamic manner. After all, visitors to the websites we create don't have a "screenshot" experience. Why should we give prospective clients anything less?

Here are a few tips that I can gather from looking at these interactive reels:

1. Show interaction with the website
2. Provide context by showing the complete page
3. Use Flash for reels on websites... Quicktime can load horribly slow
4. Don't use text or captions
5. Music selection is HUGE, and should reflect the type of work you do

Have any other examples of great interactive reels? Let me know.

The Next Creative Revolution

Nick Law is the Chief Creative Officer at R/GA, and he has a few words of wisdom about "integration"...

"..."The Big Idea." It consisted of their famous "funny story" tied up neatly with a conceptual bow called the "tagline." It worked pretty well for 50 years. Making the stories sufficiently funny and the taglines sufficiently memorable was enough to get products attention, so it became doctrine. But now the industry has a problem."

Read Nick's complete article, "The Next Creative Revolution."

Data Portability: Multiple Sites, One Profile

"DataPortability gathers existing open standards into a blueprint for a social, open, remixable web where your online identity, media, contacts and content can follow you wherever you go. Find out more at dataportability.org."

Facebook App Best Practices

The folks at the Three Minds blog have a great post up about advertisers and Facebook Applications. Just as Second Life is home to numerous advertiser locations without a soul in site, advertiser created Facebook Applications are starting to become deserted islands, with little to no usage. Here are five key guidelines they spell out for advertisers wanting to create a Facebook App:

1. Don't start a new version of something that's already popular
2. Don't overcomplicate the concept or interface
3. Don't extend a campaign without thinking about the social context
4. Don't separate your fans, reach them where they already exist

Great guidelines for the agency or advertiser wanting to get involved. I would add the following in addition:

1. Don't require invites to use your application
2. Don't require registration at your website to use the application
3. Don't send users outside of Facebook unless you have to

Here are a few valuable questions to ask as you're concepting the application:

• Would a user want to display this app in their profile? (remember, this is optional)
• Are you giving them a reason to interact with the application frequently?
• Will they really want to forward this application to a friend?
• Have you included funds or plans to drive usage of the application?

And a couple technical questions:

• If your app becomes a huge success, can your hosting handle the traffic?
• Are you building the application in a way that it can be utilized in other social networking formats?

Thanks to Three Minds @ Organic for a great conversation starter!

Good Design Friday: Starbucks Coffee At Home

Starbuckscoffeeathome.com is a nicely designed site to promote the purchase of Starbucks beans you can brew at home. Designed by Draft FCB and Your Majesty.

Quick Links: April 2, 2008

Things for Sale that I Will Mail You
Yes, it's that simple... and there are some great things. Check it out! [via ian tait]

Cadbury Gorilla Sequel
No, it doesn't feature a gorilla, but it's still a fun ad. [via InfluxInsights]

2008 Brand Junkies Survey
Who's green... What brand would you like to argue with? Sit next to at a dinner party?

YouTube Doubler

Why enjoy just one video of a baby laughing, when you can enjoy two? YouTube "Doubler" allows you to embed and play two YouTube videos side-by-side.