OK Go | Needing/Getting
Shit songs, great videos.
UPDATE: I’ve got to admit I was pretty disappointed when Jab tipped me off about this being an ad for a car called a Chevy Sonic, I honestly trusted them to not trick me. I don’t even like OK GO, but I still cried a little inside. Not as much I cried when I found out that this Wipeout thing was also lie. It was just an ad for Wipeout on (the lovely) PSVITA.
Obvious Engine | AR
A lot of people (understandably) struggle with AR and see it as a novelty/pointless item. Currently if you want to use it you have to pull out a device, open the browser, select the appropriate layer, point your camera at stuff and read info from a fairly tiny screen (while still pointing). Admittedly, that’s quite a lot of effort compared to a lot of other stuff that does the same job. While I see their point, I think a lot of that thinking is based on the current value of mobile phone based marketing using AR. Not the value of a technology that enables you to add data to your view of the world. It’s hard to argue that being able to access contextual data that is visualized around you would not be of value – it’s just that the current tech means AR can’t always cut the mustard. But if you think about the technology applied to contact lenses or glasses with voice activation, all of that bad UX goes away making Augmented Reality very valuable indeed – for both utility and entertainment.
Obvious Engine is a vision-based augmented reality engine for indie games companies, digital artists, developers and brands. The engine can track the natural features of an image, which means you no longer have to use traditional markers and glyphs. The engine now works with 3D objects and curved surfaces and there’s no need to modify existing forms.
Impressive.
I Fink U Freeky | Die Antwoord
Yep.
Bear71 | Interactive Documentary
‘Bear 71 highlights how our increasingly heavy dependence on technology separates us from nature even though it allows us to keep closer tabs on it. It also forces us to confront how we view ourselves in relation to technology and nature, and makes us question the validity of surveillance both in the wild and in human society. Since it’s launch this past weekend the site has been attracting up to 30,000 visits a day without any paid media directed at it.’
Very impressive and beautifully crafted.
ViaTheFool.
shape.method
A fun game for type-geeks.
From Canadian Interaction Designer Mark MacKay for Method of Action.
Here.
ViaNW.
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
MobileBackstage
A platform for making cash offa fans.
Here.
Surf City
Lovely work from photographer Romain Laurent.
Here.
Windows Phone & Kinect | Holographic Game Engine
Game engine utilizing a pseudo-holographic effect by enabling Kinect to “see” the position of the viewer so a 3D engine can adjust an image to give the illusion of a real 3D object. A simple WP7 app controls the application and the helicopter using the accelerometer.
Interesting.
Wrangler
Lovely interaction from Stink for Wrangler.
ViaAK
Here.
Technicolor | Personal Content Rendering
Personalized Content Rendering means the movement of a mouse or a simple hand gesture enables an individual viewer to control a live broadcast view in real-time. This means each viewer can pan and zoom the camera/s manually as you can see in this nice video:
Pretty interesting, aside from the name and the bloke presenting it who seems to be the love child of Mr Burns and a Coypu.
More here.
Content & Loyalty
As a consumer I mostly find myself waiting for brands to provide me with content. I love content, in fact I can’t get enough of it – it’s what I live for. Oh, that and loyalty schemes. I love loyalty schemes, they’re second only to content. I’m not myself unless my internet is brimming with (preferably branded) content and my wallet is rammed full of meaningful relationships with various companies. Being a consumer yourself you undoubtedly feel the same way, so you won’t find it hard to imagine how lost I felt this morning as I ambled through Heathrow Terminal 4, bereft of either. It had been several hours since I last soured Google for content and I hadn’t succumbed to the irresistible lure of a reward point in over a day. Fortunately, as is largely the case, my deficiency was soon crushed as I stumbled on this seemingly unbelieveable offer from Starbucks:
‘Benefits galore…’ I thought to myself – this is going to be special. Intoxicated by excitement I flipped the card to reveal just to what extent Starbucks will go in their endeavour to reward loyal customers for the liberty of regularly relieving them of around £2 for what, although in several different guises, is effectively a cup of dust, hot milk and/or water. Was I to be disappointed?
According to my calculations to make Gold* I need only spend around £50, provided I buy only the minimum on each visit and I always remember my loyalty card. Which, of course, I will as I think about very little else (aside from content obviously). Anyway, if I do make Gold* it looks like I will certainly get at those ‘benefits galore’, one of which appears to be free soy. Yep, I shit you not – free soy. For just £50, and a small amount of space in my wallet I can get my hands on (amongst a few other shouldn’t-they-already-be-free items) free Starbucks soy. I might have got it completely wrong (not being a coffee aficionado), but when was the last time anyone put soy sauce in their coffee? I understand it is à la mode to put all sorts of odds and ends in coffee these days – but soy sauce?
Really?
I can only hope to assume that by offering their loyal customers something that is difficult to consume in any quantity (particularly in a situation in which it isn’t really required) Starbucks are saving up their cash to provide us all with some new banded content.
Win-win.
Bustin’ Weights Wif My Mates.
Look out for the ”Feds’ / a fat bloke being followed by another fella in a high vis jacket.
A friday treat.
ThankyouHarry.
Andro | World.Words.Lights.
Bit late on this, but I love it. Androp music video that is funded by the sale on eBay of the video’s toy star. Depending on how the the toy sells, the team plan to produce and sell the video’s other toys. A smart and pretty unique compensation model, as the agency keep the proceeds as part of the creative fee.
Nicely.
Here.
eBay.
# Gif Motion Graphics Mag0c0ro Anime
More here.
ViathemightyHero&Theory.