Snamo

Decks: Alienware

2012-01-09T21:22:00.003-05:00

The turning of the year, and all that comes with it, has caused my blogging to be a bit spotty. Not too mention I'm a bit rusty. Skyrim doesn't help either.

So, the next mini-series of exploration is in the laptop/pc arena. Alienware is still going strong and was bought out by Dell since my first post.

Not much has changed in the basic styling of the site, and not much new in the area of interactive. They have, however, been cultivating an avid community.

Their "Arena" section promotes PVP PC gaming, blog posts and general news in the PC gaming world. They still have an Alien Network digital channel platform with gaming videos, news and interviews.

An "Explore" section is really just a place to get fancy wallpapers and themes.

I remember when Explore meant something completely different.

The product is still very pretty..precious even. preeciousss.

/.gollumwasanalien.\

Candy: Tofita

2012-01-03T13:50:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year! I was fortunate enough to have a nice long break between christmas and new years. I'm back in business. I wanted to close out the Candy portion of my industry-dive with a candy I didn't look at last time, and I decided to troll The FWA to see what candy sites have been submitted there.

I found this, a Turkish candy called Tofita. This site actually feels like it's a candy site.

There was a ton of clay-mation work done to pull this off, from the menu's to even the pre-loader segments. Speaking of menus, this is a great example of how a simple UI design will transcend language. I didn't necessarily know what I was clicking on, but I at least knew I was going to get more info of some type.

"Ürünler" apparently means TV spots. This lady is a Raver (or Candy-Kid) version of Progressive's Flo.

Out of the sites I've looked at in this set, this is the most simple, but most fun way to show off the product.

Then there is a section for just weird clay-mation fun. If a Flash game was a required section, this site has the best conceptual set-up for one, but they didn't take the bite (or at least didn't have the budget).

Light, fun, sweet, playful..doesn't take itself seriously, and doesn't try too hard to be be anything than what it is.

/.sweetclick.\

Candy: Cadbury

2011-12-22T09:50:00.007-05:00

I think the spot with the different animals clucking like chickens for Cadbury is eternal. And just behind it is a Gorilla playing drums.

Cadbury's Glass and Half Full Productions has been very busy the last couple of years. They went from being a full on Flash experience, to being a super content buffet. Everything from past campaigns, videos, a blog and a few Flash games that are tied to specific campaigns (rather than up there to just shamelessly gather engagement time.)

The menu is simple and doesn't try to categorize the content (but you can filter it yourself). And although I've seen it before, I like the Surprise! button. You can't ignore a surprise.

Surprise! There's a party in my pants.

Hey you can fling shit too!

Cadbury doesn't seem to have any qualms with letting their site consist of content past and present. It's a nice departure from the love it and leave it mentality the ad world has had for so long. Then again I shouldn't be surprised since Cadbury still runs that spot...

/.cluck.\

Candy: Butterfinger

2011-12-15T12:31:00.006-05:00

Butterfinger, like most of its candy counterparts has focused its efforts across the social space. The Butterfinger site is a combination of the Snickers and M&M's. Like the former, it wants you to pass on quickly to its social partners, but if you insist on staying, its got some Flash games like the latter.

The primary design aesthetic might be "afterthought".

I've never had the pleasure of working on a site or brand that felt the need to have mini-games on their website so I don't know if they actually work. Seems like a good theory on paper - people come + everyone loves games = people stay longer = profit! But for the most part the games end up weaker than games on Kongregate. I thought a few years ago we would start to see the decline of this type of content, or even an evolution of it.

I will admit that this particular game has a cool concept though.
You zoom into the crowd to find and nab Butterfinger thieves.

It's not until you peruse the Butterfinger social properties that you really see the digital investment. Home videos on YouTube, and a brand-produced short movie directed by Rob Lowe on Facebook.

From the modern master of psychological terror Rob Lowe. lol.

I could only handle watching about 2 minutes, but that's more on the part of my ADD then anything else. Props to Butterfinger for the effort however, I wonder if they had any sort of media buy driving to it?

/.modern master of stuff.\

Candy: Skittles

2011-12-12T15:12:00.008-05:00

The last time I checked out Skittles.com it didn't disappoint.

