Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture.
// September 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design
This is an awesome banner ad. http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii.
Newsletter Guidelines for 2008
// September 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design
Originally posted a few months ago, this great article from the Campaign Monitor guys outlines the current state of sending mass e-mails to your customer base: what to say, what not to say, coding tips, and how to design the HTML emails for optimum compatability and readability.
EDIT: You might also want to check out the Email Standards Project, which is a group that’s trying to promote standards in email rendering in email clients (web and desktop).
Myspace: Helping You Promote Your Kitty/Band/Horrible Page Layout, One Ad at a Time
// September 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
Image courtesy of xkcd
Soon to be release to the public, MySpace is currently running a beta of their hopeful combatant to Facebook’s Targeted Ad feature. MySpace users will now be able to create and traffic their own ad campaigns. The key difference between MySpace and Facebook is in the fact that Facebook’s program only works if you have established a “Page”, otherwise known as a corporate presence; you’ve seen this in the form of “[friend's name] is now a fan of [brand name]“. Both sites allow you to directly target audiences based on both demographic and psychographic criterion such as age, gender, location, interests and recent activity.
In other words, if you use MySpace expect to see ads for 16 year olds’ birthday parties, horrifying html page layout designers and other MySpace-esque twists on advertising. I could be wrong, but at our office the term “Geocities of advertising” is floating around.
Latest Microsoft Campaign Created With Macs
// September 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Advertising
Last week Microsoft decided to discontinue their “We need to get down with the people” ad campaign featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, galavanting about town shopping for discount shoes and living in “common folk” homes. The intent was supposedly to create a more down to earth image of Microsoft, but unfortunately, it did just the opposite of that. We showed the first ad not long ago, and I was quick to comment on my lack of appetite for it; however, the second ad was actually funny. Entertaining as it was, it still failed to instill me (an Apple and PC user) with that warm and fuzzy feeling that was intended for me. I don’t find Jerry all that funny anymore, nor do I feel that Bill can earnestly relate to his consumer audience. In efforts to remedy this $300 million misdirection, ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky has shifted direction to leveraging several celebrities including Deepak Chopra, Geoff Green and a new “I’m a PC” guy who strikes a remarkable resemblance to John Hodgman, the original “I’m a PC” guy who plays the PC to Justin Long’s Mac.
Earlier today, Computerworld published a post stating that the preview assets for the next version of this campaign were created on a Mac… Whoops.
Does this really matter? Is the whole world going to laugh hysterically at Microsoft because their own ads were created on a Mac? I can’t say for sure. I’m not that surprised to be honest, as most agencies use Macs, but I’m not the general public. I work for an interactive firm. Time will tell whether this actually makes a dent in Microsoft’s image, and I’ll continue to use both my Mac and PC for what they’re respectively good for.
To test the assets out for yourself visit Microsoft’s Press Release
Canada’s In Poor Shape for the Future of Web
// September 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Emerging Trends
According to an article posted on CBC News, Oxford has published a report of the world’s best and worst positioned countries for upcoming bandwidth needs… With Canada ranking 27th out of the 42 surveyed. Ouch.
Read the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/09/15/tech-broadband.html
CIA Creates Social Intranet Called “A-Space”
// September 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
Last week (Sept. 5th), the CIA released their first Social Intranet dubbed A-Space. The network acts as a method of contextualizing information in the past, present and future, much like any recently proposed Social Intranet. Given the complex security implications of CIA data, I’m wondering what kind of piping they have running in order to ensure proper governance… Is Active Directory enough for the CIA? Are they running on SharePoint?
Large Hadron Collider in Twitter Form
// September 10th, 2008 // No Comments » // Social Media
For those of you that have been anticipating the “on” state of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), you’ll be happy to know that Wired Magazine’s ‘Science Blog’ has officially published their “Twitter Friendly” FAQ list of LHC “Need to Knows”.
See it here: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/the-bosons-that.html
For those of you that missed the flip of the switch this morning, or just don’t know what the LHC is, enjoy these links:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/11/72198 - Wired’s four part series on LHC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider - Wikipedia’s LHC entry
Seinfeld and Bill Gates Waste 91 Seconds of My Time Talking About Shoes
// September 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Advertising
I’m not going to glorify this video by even talking about it. You’ll end up seeing it anyway, you might as well say you saw it here first. However, I will warn you that this ad doesn’t sell anything, nor does it make any sense. The first batch of users on YouTube who have already seen it in the past few hours that it’s been up have already pointed out the advertising strategy of Microsoft’s current PR facelift. I’ll let you all come to your own conclusions:
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Interview with HTML 5 Editor Ian Hickson
// September 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Development
Excellent interview from Tech Republic about what goes into making a standard for the web, and a little preview of what we can expect in the next version of our beloved markup language. (better error handling, video and audio tags, the canvas element, lots more)
Step 5 to Global Dominance: Google Chrome
// September 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Emerging Trends
So, a few days back Google releases “Chrome”; their very own browser. A week ago or so they release (or leaked) several videos featuring their mobile operating system “Android”. I smell market dominance in the air. Not in the immediate future though, as they’re competing with Internet Explorer and FireFox, who currently offer a greater breadth of functionality. But if you think about the combined power of Mobile, Search, and Desktop Apps, you have a formula for success… If all goes according to plan. I personally haven’t been able to test drive Chrome too much as I’m a Mac guy, but the Developers here are pretty happy with what they’ve seen so far… Particularly the “Incognito” mode.
See it in action here:
