Alright, maybe that title is a little esoteric for the subject matter – but check out this coolness below.
This is the kind of 3D I’m excited about – the kind that removes the need for glasses. Sure, it might be hard to create 3D without glasses in a cinema setting where you’re unable to use head-coupling, but for personal devices? It’s great.
On a final note, something needs to be done about the term head-coupled. It’s gross.
Team Meat, the team behind the brutally unforgiving platform game Super Meat Boy got some unexpected free publicity this week when they became the latest target of animal rights group PETA.
PETA, apparantly objecting to Super Meat Boy’s meat-themes launched it’s own ironically-bland parody game called Super Tofu Boy. Made in Flash, the game attempts to duplicate the gameplay of Super Meat Boy, but instead it’s the Meaty guy that’s the bad guy this time as he exacts bloody, vengeance because his girlfriend has decided that she prefers tofu. Or something.
More after the wall-jump. Continue reading
We love unboxing gadgets! …and the AR Drone from Parrot is GREAT fun. The Drone is controlled via an iPhone app which works by tilting your phone to steer whilst viewing a live video feed through a camera mounted in the Drone. It’s a truly usable Augmented Reality device.
How to buy in Australia: We ordered it from Amazon.com. It took 3 days to be delivered to Sydney from the US and cost just under $350.00 AUD including delivery.
So here it is the unboxing through to a test flight…
Amazon delivers it in a HUGE box…
Slightly smaller, but still big box inside…
The Drone is neatly packed surrounded by protective cardboard.
No unwrapping necessary. It pops straight out. Nothing to assamble.
Battery, battery pack and stickers for the external shell.
It comes with the outdoor shell, and adaptors for Au, UK, US, EU.
Below: Unboxed looking at home in the studio…
Below: @bradyohalloran takes an instagram photo of the AR Drone:
Below: Flight Test: This a video taken from the Drone’s camera in the studio.
Below: We do like the idea of attaching a GoPro camera to the Drone to attain HD video – here’s a nice clip of someone flying the drone pretty high… (you can unlock the altitude sensor in the iphone app allowing you to go up as hi as the wifi lets you).
Below: The Promo Vid for the AR Drone.
Things you should know before you buy:
You get one battery that lasts for about 15 mins flying time.
Charger comes with four adaptors incl AUS, UK, US, EU.
You need an iphone or ipod touch to control it.
You don’t need a wifi network (the Drone creates one).
It takes about 5-10 mins to get to grips with the controls.
You need a seperate app to record video.
Onboard Video is 15fps
There is a secondary camera on the bottom of the Drone.
You need 2 of them to have a virtual dogfight.
It’s much bigger than it looks.
It’s a lot of fun.
“We wanna make this digital” is the cry of many a client when they enter their ‘digital’ agency with a shiny new TVC and poster under their arm. Too many agencies will take a client’s TVC (and money) and make it ‘digital’ simply by putting a browser around it or sending it’s animated cousin off to Double Click.
I’m proud to say that’s not what we do here at Amnesia Razorfish. When our client, realestate.com.au, shared their really nice ATL spring campaign with us, we got really fired-up by the challenge of making this campaign come to life in the digital space. We didn’t want to simply TELL consumers that realestate.com.au helps give people a fresh start, we wanted to actually GIVE someone a fresh start. Some one that really needed a fresh start.
Say hello to The Fresh Start Project from realestate.com.au. The aim of the campaign is simple. Build a a new home, for a family in need, through people’s use of realestate.com.au. As users interact with realestate.com.au they collect ‘bricks’ which they can donate to the 1 million brick target. In partnership with Habitat for Humanity Australia, the house will be built. There’s no augmented or virtual reality here. Sure – it won’t cause world peace, but it will make a real difference to a real family in real need. And that’s why I love this project so much. Hope you do too.
I was just checking my folder where I keep interesting screenshots of stats (ok, I admit they’re probably only interesting to me but hey… I just like sharing). So here’s some ‘interesting’ moments where power shifts occur in the world of social and UGC. (Note: Stats are from the publicly available Alexa site). Note that I screen grabbed these at the time and saved them because there’s not always a guarantee you’ll be able to get the data in the same state in the future. Currently Alexa now only goes back 2 years since they changed their data analysis so the first screenshot below is something of a collectors item (if you collect screenshots of stats that is).
~ @eunmac
Below: Jan 2007 YouTube clearly passes MySpace.
Below: What has happened since (in a little under 3 years)
Below: Another change in global domination in 2009. Facebook passes YouTube in July.
Below – What’s next? Despite the hype surrounding Twitter it’s got a long way to go to catch Facebook which continues to grow at a phenomenal rate with YouTube appearing pretty solid – although interestingly Twitter appears to be now on par with MySpace and looks set to pass it next month.
An experimental site, www.twinfluencers.com created by Amnesia Razorfish launched ‘softly’ today. It takes a live look into “influencers” and what they are saying on Twitter as it happens.
www.twinfluencers.com monitors US and Australian Journalists, Twitterati and CEO’s
What does Twinfluencers do?
Twinfluencers is a dashboard showing live tweets from Twitter users considered to be influencers within specific groups (Journalists, CEOs and Twitterati). Currently we are breaking these out into Australia and US regions.
FAQs: Whilst there are many tools which track trends, hashtags from the masses this tool takes another angle and provides a peek at live information being generated from these influencer groups. You can jump in at any time without needing to be a Twitter user. It also saves you having to follow and segment the 900(ish) people that Twinfluencers is watching!
So what’s the point?
Why did we build Twinfluencers?