And once again it delivers. I give a reverent salute to the rainbow. Skittles.com, like a talented basketball player, or a kung fu master, makes it look so easy to do. There is a deep understanding of the medium that goes into making a site like this, a site designed to be aware of it's own content, not to just be a shell packed with whatever is deemed content at the time. The site was designed to be a sexier way to view Skittle's social content.

It's a scroll-down, a popular execution that's been around for the last few years. An interesting note is that it doesn't seem to end. Whenever you get close to the bottom of the scroll bar, the page loads in previous posts seamlessly. It took a minute for me to realize that was happening at all. The layout was intelligently designed to make you think it goes forever.

The Skittle's site is the place where their social content converges and makes something new. It's the stepping out from the boundaries of 3rd party platforms to stretch and flex, and strut in rainbow pants. It feels nice, it feels natural.

Oh, and btw - their Tumblr account is interesting too -

/.rainbro.\

Candy: M&M's

2011-12-07T10:45:00.003-05:00

Well I'm two posts in after an almost 3 year hiatus and I feel like time has stood still.

Here is M&M's in March 2009:

And here it is Dec. 2011:

Unlike the Snickers.com site, which feels like a one-shot site that's overstayed it's welcome, the M&M site has a polished structure that lends itself to longevity. However Snickers has new content, whereas the M&M site just has new promotions (expected).

This site is a great example of elegant interactivity, it's full of little bits of fun just like the candy itself. Not to sound too much like a geek who's done this for years, but little things like the way they handle the masthead navigation on the left is pretty sweet. And even the roll overs on the bottom promotional tile arrows have the extra bit of love that makes you want to click again.

I enjoyed poking around the site the last time I looked at it, and I'm a little disappointed that there's no new content. They still have the same "create an M&M avatar" app, granted it's got a few more cosmetic options but it's still an isolated site app. It's cool that you can make an avatar and then go play their games with that avatar...but I'm surprised the app hasn't made it's way to Facebook, Itunes, Android etc. Creating an M&M avatar army in the social space would be interesting..especially since they too are rocking 2 million + likes.

/.magic beans.\

I'm back bearing candy

2011-12-05T12:03:00.004-05:00

Hello again.

Well it's been almost three years since the end of my nine-month study of interactive advertising across the web. My intention was to take a break for at least a year and resurface to revisit all those industries again. One year turned to three, but I think the extra time will actually make this more interesting.

My plan is to revisit a majority of the industries from the first study and hopefully a couple new ones. The very first industry was Candy, and the first site was Snickers.

Here was Snickers.com in 2009:

And here is Snickers 2011:

Wow. Almost three years later and we're still looking at the same site. It either performs extremely well, or a Snickers website is at the bottom of the priority list.

So much has happened in these years, from the big corp rush to Facebook to mobile sites becoming a necessity. It's as if time has stood still here. Checking this site on my iPhone shows a "Download Flash to see the World" message.

I don't see a link to their Facebook page on here. Last I checked they had 40 fans.

Holy crap. 2,842,371 likes. Apparently Social works pretty well for Snickers. Judging by the amount of wall posts and engagement they have going on, I'm starting to understand why the site (barring new content) is a low priority.

One of the more important questions I want to answer for myself through this new study is the affect of social on true interactive websites. Here we see the website sitting on the sidelines while social plays ball.

Are interactive websites dying?

Or is it, to use an analogy, like Solo play vs. Multiplayer in video games, a duality where each part can be the star depending on the game. Like a Skyrim (solo play) vs. Battlefield 3 (predominately multiplayer with so-so solo play) vs. MW3 (equal parts great solo and multiplayer).

Looking forward to exploring the landscape again.

/.brains are candy.\

Interactive Advertising Today

2010-04-27T13:43:00.003-04:00

Hi, I'm a Digital Creative Director at a large mid-west agency. I've spent the last nine months visiting websites in 25 industries. I've avoided retail web, focusing mostly on industries that use interactivity to communicate. I've kept my sample size between 2 and 4 from each industry, and tried to keep my findings as objective as possible.

So what have I learned? 98% of the commercial web suffers from at least 3 different ailments.

I've compiled my thoughts and theories on these ailments in the posts below. However, all the exploration to the sites is also available starting here.

