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.

Cannes Videos From Arnold

Some folks from Arnold Worldwide are publishing daily videos from the festival in Cannes. You can check out all the videos at the Arnold website here. In addition, you can subscribe to them on YouTube here.

I've posted the first two days of video below. Check them out!

Link via Adrants.

Cannes Cyber Lion Finds

Looking through the 2006 Cannes Cyber Lion Winners, I found a few gems that somehow slipped under my radar, but are worth checking out:

Stockholm - The Musical
Created by FarFar for the Swedish Tourist Council, the site allows users to enter their name, which is then dynamically inserted into the musical.

Cisco Booom
Created by OgilvyInteractive Worldwide for Cisco, this website allows you to play a game with the website through your phone. Unfortunately, it's an international number... so someone try it out and let me know what you think. Looks interesting.

Make sure you check out the complete list of winners... some good stuff in there.

2006 Webby Awards

The nominees for the 2006 Webby Awards have been announced. View the complete list here. Some of my favorites include:

Toyota Financial Services: Scion
This has to be the best website I've seen from the financial services division of any auto manufacturer.
http://www.scion.com/own/drew/launch.html

Royal Caribbean: Freedom of the Seas
Wow... all I have to say is - nice use of video and flash. This clearly sets the bar.
http://www.freedomoftheseas.com

Lenovo: Which Side Are You On?
Great site which launched not too long ago. Simple idea, great execution
http://www.whichsideareyouon.com

Absolut Metropolis
Come on, what's not to like. Absolut doesn't just make a good vodka, they make a good site, too.
http://absolutmetropolis.com

2006 Bloggies: Winners Announced

The winners of the 2006 Bloggies have been announced. Check out the complete list of winners at: 2006.bloggies.com. Some of the more interesting winners are The Movie Blog, for new category "best podcast of a weblog", as well as Post Secret, mopping the floor with the competition and taking away multiple wins.

SXSW Interactive Podcasts

SXSW Interactive is podcasting... Check out the complete podcast coverage here. Not sure how often these are going to be updated, but a couple podcasts are already up. Hopefully they have more than just the few listed. There's also a SXSW community blog worth checking out.

As a side note, Click Here's own Pete Lerma will be a speaker on one of the Interactive panels today (Monday the 13th), "Selling Big Ideas to Big Clients." If you're in Austin, drop by the panel and say hello.

Battle of the Ad Blogs: Winners

Well, Adland's "Battle of the Ad Blogs" has wrapped up, and the winners have been announced. Random Culture made a good showing in the "Best Inspiration Blog" category, but the folks at PSFK took home the prize in the end.

Interestingly enough, it seems there was some shady activity going on in the voting for some categories, so the voting had to be audited. In a couple cases, it affected the outcome.

View the complete list of winners.

Battle of the Ad Blogs: Vote for Random Culture!

Whoooo! Random Culture has been nominated in Adland's "Battle of the Ad Blogs."

We're up against some tough competition in the "Best Inspiration Blogs." The folks at PSFK, for instance, which is a site I read all the time.

Voting continues through February 10, so you have plenty of time to cast your vote for Random Culture now!

2006 Bloggies!

The 2006 Bloggies are now accepting nominations. A few categories have been removed, and there are a few new ones, like a podcasting category. Since you couldn't possibly nominate Random Culture for the best designed blog, or the best food blog... how about the best kept secret category, or the best topical blog?

Nominate your favorites for the 2006 Bloggies here

Channel 4 Viral Contest

Channel 4 in the UK has launched a viral contest entitled "Germ." The contest is open to the public as well as agencies, and there are multiple categories: best UK viral photo, best UK viral movie, best UK interactive viral, best International viral and best agency viral 2005.

In addition to the contest, Channel 4 has advice on viral creation and distribution from a number of companies that are affiliated with the contest. These companies include DS.Emotion, Hot Cherry and Bore Me.

I was a little underwhelmed with the language on the front page of this effort, as it seemed to allude to the fact that viral is an email phenomenon, but as I dug deeper in the site, they got away from that notion. I also think there's a pretty limited view of viral formats in this contest. It's focused on a couple popular formats rather than what the true nature of viral is... the effect. And that isn't format specific.

Link via AdLand.

