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Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category

Customized Energy Bars

28 Jan 2008

A while ago I posted about those yummy customizable M&Ms you could order and surprize friends or business relations with. But in the light of ‘healthy futures’ and ‘powerful messages’, what can be more fun than creating your own energy bar and have a custom name printed on the wrapper? I mean, the message is pretty clear: chocolate is for wussies and sweethearts. Energy bars are so much more of a statement than practically anything you’ve ever been able to customize. And it really shows you either have a powerful product to promote while you wish a good physical condition to your target audience by bringing them something they can use.

There’s not much more to add. Start creating your own bars, and send out a message that makes sense!

Visit YouBars
Thanks, Dave

 

PSFK London

23 May 2007

PSFK presents a series of presentations and discussions by leading innovators over the course of a day on June 1st. They have invited some of the most brilliant thinkers who will lead tomorrow’s businesses to speak to an audience from the creative, media and marketing communities. In the morning the speakers and panelists will explore new trends and ideas in areas like digital media and eco-consciousness; and in the afternoon the speakers will provide inspiration on how to apply the insights gained from looking at trends and ideas and applying them for new marketing, branding and design. Sign up today and be part of this event!

PSFK London

Speaker List:

  • Niku Banaie, Naked Communications
  • Mike Butcher, TBites
  • Russell Davies, Open Intelligence Agency
  • Regine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art
  • Jeremy Ettinghausen, Penguin Books
  • Karen Fraser, Ethical Index
  • Santiago Gowland, Unilever
  • John Grant, BrandTarot
  • Tamara Giltsoff, OZOlab brand
  • Jessica Greenwood, Contagious Magazine
  • Hugh MacLeod, GapingVoid
  • Beeker Northam, Bloom
  • Steven Overman, Lowe Worldwide
  • George Parker, Madscam
  • Simon Sinek, Sinek Partners
  • Stan Stalnaker, Hub
  • Iain Tait, Poke
  • Diana Verde Nieto, Clownfish
  • Timo Veikkola, Nokia
  • Johnny Vulkan, Anomaly
  • Faris Yakob, Naked Communications

Check out the site for the full program and the list of attendees that have signed up so far.

 

Scratch Yourself

14 May 2007

Pretty cool stuff coming up: here’s a fun way to spread your love to your friends and relatives. Instead of sending them those boring images of the lastest family gig in attachment, why not make it interactive and add a chance to win some money at the same time? ScratchYourself is a Flash application that lets users upload an image and build a lottery-style scratch card from it. Once a scratch card has been created, users can email it to friends or embed it on their site. Users could create and embed these on their blogs, MySpace page, etc. The only downside is that the card has a 550 px width and it’s just a little bit too wide to fit in the template.

Product Details:

  • Scratch card creators can email their scratch card link to other people or use a code snippet provided to embed the scratch card on their Web site.
  • Scratchers move their mouse over the scratch area to reveal the message underneath.
  • Every day, Scratchyourself chooses two winning times. The first person to scratch after each winning time wins an Instant Prize of US$10, and the scratch card creator wins a Bonus Instant Prize of US$10. Scratchers may reveal a message entering them into a Daily Draw for US$50. Users can scratch multiple times to win an Instant Prize but can only enter the Daily Draw once per scratch card per day.
  • Winners can choose to be paid via PayPal, check or Amazon gift certificate.
  • The current Scratchyourself promotion runs until June 7, 2007. Scratchyourself intends to run a second promotion from June 8, 2007, with bigger prizes.

Example (unscaled version – click here) :

The setup is very easy. First you provide the name of the ticket (the blueprint stamp you see before you scratch) – Next you upload an image (300k limit) and write the caption (text in the bottom left corner), then you pick a color panel and then you login or register for free, to send it off. (took me 20 seconds). Simple, cool and very nifty.

Get your own at: Scratch Yourself

 

Urban Guerrilla: Revenge Of The Pixel

06 Apr 2007

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists. Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA’s effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces. In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA’s video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.
[Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art]

Video Link

 
 

Roxorloops

04 Apr 2007

I know the concept of beatboxing is pretty old already and I can’t remember having seen any commercials or advertising with a serious beatboxer in it… but honestly, Roxorloops is da bomb. If you can endorse this guy for a funky brand… you have an entire community within reach. And if you endorse him right without abusing the concept for some cheap stunt I can assure you there’s a hit commercial ready to be born. Other than that, I’m pretty sure that this guy can be a headliner in just about any cool event that targets youngsters. And yeah, I was just looking for a reason to post these kick-ass clips. Still… there’s got to be something you can do with this.

Video Link: one & two

Thanks, Arnaud!

 
8 Comments

Posted in Fun, Geek, Trends, Video

 

The Networked Self

10 Jan 2007

The eligible mister Swaminathan, previously interviewed on Coolz0r, has lined up the predictions Faith Popcorn has made for 2007 and the near future. Although I don’t agree on all of them, I’ll line them up here. For more details, I’ll refer you to Customer World, where every item in this list has some more background text.

  • Identity Flux

    Gender-neutrality goes mainstream. People list skills on their business cards rather than title, and dress up in various costumes depending on who they feel like being that day.

  • Liquid Brands

    Chameleon-like brands focus less on communicating a static message and more on being the right thing for the right persona at the right time. Constantly morphing retailers carry products until they sell out and never restock.

  • Virtual Immortality

    While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.

  • EnvironMENTAL Movement

    Companies are expected to reduce the amount of damage they are doing to our minds. Savvy companies sponsor marketing-free white spaces in lieu of polluting the environment with models and logos.

  • Product PLACEment

    Enviro-biographies are attached to just about everything, letting consumers know the entire life story of a product: where the materials were harvested, where it was constructed, how far it traveled, and where it ended up after being thrown away or recycled.

  • Brand-Aides

    Socially responsible brands make a buck while providing desperately needed services. Communities are revived by Target daycare, Starbucks learning centers, and Avis transportation services for the elderly.

  • Moral Status Anxiety

    A person’s net worth is no longer measured by dollars earned, but by improvements made. Families compete with each other on how many people they fed while on vacation, and the most envied house on the block is not the biggest, but the most sustainable.

  • Oldies but Goodies

    Respect for elders makes a comeback in the form of Ask Your Grandma hotlines and the proliferation of online video clips by seniors showing us how to tie knots and concoct home remedies.

 
 

Another Tabloid In Second Life

09 Nov 2006

*** Update: I thought the Second Life Herald was a Press Agency. But I was wrong. They’re also a tabloid. ***

Yes, in come the media. Reuters and BigBrother have made their moves, now it’s time for the another tabloids to follow. Axel Springer, the publisher of Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper, is poised to launch a weekly paper designed to sate the virtual population’s appetite for news and gossip.

Due to be launched in December, the paper will be written in English and is estimated to cost between 10 and 15 Linden dollars. It will likely be sold by subscription – posted into mailboxes across the virtual parallel universe. Mr Springer plans to construct an online editorial office for SL News. A real editor-in-chief will then recruit a team of roving reporters from among the avatar community.

It’s a good thing they’ll be scouting for stories within the community and that in fact a lot of the news will be produced by residents. It’ll be only a matter of filtering out the junk. Oh no wait. That’s exactly what a tabloid is going to publish. How long ’til we have paparazzi that’ll be stalking ‘famous’ avatars to take snapshots as they enter nudie bars?

“It will be a colourful tabloid, with snippets about showbusiness and human interest tales from the avatar world,” explained Dirk Meyer-Bosse, a spokesman for the German publishing giant.

Read more on The Guardian | via SmartMobs

 

BigBrother In Second Life

07 Nov 2006

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all… the television companies are starting to invade Second Life. In the lastest poohah of press attention, BigBrother (thé reality tv show) opened up a house in the game. The last visitor that’s left in the house wins a tropical island. But, and here’s the but… the participants need to spend at least 8 hours a day in the big brother house… so you got to be unemployed or shifting day and night between the 1st and the 31st of December. In case you were wondering: yes, that means you’ll spend Christmas online. Nice change instead of being with your real life relatives. I’m sure they’ll understand that you would like your virtual character to live on a virtual island. Figures. So, Jerry Springer? David Letterman? C’mon guys, the virtual audience is waiting…

BigBrother Second Life

Check out the “BigBrother in Second Life” site