A full-screen web browser

It´s free and it`s awesome! Some of you may already have seen it. The Barbarian Group have been generous and shared their new software with the world.  It's called Plainview and it's fantastically simple -  a full screen web browser for presentation purposes so you can show web sites easily without having to fire up a browser. It can be downloaded here.

Blood soap dispenser

Here's a fun idea for the promotion of a horror movie - blood-looking soap dispensers - via makezine

Pork and beans

Weezer has come out with a video that mashes up some of the best Internet meme’s over the past few years. 

via marketing.fm

Lost Season 3

via frederiksamuel

IKEA goes green

IKEA Denmark introduces the free use of bikes and matching trailers. Again, a great example of IKEA showing they know how to market themselves in a useful and more interesting way.

Moreover, this initiative is based on market research showing that roughly 20% of their customers ride their bikes to the stores - even though the stores are located outside the city.

via copenhagenize

Animals on the underground

Great example of how boredom is linked to creativity!

Cool website and project.  A collection of animals made up using tube lines, stations & junctions of the London Underground map. Was first spotted by Paul Middlewick in 1988.

Nintendo wall graphics

via geekologie

Lego + wall

This is really cool! The work is part of the “20 Eventi” project that has been done in Bocchignano village near Rome.

via threebillion

Google Artists & Innovators Projection Event

To celebrate the official launch of the new artist themes for iGoogle service, Google held a candle-lit media bash in New York. Google projected moving images of the iGoogle artwork onto the facades of buildings for three nights in May.

Importance of data visualisation

Visualisations are going to become more prevalent and interesting as more and more data is generated by every digital interaction. Google Analytics is a great example of this! I like these quotes...

"In a data driven world, infographics are the new art".

"In a world increasingly saturated with data, we will all need to develop new ways of seeing."

Go read the great article from Noah Brier and Faris Yakob about the importance of data visualisation.

Radiohead remix of Nude

Radiohead held an online contest to remix "Nude" from their album - "In Rainbows".

Instruments that are being used in the video:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)

Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums

HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar

Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

via crackunit

Just a thought..

I was on my way home from Stockholm the other day, and when you´ve been away from home it is always a great pleasure to read the preferred local paper in relaxing surroundings. However, I was surprised of my superficial reading, and it struck me that I have adapted online readership habits. It simply means that I´m not capable of digging into a long article unless it really has my interest. But, during my three minutes overview reading I finally came to an article about Google Friend Connect. Wow, I thought this is what I like reading about - new technology and trends within this field. But, I was disappointed, since I didn´t get it. It was impossible to understand it in the written form, and my point is that there exist many limitations for the written medium. Communication will be more about visuals, audio and video, because many areas are developing at such a pace, that it is difficult – not to say impossible - to understand without supporting visuals. Technology within the business field will play a more and more crucial role and again I was confirmed by the fact that print will struggle beyond these emerging changes.

New YouTube function - Annotations

YouTube just added another cool feature: Annotations. It allows you to add text and links to your YouTube videos. You can only add links to other Youtube videos, search results or channels. It simply adds an extra layer to user-generated content and I believe we will see even more spoofs of original versions in the future.

Go check it out.

As irresistible as chocolate

What´s next in media

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via neilperkin

Lastminute.com theatre tickets

Guerrilla marketing should be both smart and surprising. I think Lastminute.com scored a good point with an unexpected musical performance at London Stansted Airport. A good idea to catch the attention of bored passengers in the waiting room.

via adverblog

World´s first internet balloon race

As i posted earlier this week I´m focusing on how blogging can be incorporated in a commercial context. Another great example of this is play balloonacy - Orange´s celebration of Orange’s Animals packages to their Pay As You Go customers. Balloons will fly across a range of sites, picking up speed & distance bonuses as they fly. They can also pick up tokens for entry in to free prize draws. There are already a bunch of sites signed up to support the race, including The Sun and Yahoo, and now I`ve signed up as well and added the widget. It will be interesting to follow, whether this actually increase traffic to my site.

The motive for participating and adding the widget is to get my site in front of an audience of 16-24 year olds, the TG from Orange´s own perspective. 

The race starts 23rd of june and ends 30 of june.

Effective targeting

Is a picture worth a thousand clicks? You´ve heard of contextual ads triggered by keywords on a webpage. Now, get ready for contextual ads triggered by images on the page. Visual-shopping search engine is running ads on Facebook that appear to match objects in profile photos. Notice the ad in the lower left for aviator in the screen shot below.

Spiderman

Window cleaners at the Sheraton in Shanghai. If I should promote the movie Spiderman I would do this and PR the hell out of it...

Blogging and commercialization

I´m back! Been fully dedicated to work and haven´t had the time to feed my baby - my personal online tamagotchi.

Everybody is talking about blogging and the missing link to commercialization. I know there exist many different types of blogs: personal blogs, corporate blogs, vlog, moblog etc. and they all have different purposes of existence. However, what I find of extreme interest is how a company can use blogging to build a brand - and generate added value for both for the company and the bloggers. 

The Swedish fashion retailer lindex.se is an awesome example of this. The company has already created an affiliate program for fashion bloggers that makes it easy for bloggers to link to individual garments via a "blog this" button (see below). 

The button simply gives bloggers a code that you copy and then you are able to put it into your own personal blog. I´ve copied the code of the red pants and here they are... a genius and simple way of creating value for both the company and the blogger!

Besides, lindex has teamed up with twingly, a Swedish-based company who´s service shows which blogs that link to a specific page. Simply put, not only does lindex use blogs to drive traffic to their web shop, they also send back traffic to bloggers by showing links to their blog posts (shown in the product category on lindex Online Shop), which most likely will encourage more fashion bloggers to link to lindex.se.

For the Nordic people see below.

I definitely think they are on the forefront of using blogging in a commercial context.

In the coming week I will focus on blogging and further investigate the topic of commercialization and blogging. More to come...