Thinkubator - A Thoughtprocess Interactive Blog » Multimedia News

Tour de France Gets Interactive

Brian — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:37:20 +0000

As part of Lance Armstrong’s comeback and Livestrong campaign, Nike has created a way for you to get personally involved in the Tour. The robot, known as Chalkbot, prints user submitted messages on the streets of the Tour de France.

If your message is accepted you will receive a picture of the printed message as well as the location so you can figure out when the riders will be passing it. You can submit your message online or via text message to get in on the action!

That takes nuts… Grape Nuts

James — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:59:21 +0000

The crunchiest cereal in the history of cereal, has a new angle they’re using to market their whole grain goodness. I just came across this site, obviously targeted at men, more specifically, middle-aged regular working Joes.

http://theguysmanual.msn.com/

It’s actually pretty cool, and they’ve done a pretty good job making some web videos that are fun, and make you want to eat Grape Nuts (the make me want to them at least). Will this angle work? I haven’t had Grape Nuts in forever, but I’m definitely jonesin’ for a bowl now.

Twitter: flash in the pan or internet phenomenon?

Brian — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:28:22 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 6 months (which may not have been a bad idea for some industries; cut overhead at least) you’ve heard of the new social networking website Twitter. Twitter simply asks the question “what are you doing?” and then chronologically tracks status updates.

Many are singing (or tweeting) praises for the simplicity and ease of using twitter to connect with friends, and the proof of the pudding is in the traffic. Twitter has grown to 8 million users in the U.S., doubling in size in the past 4 months!

Facebook evens seems to have taken a page from twitters book with a recent redesign to highlight what were formerly known as status updates. However, 94% of facebook users dislike the new design. Oops.

I’m not completely sold on Twitter just yet. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems like an old product in a shiny new wrapper. I could have updated my status on instant messenger, facebook, linkedin, or blogger and it would essentially accomplish the same thing. I could communicate with friends and generate followers just the same on any of these other time-tested services. As Twitter climbs the Top 100 sites I have to ask one question:

Does Twitter revolutionize social networking or it is just 15 minutes of fame in 140 character increments?

Spoiler Alert: Super Bowl XLIII Commercials

Brian — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:42:56 +0000

Adweek released some previews of the upcoming Super Bowl Sunday commercials. With ads going for upwards of 3 million dollars for a 30 second clip, you be the judge if it was worth it for the big hitters of business.

The ads can be viewed on their website at

http://www.adweek.com/aw/custom-reports/superbowl/video.html

Also, check out the classics tabs for some oldies but goodies. After all aren’t the commercials the best part most of the time?

Scoring Tickets to the Big Game

Brian — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:01:29 +0000

Two MIT students have created a stock market for sports tickets. The site features a real-time exchange where prices fluctuate just like on the New York Stock Exchange. The idea is that you can buy tickets to the big game, for less than face value, months before the game.

The site is designed for hardcore fans to get tickets to see their team in the big game. However, just like the NYSE there is also a trading aspect to the ticket market. Pretty impressive, right?

Gamblers and underdog (Cubs) fans beware: If your team does not make it, you lose your investment.

A great flash site and a very cool concept, IMHO:

https://www.yoonew.com

Remember when…

James — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:56:46 +0000

…Hyundai first introduced cars here in the US? They were tiny, egg shaped, econo cars that, if I remember correctly, you could get for $5k or $6k. Apparently they’ve come a long way in 15 years or so. They’ve got their new Genesis that they’re advertising, and they’ve got a pretty slick microsite for that model.

http://www.hyundaigenesis.com

I’m pretty impressed. Makes good use of video, some cool pseudo 3D stuff, and… I got there by clicking on a banner ad, so their ads are good too. Pretty nice campaign altogether.

Google Speech Recognition in Videos

Erin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:24:09 +0000

I was just reading a SearchEngineLand article stating that Google has rolled out audio indexing (GAudio) for YouTube videos on the YouTube political channel and will soon roll it out to all YouTube. That’s very exciting stuff, as it presents a great opportunity for companies who publish great content videos to start seeing their videos rank for important keyword phrases, and increases the relevancy of video rankings. It’s a necessary advancement beyond using meta data to rank vidoes.

Granted, it also presents the opportunity for keyword spam in video content, ie “Governor Palin, we need you to mention ‘Maverick’ 3 times in this speech, and put strong emphasis on it once at the beginning.”

15 most artistically awesome ads

Erin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:08:01 +0000

Pretty cool list: http://www.redux.com/playlist/15_most_artistically_awesome_advertisements

More on SEO for Flash and Google’s new capabilities

Erin — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:39:07 +0000

Good article that summarizes a lot of questions/answers:
http://www.closed-loop-marketing.com/blog/2008/07/18/googles-improved-flash-indexing-and-what-it-means-for-seo/

Black In America

James — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:38:40 +0000

I think these are clips taken from our kiosk…http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/29/hbcu.tour.irpt/index.html

Abe. I think I have something you’re going to love…

Cathy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:07:48 +0000

Ok, so this is probably something that Erin would normally drop the ball on, but I couldn’t help myself. I think it could make a pretty big impact on how we approach design and development for our clients.And now, without further delay…

Adobe, Google and Yahoo join to make Flash content searchable!!

As Ryan Stewart, an Adobe evangelist put it…
“So what does that mean? We are giving a special, search-engine optimized Flash Player to Yahoo and Google, which is going to help them crawl through every bit of your SWF file. This Flash Player will act just like a person would in some cases. It will click on your buttons, it will move through the states of your application, get data from the server when your application normally would, and it will capture all of the text and data that you’ve got inside of your Flash-based application. We’ve basically provided a very powerful looking glass into SWF files so Google and Yahoo can pull out meaningful information.”

And here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html

So, I’m curious… Erin, what’s your take??

Video to Drive 50% of Net Traffic

Erin — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:42:19 +0000

Something to think about:

“Internet video will account for half of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012, according to new research from Cisco. In its Visual Networking Index (PDF), the company says video already accounts for a quarter of all consumer Internet traffic, a number that will rise to 32 percent by the end of the year.”

Here’s the article:
http://newteevee.com/2008/06/16/video-to-drive-50-of-net-traffic/

Google hating on Flash again—Now you can skip intro right from search results

Erin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:09:25 +0000

http://searchengineland.com/080611-093416.php

CNN blocked my driveway.

Abram — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:35:17 +0000

Stevie’s reaction when her lunchtime exit today was interrupted by the CNN Election Express Yourself Tour trailer pulling into our parking lot: “What the heck is going on here?”

Business, Stevie. Big business.