Future Marketing Awards

The Viral Awards from last year have now evolved into the Future Marketing Awards. The new award show will not just focus on viral, but according to the site, will "celebrate a wide range of non-traditional marketing and advertising techniques." It's being given a push forward with Alex Bogusky from Crispin Porter + Bogusky as the "Global Jury Chairman."

Link via AdLand.

IDEA Awards

Business Week has a must-see slideshow showcasing the 2005 winners of the IDEA Awards. Check out the 158 slides for the best product design of the last year. You'll catch the usual suspects, like Apple, but you may also find some pretty interesting things you never knew you needed.

Cannes Cyber Lions

The Cannes Cyber Lions have been announced. You can view the complete list of winners and work here. There's a TON of really great work, and it's worth spending come time checking it all out. It's great to the work from other countries that we don't get to see all the time.

Cannes Lions Winners

The winners of the 2005 Cannes Lions are starting to trickle in. The Media Lions are one of the first categories for winners to be announced. The Lions Direct winners have also been announced.

I'll be paying the most attention to the Cyber Lions, which will be announced on Thursday, June 23. Stay tuned for that.

Contagious Media Winners

The winners of the Contagious Media Showdown have been announced. The awards ceremony will be held this Saturday, June 18th at Eyebeam.

Webby Awards: 2005

The 9th annual Webby award winners have been announced. There's always some new sites to discover in this very long list of winners and nominees. In particular, pay attention to the places where the winner and people's choice are the same.

Vote for Random Culture!

Just a reminder that Random Culture has been nominated in the Marketing Sherpa 2005 Reader's Choice Awards in the category of Best Online Marketing blog.

Two days of voting are left, so click here to cast your vote.

Emmessennys Winners

MSN has announced the winners of the first annual European Emmessenny awards. The awards were created to showcase some of the great online media being created... In addition to seeing the winners, you can see a comprehensive list of all the entries as well. Worth taking a look if you're an online marketer, advertiser or agency.

Link via Adverblog.

Vote for Random Culture!

Random Culture has been nominated in the Best Online Marketing blog category for the 2005 Marketing Sherpa Reader's Choice Awards... Voting is only available to Marketing Sherpa members, and appears to only be accessible through the email they sent out. Actually, it looks like you can vote for Random Culture by clicking here.

ANDY Award Winners

The Advertising Club of New York (ANDY) has announced the winners of the 2005 ANDY awards. There's some really great work to be seen, across a range of categories, including interactive, radio, television and more. Award winners back to 1999 can be seen on the site.

Link via AdJab.

Webby Awards Voting

The nominees for this year's Webby Awards have been announced. Be patient, as the site seems to be slow this morning. Vote in the People's Voice Awards by clicking here.

Contagious Media

Eyebeam, a non-profit center for art and technology, is sponsoring a "Contagious Media Showdown" contest. The winner of the $2000 grand prize will be the site with the most unique visits. A $1000 prize will be given to the site with an Alexa ranking of higher than 20,000. Another $1000 prize will be given to the site with the most links from blogs in Technorati, and another $1000 prize will be given to the most popular site under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.

The following restrictions are in place: "You may not use paid advertisements, automated processes that fake traffic, or scams that produce traffic without people actually seeing your content."

These restrictions still leave the table open to a number of tactics that might be considered "below the table." So is this really a measure of what's the most "contagious?" Or just who can bend the rules and get a ton of traffic?

Link via Kottke.

Icon: 21 Most Influential

For their 21st issue, Icon magazine asked the following question: "Who are the people who are changing the contemporary design landscape? What are the products, organisations and ideas that everyone will be copying in the immediate future?"

These questions helped them put together a list of the 21 most influential.

Granted, their no.1 choice of IKEA isn't surprising anyone, and I'm a little disappointed that they included the Nintendo DS in the list, but it's a good read.

Link via Hidden Persuader.

2005 Bloggie Winners!

The winners for the 2005 Bloggies have been announced.

Here are a few highlights:

Best topical weblog: Bookslut
Best designed weblog: Loobylu
Best new weblog: Defamer

On an interesting note, there's one weblog that seems to stand out, and won multiple awards... Dooce. Dooce won 4 Bloggies. What's interesting is that Dooce is written by a stay at home mom who was once a web designer who got fired for blogging. She admits that she talks on the blog a lot about "poop, boobs, my dog, and my daughter."

Wanna know why it won so many awards? Because it's good writing...