Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Deck Week:Falcon NW & Commodore Gaming

Deck week might turn into Deck couple-of-days. I'll be honest, I'm not sitting back here with a list of pre-viewed sites that I'm just checking off as I post them. I'm flying by the seat of my pants and exploring new each night. It's actually a large part of the fun for me.

Anyway, a majority of Computer manufacturers are concentrating on the retail side, which means I'll need to dive into Banner land to scrap up something to look at in the next few days.

However, I did find two nuggets to discuss today.

First up is a mechanic that we (as in Interactive Ad departments) are still haunted with even to this day. The "Let the viewer customize their experience" device.

Exhibit A:

In the upper right of the site is a tab for Settings. If you mouse-over you get the interface you see above. Here you can change the color of the headers on the page, change the cursor, or switch mp3's. I've absolutely never understood the appeal of this mechanic. I cannot get myself to believe that anyone would bother with it. And it is not a strong enough mechanic to be the experience of the site.

Perhaps if it was a component of a much bigger experience. I'm not condoning ever using it. But, if changing the way you looked at the site was tied into the navigation, if it changed the products you were looking at. If it were a way to navigate not only the site, but the concept..then maybe it could be cool. I cannot remember ever seeing a cool use of this, if anyone can I'd love to hear it.

Second up, Commodore Gaming. They just started in the last year or so marketing in the US. So I didn't expect much from their site. One bit of interesting interactivity though:

You can play a short list of vintage c64 games there on the page. As I've already said before, there are much better ways to waste your time online, but this is a nice nostalgia play.

/.blue screen face.\

1 comment:

Patrick c. said...

falcon nw just cant compete with some of the other gaming machine makers. i was on the market a few months ago and decided to go with a killer classic from gaming pc and it ended up being the best thing ever. i saved about $500 and got a more quality computer than i would have gotten from falcon nw... but i guess its like anything else, everyone loves what they got.

Grey Matters

I'm a Digital ACD in Advertising land. I have been in love with the internet for over 10 years now. And I have a Red Bull problem. There I said it.

I travel around different industries every week or so and look for interesting and tasty interactive bits. I hope to make this a place for ad folk to keep up to date. And I just enjoy the spelunk.

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