#1. The Atlas Syndrome
#2. Sectionitis
#3. Jekyllism

On to the first ailment The Atlas Syndrome....

If you want to take a look at all the sites I've visited, you can peruse the links below.

/.cheers.\

Put their face in it

2010-01-14T09:22:00.003-05:00

Putting your friends face into a web animation/video isn't new, but it's being refined in Europe. Every-time I find a site using it lately, it feels brand-new and exciting.

These two sites are particularly cool -

http://www.jetueunami.com/13emeRUE/
Choose a way to assassinate your friend....deliciously morbid

or

http://en.tackfilm.se/
Honor your friend by putting them in the role of a hero

/.chow.\

Distributed vs. Centralized

2010-01-11T11:58:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine runs a non-profit nature association that buys certain pieces of land to protect throughout Michigan. These sanctuaries usually contain rare plants, flowers or insects.

A few years ago I built a website for them that basically contained photos of each sanctuary, an event calendar and other information about the company. The company functions purely on donations, and does not buy online media.

Recently he came to me and asked if I would refresh the site.

I told him that we should create a Facebook Fan page for the company, to help keep track of members, post events and use the social space to help other people find out about the company.

Then, use Flickr to create albums for each of the sanctuaries, or post them exclusively on Facebook. I think the Flickr idea is better, as it opens up yet another channel of exposure.

The actual website for the company could be a semi-portal pulling content in from these other placements and directing people appropriately..as well as containing the actual "donation" forms etc.

I wish I could say this was a success story, but as far as I know it hasn't happened yet. He said that he was worried that people would take the photos from Flickr or Facebook...and I had to tell him that people can take the photos from his own site as well. I haven't heard anything since on it..i'm hoping he'll come around.

The point I'm getting to is that the standard approach to a website is from a "centralized" viewpoint. Everything is contained within the website, like a brick-and-mortar store. The store is your place of business, and the center of all your services.

But the opportunities on the web now suggest a paradigm shift to a more "distributed" mind-set. Utilizing other, often larger, platforms can be efficient, cost-effective and open your business up to more traffic than your online media budget can offer.

/.chow.\

Update and Tongues

2010-01-07T14:08:00.002-05:00

I've decided to post general thoughts and observations until March, when I will start my exploration of sites over again. It will be interesting to see what sites have been updated, and find new ones to get clicky with.

For a bit now the FWA has been posting more and more foreign sites. I'm loving it. I love the fact that a well put together site can be navigated, even if you don't know the language.

A good test for your own web endeavor - look at it as if you don't speak english, could you still figure out what's going on?

/.ciao.\

Harnassing the Power of Achievement

2010-01-04T21:10:00.004-05:00

There is a very powerful tool being used online today that advertisers haven't seemed to fully grasp yet. I believe it's the reason the indie game industry is literally booming, Facebook games are so popular, and why Blizzard, the creator of World of Warcraft, is a mega-billion dollar company.

They understand the power of Achievement. This component to a game overshadows story, and sometimes even game-play. Instead of giving a person 1 goal (beat the game)..give them almost infinite goals. What is MobWars..but the never-ending achievement of gaining strength and power. If you play Xbox, you know the addictive pull of Achievement Points.

Is there a way to harnass this power in Interactive Advertising? I've seen many sites that have the "0/10 Secrets found" mechanic. Is this the beginning or just an echo?

/.chow.\

Vacation for Brains

2009-12-15T15:56:00.002-05:00

I'm going to take a break until the New Year, and then either start all over again, or maybe start a new format (still focused on interactive advertising/marketing). Happy Holidays!

/.chow.\

Gray Matters #3: Jekyllism

2009-12-07T18:19:00.006-05:00

Bringing a close to the Web Ailments series is a multiple personality disorder that could possibly be the father of both the Atlas Syndrome and Sectionitis. Jekyllism is a war between the rational and the emotional, and it’s older than the web.

Jekyllism affects all advertising creative, from TV to Web. It’s a war where one side wants every bit of information about the product in a commercial, and the other wants to infuse an emotional connection to make the spot memorable. The battlefield is the limitations of the medium, whether it’s 60 seconds, or the size of a piece of paper. More often than we’d like, the advertising produced is merely the outcome of the war. It takes intelligence, patience and sometimes a strong ego to hold Jekyllism in check.