Firstly, we love doing experiments – the point is we’re not 100% certain of ‘what comes next’. Secondly, we’re of the school of thought that if we’re going to become better at working in social media then “doing stuff” is the way to go. Building the tool may prove useful or useless, but the mere act of building it allowed us to learn some new things. We might yield some insight and analytics that become usable -that would be a bonus. Finally– we couldn’t find a tool that produced what we wanted to see so decided to do it ourselves (although half way through build we found a similar tool muckrack.com for US journos which is actually very good).
What might the site do in the future?
The lists will be keep being compiled and updated. We may add other countries if the demand is there. It would be nice to see some historical data, trends etc from these groups. There are a few minor UI tweaks to be made. We’ve already been asked to do a celebs version, although we specifically avoided celebrities in this round. Alternatively – if we learn nothing or find something better to do then maybe it will just fade away 
How many people are in the lists?
At time of writing, but being updated regularly at present;
Australian: Journalists (500) Twitterati (101) CEOs (30)
USA: Journalists (105) Twitterati (101) CEOs (30)
Where do the lists come from?
This was possibly one of the harder parts of the experiment and something we consider to be work in progress:
How can I get my hands on the full list of these groups?
Whilst we’re still in beta testing we’re not openly distributing. The plan is that if the site generates any ongoing interest we will open the lists up – initially to individuals who are willing to contribute to the ongoing maintenance of the lists, and then open to public. Please remember, keeping these lists up to date is quite a lot of hard work.
”How can I get on the list? ARrgh – I deserve to be there!”
Firstly – tweet something and wait a couple of minutes (there can be a delay before you see your tweet appear). Not there? Yes… We know how this works and of course there are people who should be on there who aren’t and vice versa. We’ll keep adding but we’re trying to make this less about the egos, more about a tool that offers some value that we can learn a little from. For those who believe they have been wronged (and we do not mean to wrong anyone) there are some instructions on the site at the bottom of the page to suggest follows, “but” we will apply the same filtering and vague scrutiny to try to keep a balance. 
From a genuinely random and spontaneous twitter experiment (here) that led to Coke and Pepsi becoming ‘friends’ on Twitter there’s been a fair bit of press coverage. Nice to see Biz Stone, founder of Twitter tweet it out too (here).
Maybe Twitter Hugs are something we’ll see more of in the future.
Adding links below as they come in:
Posted by ~@eunmac
Above: The original tweet from Coke to Pepsi:
Below: Pepsi says Hellooo back to Coke.
Global Press Coverage:
http://adage.com/digitalnext/post.php?article_id=137709
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/917650/Coca-Cola-Pepsi-bury-hatchet-Twitter/
Founder of Twitter Biz Stone – tweets out the news:
http://twitter.com/biz/status/2438852220
Reuters : http://blogs.reuters.com/shop-talk/2009/07/07/cola-truce-coke-and-pepsi-trade-niceties-on-twitter/
UPDATE: An historic moment in branding?
As a result of the twitter experiment below Coke said HELLO to Pepsi via Twitter (and started following them too). [Update] Pepsi responds in kind. All within 18 hours.
http://twitter.com/CocaCola/statuses/2413906945
Pepsi replies:
http://twitter.com/pepsi/statuses/2423584043
Pepsi Canada joins in:
http://twitter.com/PepsiCanada/statuses/2423730800
And just like that, the world feels like a slightly better place.
Ahh maybe Twitter really is more than just “what I ate for breakfast.”
Thank you Coke and Pepsi for being good sports
What happened:
- We started the experiment at about 9.42am July 1 in Twitter (Original Tweet here)
- There were a significant number of RTs
- Coca-Cola responded less than 3 hours later with the tweet above.
Currently Pepsi have not replied or followed back… but we’re watching
The Original Experiment/Post:
Oh we all know Coke and Pepsi are age old bitter rivals but this is a new age of SOCIAL and we want to see something change between these arch enemies – even if it is just courtesy. Currently they are both on Twitter but at time of writing neither follows the other (http://www.doesfollow.com/cocacola/pepsi) or (http://www.doesfollow.com/pepsi/cocacola).
Join the fun: Let Coke and Pepsi know what you want: ReTweet this now! 
Coke and Pespi Twitter accounts… why not end the cola wars and follow each other?
It would be like a public hug. (…Then you can go back to being rivals). So who’s first?
Well we want to see it happen… we’ll be watching…!
C’mon show us you have a sense of humour and do the follow!
Oh… The Re-tweets will keep coming at you until you do
UPDATED Following situation:
Post by:
-@eunmac
You know it makes sense… All that tweeting isn’t shaving any cm off the love-handles is it? OK, this is just a bit of fun… but at the same time if you can run 5km you’ll probably feel a bit better no matter what the time!
The Rules:
- 1 month – finishes on 14 June
- Open to all people who are unfit and on Twitter.
- No Treadmills – get outside!
- Open to international
- 1st Prize = Pride!
Instructions
- You’ll need an ipod/nano/touch and a Nike+ Sensor (they cost about AU$30)
- The challenge is here – you just need to sign in.
http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=all_challenges,2935985
- Use #5km as the twitter hashtag
New to NikePlus?
Check it! You get to look at cool charts and stats and see how unfit you really are!
During his 2009 Client Summit presentation, “Innovation Hell,” Joe Crump did something quite extraordinary: he challenged event attendees to send Razorfish their business problems, a global problem, or just something that plain bugs them.
He promised Razorfish would spend the next year to create an innovative solution to the problem. (You can view Joe’s presentation on SlideShare or Vimeo).
To submit an idea, clients need only jot an email to [ innovate at razorfish.com ]
For instance on Twitter @scottlum of Microsoft asked, “Can we educate, inform & synthesize change for Swine Flu using social media w/out spreading disinformation, confusion and panic?”
You get the idea… now you have the chance to have those thought leaders at Razorfish look at your problem.
Also: Make sure you read the David Deal (VP Marketing for Razorfish) post on the subject of innovation Hell” here.