You would imagine that if you took away the 60 second limitation, or the dimensional restraint of a printed page, then we could reach a blissful dream land where anything is possible. The website,with it’s potential for a hundred million doorways, and cubby holes, and the ability to offer doorways within doorways…could very well be the promised land.

But it’s not. Because the disorder that has affected traditional advertising for so long has it’s hands all over our websites. There is no better or more obvious place to see this then the homepage of most sites.

Jekyllism is trained to fight in a finite space, so it’s dug trenches in the one crucial page to any website. It’s made a website finite by deciding that everything that is needed to be said, should be said on the homepage. and “Above The Fold”. For those who aren’t familiar with the Fold, it’s the area that a visitor views before they need to scroll down.

We’ve taken a multi-dimensional space and built a box.

On homepages you’ll see Mastheads with multiple messages, accompanied by Promo-Boxes with multiple messages, with Text boxes of multiple messages, you’ll see Navigations drop down with multiple ways to get to every page on the site, your head will spin with all the options, pictures and words. All crammed together, fighting for your attention.

If you want to see a great example of this – visit godaddy. Or visit a site with products that have a lot of features.

In mediums with finite space, Jekyllism will continue to be a problem. Online media with it’s little boxes will be subjected to the battle. But when it comes to your website, the figurative drive needs to be reformatted.

Peace can be achieved for Jekyllism because there is space enough for both sides on your website. The website is not a store, it’s not physically limited, and it doesn’t have just one doorway. In fact, your visitors will enter from all sides at any time. The answer will not be to put as much content as possible on every page, but to take a step back and let both sides of Jekyllism decide the best possible way to achieve their goals..across the entire site.

That ends the Website Ailments series. While Jekyllism, Sectionitis, and the Atlas Syndrome are all still found on the commercial web, I find that it gives me great hope. These are ailments either inherited from old think, or a result of just trying to figure this web thing out. Which means, to me, that the truly great stuff is still to come.

/.chow.\

Grey Matters #2 : Sectionitis

2009-12-04T13:07:00.007-05:00

The second ailment in commercial web today is Sectionitis. From About Us, to Photo Gallery, the Section has been the de-facto way to organize a site. While the Section itself has been a solid solution for organizing content, the side-effect, Sectionitis, has led to the dilution of great ideas and a thought process that demands you create content for the sections, instead of ideas that makes sense for your goals.

Sectionitis says, we have these 4 sections, how does your idea fit into one of these sections? If your idea doesn’t fit neatly into one of these sections, you must either mold it to fit, or create a new section. If your idea is bigger than a section, then the only answer is to make it a completely different site.

What if you have four great ideas? Sectionitis would lead you to creating four sections for your site, one for each idea. Organized, yes. But now you’ve split your budget four ways, and the result is four ideas quarter-baked.

I’m going to provide an example for this one. Mountain Dew has a “Green Label Art” initiative going on where they have independent artists create bottle labels. The website has 8 sections total, ranging from Artists to Events to Gear. And of course a landing page that binds them all.

One section of the site is a Draw Your Own label. Very cool idea. Not ground-breaking, but perfect for what they are doing. It allows a visitor to “paint” their own label design. However, the interface and functionality is lacking. It feels rushed, and an after-thought. The signs of Sectionitis.

Instead of creating a section-based site, why not make this idea the site. Spend your efforts in creating an environment that encourages the visitor to express themselves while learning about the other artists participating. Allow the visitor the ability to change the canvas to other Artists renderings, while giving them the ability to draw on it as well? Is “Events” a section that needed any part of the budget beyond a easy-to use and post RSS feed?

Sectionitis makes every section equally important, so that no section is important.

If you are in the business of conveying pure information, then neatly packed boxes is possibly the best solution for you. But if you’re in the experience/emotional business as well, then it might serve you better to keep in mind that it is more likely that a structure for site will be the by-product of great idea, rather than the other way around.

Grey Matters #1: The Atlas Syndrome

2009-12-02T19:46:00.010-05:00

The backbone of business online, the Website, has fallen into the shadows with the rise of Social Media. While it doesn’t get the attention its more popular sister gets, Clients still invest millions of dollars a year for website oriented Interactive Advertising, whether it’s a 3D video experience, an online game, or User-generated send-a-longs.

I’ve spent the last nine months exploring websites in key industries, looking at the inspiring (or sometimes dull) ways we are promoting our products online. One hundred websites in twenty-five industries later, I’ve found three common maladies affecting Interactive Advertising today. In this series of posts I’ll share the problems, and offer my thoughts on cures. A link to all my findings is down below.

Ailment #1: The Atlas Syndrome

The most common cause of Atlas Syndrome are attitudes like “If we build it, they will come” and “That’s a cool idea, throw it in there.”. The former believes that by the simple act of creating a forum, for example, then hundreds of people will flock to your site and a community will be born. The latter believes that the simple essence of an idea is suitable for web consumption – you need not add water, love, or budget. Both leave it up to the website to magically make itself profitable.

The results are typically low traffic, and even lower ROI. The cure is simple, not all websites must carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Let’s look closer at “If we build it, they will come.”. One example of this is the User-generated promotion. Site A wants you to upload a video of yourself doing Fun Thing B. Site C wants you to write a story about your experience with Product C.

In theory, these always sound like a great way to involve your customers.

In reality, there are two very real insights that, if having been realized, would have saved someone the embarrasing 2 video submission result down the road.

Insight 1: Only a small percentage of the total traffic to your site will actually participate in your promotion. If your site gets 100,000-150,000 people a month, don’t expect 100,000-150,000 video submissions. Hope for 50. And really hope that 10 of those are somewhat decent.

Insight 2: People love to share…to an audience. This is why User-generated became so popular. We’re igniting the inner narcissist. Call it social or sharing, the Internet is built on it . So we put up these User-generated promotions and sit back waiting for the floods. But wait…your website, out in the middle of nowhere, isn’t exactly Madison Square Gardens. Not many people like giving private dances.

The answer is to step outside of the website box you’ve created. The web now flows in channels. Large pipelines of people that perfectly fit your content desires. Channels that can provide both the traffic and the audience. Do you want people to upload great pics? Use Facebook, or Flickr, or go rogue and find an up-and-comer social site. Do you want people to upload videos? Start a Youtube Channel, or partner with a large portal.

Before you embark on a large initiative online, look around, there’s a really good chance there’s a better, smarter outlet to help you with your goals. Use your own website to help enhance the project. Look for ways to connect the incoming traffic to your site with your promotion within the channel. Design your website to be the best possible pay-off to the promotion, rather than the source. Don’t let it crumble beneath the weight of your great ideas.

Now let's take a look at “That’s a cool idea, throw it in there.” This attitude is based on the assumption that your website will be improved if it contains as many different ideas as possible. Your website will be a hit if it’s a one-stop shop for information, entertainment, and social connectivity.

If you have the budget of say, Yahoo, and the focus of your site is to be everything to everyone, then this doesn’t pertain to you. Otherwise, your website need not carry the weight of the world on it’s shoulders.

The primary cure to this attitude is focus. It’s easy to catch this attitude with the lack of boundaries the Internet provides, and the multitude of glittery ideas available.

Let’s take Games, for example. Specifically Flash games. I was surprised to find all the sites that had a Flash game. As I was exploring the sites of different industries it became a subgoal of mine to find as many games as possible. In 25 industries, I found a game in at least one site each. This includes deodorants and dog food!

Games are great interactivity, and in theory, will keep a person on your site longer. But in practice your game is competing with literally millions of other free entertainment sources online and the person shopping your brand is most likely shopping.

The money you spent on the game, and the time, could have been used to strengthen the focus of your site.

If you think a game, or game-like attributes, perfectly fit your brand and the goal of the website, I can suggest a couple of things. One, there are quite a few great communities for game creators out there. Why not commission an actual game-crafter, or even better, sponsor one of the thousands games already made on a site with steady traffic. Two, add game-like attributes to the core focus of the site. If you want people to learn about the benefits on your washing machine, build a game around the features. This will combine the two solutions you’re looking for: informing about your product, and keeping someone on your site to hear everything you have to say about the product.

To wrap up The Atlas Syndrome, it’s best to keep in mind that a focused website with strong supporting ties to other content channels will be more robust, will last longer, and achieve a higher and more consistent ROI. A gas station next to an arcade on a major highway will be more profitable than one on a side road with a Pac-man machine.

Toy Co. #4: Fisher-Price

2009-11-23T15:49:00.005-05:00

The toy market doesn't seem all the big, dominated mostly by Mattel, Hasbro and Fisher-Price. It's amazing how small the world begins to feel as you take a look at different industries.

Like the other toy sites I've looked at, Fisher-Price is predominately a retail site. But I did find a couple interactive pieces (that weren't the obligatory games):

The Geotrax line of Train track building has a "Submit your Photo" section of the site. There's a respectable amount of photos here - and they don't seem to be all from the same kids ;)

Here's a cool idea. The notion of Downloadable Content seems to be old-hat to the Video Game industry, but this is the first incarnation I've seen in the Toy world. This series of toys is your basic "build-a-something" set, but it has areas where you can physically attach an illustrated image to enhance the "scene". The cool part is that you can create the images online and print them out.

But, like so many great ideas on the web, they end up half-baked -- like the above.

/.chow.\

Toy Co. #3:Playmobil

2009-11-18T17:47:00.005-05:00

I didn't know Playmobil was a german company until visiting their site.

There are a couple interesting things on the Playmobil site:

With an Ikea-type flare, this is a flash exploration of a suburban Playmobil house. There's a bit of a story on the right, which, oddly enough, I've not really seen before. It's like a snippet from a book, following a young girl answering the doorbell.

If you click on any of the rooms you get a slideshow of a variety of accessories/furniture for that room. The Ikea feeling is really strong here, like Ikea took over Barbie and put some thought into it.

This is here is probably one of the smartest games I've seen on a site. You are in charge of barbequeing for the family. You put the meat on the grill and you've got to flip it at the right times so you dont burn it. You get points for the best grilled meats.

those germans, always thinking and shit.

/.chow.\

Toy Co. #2: Hasbro

2009-11-16T17:30:00.007-05:00

The Hasbro site kinda looks and feels like someone dropped a grenade into a toy chest and then put the resultant chaos online. I say this with nothing but love.

Sifting through the debris I found a couple things to share:

This is the G.I. Joe page within the Hasbro site. It might be hard to tell, but the majority of the page is taken up by a battle scene between action figures. You can mouse either direction to see all of the scene. There's also a variety of games that feature the figures as well. If you click on one of the figures, you're taken to the Shopping section....which then makes the whole experience feel really disjointed. Is this a site for kids or for adults to shop?

You see this on a lot of commercial sites, this mashed duality. Do you want me to play or do you want me to shop? There's only so much room on the page. What ends up happening is the page above, full of shit for both and feels a bit overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. Confusing ain't it?

Then there's this page:

Which i think is strictly for kids. Kinda raids the eyeballs. Somehow, by exploring more, I found another version of this page:

I'm confused too.

But! Out of this I found the Star Wars Comic Creator:

Which is a sweet idea.

I imagine children getting lost in sites like this for days, then shuffling out of nowhere with a blank distant look in their eyes, their greedy little hands begging for your credit card. There might be a science to this that I'm immune to (or to old to fall in to).

/.chow.\

Toy Co. #1: Mattel

2009-11-13T14:57:00.005-05:00

If your job is making fun interactive things for children, your website should probably reflect that. First up in exploring the Toy industry is Mattel.

While not pushing any boundaries, the Mattel site does feel a bit like a kids toy. All the buttons and motion have sound effects that you usually find accompanied by furry animals or big plastic instruments. Interesting note on the masthead, you can click at the top or bottom to have all the info/images (ie. dino, and cloud images seen above) move in and out via a Z-index, revealing completely new toy environments.

Unsurprisingly, the site has a whole section dedicated to games. I didn't see anything that struck me as topic worthy, but I will say that all the games were centered around Mattel products, and, for the most part, well executed. I say this because you can find some real crap when it comes to advergaming.

The section that took my notice was the Toy Factory section:

We've seen this before, many times. Basically a build-your-own-scene application. Choose backgrounds, toys, accessories etc. The interface is one of the better I've seen however and worth a look. The page features a wind-up randomizer device, which when used, just throws a bunch of objects into a scene. Strange results, but the device is fun to use.

Best feature of this app is that it begins building a Wish List below with all the toys you pick for your scene.

/chow.\

Camera Nerds #4: Hiroshi Seo

2009-11-11T19:42:00.005-05:00

The last photographer portfolio in my excursion is taking us over to the land of the rising sun.

The site of Hiroshi Seo is packaged up neatly in concept, unlike the others we've seen so far. His work is presented as a simple story told over his career.

The timeline on the right acts as your guide through the tower of images that represent his body of work. In between the image tower and the timeline is an interesting touch that validates the concept. Here you'll find the timestamp of each photo in the tower. It's this minor detail that gives the site a sense of history and atmosphere (along with a bit o' music).

Selecting a photo moves the timeline and tower over, always a better option than the a "close" button or the like.

It's not often that meat-and-potatoes sections such as Profile or News would be included in a concept, but here the site carries through the timeline to support the content.

/.chow.\

Camera Nerds #3: Andreas Smetana

2009-11-09T16:17:00.005-05:00

I could probably spend a few months looking at photographers sites, and like it.

Andreas Smetana's site is a tasty elegant affair:

Your trip through the gallery of his work is controlled by the Up and Down arrows, each new row cascading in fluidly.

And of course, as all photo sites should be, the photos themselves are viewed full-screen.

It's so easy when building a website, or probably any piece of design or creative, to muck it up by trying to be too clever. The real trick is to make it look easy.

/.chow.\

Camera Nerds #2: Fabio Lana

2009-11-04T14:15:00.005-05:00

Sailing our barges across the Mediterranean to Italy, we find Fabio Lana's site. This is actually the work of Gabriel Vinci. I feel i need to state that, since this is no longer Fabio Lana's official site.

It's an interesting take on the slide carousel. Clicking the arrow turns the carousel of course.

A nice touch is the connection between a "quick view" mouse-over menu at top, and the carousel below. While it's just a linear version of the same menu, the images visible below are darkened above.

/.chow.\

Camera Nerds #1: Emmanuel Rouzic

2009-11-02T12:52:00.004-05:00

Photographer portfolio sites are a source of inspiration for me. For one thing, they're very focused. The whole goal is to show off their photos. And secondly, they (the photo portfolio web designer) are continuously experimenting with the how someone experiences those photos.

Today's site features a spanish photographer: Emmanuel Rouzic.

The site opens with a full-screen montage of his photos, with random photos flashing and changing as energetic music pulses out of your speakers. Can your flickr do that? :) All the images are clickable, leading you on to that images and the rest of the album it's attached to.

You can click on the photo to zoom in and then mouse-around to see the details, or keep clicking the arrow (on right) to see the next bits.

Very simple, yet it's got an atmosphere. You feel more like you're at a show, walking around looking at what you want to look at, taking your time. If this site showed you all his photos in a literal fashion or just as a page full of thumbnails, I think it would just be an over-done Flickr rip.

/.chow.\

Heavy Petting #3: Pets or Food?

2009-10-27T09:22:00.002-04:00

I'm having a bit of a holiday this week, so updates will be spotty until next monday.

But, I am leaving this here with you...the comments are the best part :)

http://petsorfood.com/

/.chow.\

Heavy Petting #2: Alpo

2009-10-21T15:39:00.006-04:00

My hundredth post! Can I get a bow wow?

Dogs trust Alpo. I think it's right up there with dead squirrels.

I was happy to find a few things going on here. But first things first....this gave me a laugh ->

Hot-spots on dog food! Is there no end to the universal usefullness of the hot-spot? It's as if..the hot-spot is the duct tape of the web!

Anyway, Alpo's writing a book called Real Dogs Eat Meat, and they took stories from people about their dogs. Sounds familiar (see last post below). I do think this is perhaps a better execution, as they end up with a tangible product that they can resell back to us. Smart puppy.

A game! I wish I had a "game alert siren". This one is your very basic "memory match" game. However, they have a great payoff - you can download and print out a coupon. Granted the coupon isn't that great, but it's the thought that counts. I think they should beef up the reward and make it a coupon book or something. They're on to something here. I have yet to see a game that offers a reward..most are self-indulgent "hope they waste time on my site" wastes of time.
I'm a gamer and quite addicted to Xbox Live achievement points -- which are used for nothing. I hope we see more of this kind of thinking.

/.chow.\

Heavy Petting #1: Fancy Feast

2009-10-19T09:33:00.004-04:00

Every week I think I've ran out of commercially advertised products, and every week I manage to dig up something. I have got to be getting close to the bottom of this barrel.

I'm not sure how interesting Pet Food sites will turn out to be. Judging by what I know of the pet social scene online, I would imagine a lot of manufacturers would be focusing on Twitters/Facebook/Youtube.

Not so much with Fancy Feast, the first product this week.

Fancy Feast lavishes you with large luscious (dare I say fancy?) flashy masthead action. Nothing else, but get a load of that crystal feeding dish. That fucking cat eats better than I do. Although, it does look like it's full of brains.

The Confessions of Love page asks you to submit/write a memory of your cat onto a postcard. It's got the usual things, like picking a background for the card, sending to a friend etc. One thing that caught my eye was this - "Your confessions will appear here on the site and maybe in more surprising places."

A few ideas on where those "surprising places" would be:

1. Part of the Ransom Note you find in place of your cat
2. Carved into a dog
3. Behind the toilet

/.chow.\

Eau De #4: Airness

2009-10-12T18:01:00.006-04:00

The last stop in my look into the perfume/cologne arena is, again, in France. And this site is definitely completely in French (unlike last week's false alarm).

The Airness-Attraction Day site is comprised mainly of a interactive video story:

I will warn you, the intro involves a man topless, parkour and a panther. Once you get past that (and feel less vomitey - due to the cheese factor), the video is quite epic at times.

Like most interactive video sites, the movie plays to a certain point and then offers you choices:

I do not speak french, so I have no idea where I kept going, but the elevator scene is nice. I will be honest, there is a part of me that, due to this being french, I was hoping things would take a turn to the ... more expressive? It doesn't, oh well.

The end surprised me. It was a mini-game you play to seduce the girl. This is a true test of a game, can you understand how to play without knowing the language? Took me twice to win ze lady.

Games are the language of love. Or something.

/.chow.\

Eau De #3: Cacharel Scarlett

2009-10-09T17:30:00.005-04:00

Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead - The Pierces

Or if one of them cannot read French. I'm not 100% completely absolutely sure this is a perfume site, but it does have words like Eau De, and Fragrance. And it's hot in a soft, feminine way, which screams (or rather giggles) perfume to me.

HA. There's an english version to the site. Here I thought I was peeking into the bedroom of a french girl. God, that sounds bad. *cough. Ok.

With no real prompt or introduction, the Scarlett site places you in the middle of a woman/girl's boudoir. While their target is obviously very focused, I couldn't help being a bit drawn in. The tiny dots around the room bring up soft fluid glimpses into this persons (your) life.

Arrows on either side bring all portions of the room into view.

In addition to the bedroom is the "Wall of My Life". It's basically a scrap-booking app, to upload photos (which you can add tape too), or create your own images with the drawing tools. Nowhere in this is there an Ad for the perfume. You do not make a wall that is an ad for this product.

If you happened to have read the last two posts, I swear I didn't set this up. Where the last two sites were self-involved, this one is you-centered. The former made it plain that it was about the brand, the latter about me. When the other sites use CTA's like "Discover" and "Experience", this one embodies both those actions and leaves the rest to you.

/.chow.\

Eau De #2: Davidoff

2009-10-07T15:09:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we "experienced". Today we "Discover". It's like there was a deal struck between the copy-writers for these sites. Tomorrow maybe we'll find the "Explore" site.

Today is Davidoff, of such colognes as Cool Water, and Adventure. The Adventure microsite was indeed a discovery for me. I did not expect it. In hindsight, maybe my sarcasm was uncalled for.

The Adventure site is a collection of full-screen video clips that act as the only real content in each section of the site. The History section above is what you see, plus a few words including Exoticism, which I did not know was a word. Another discovery!

The site is full of video clips and just tiny bits of copy. I must admit, it's got a certain charm to it.
I grudgingly admit that I "discovered". There was thought put into this, and it was refreshing to see.

and then I moved on to some of the other Davidoff fragrances. And I found this little number:

This is a "send a postcard" app. The premise is that you send someone you love or secretly admire a postcard....of some douche sitting on a bed in a suit and a bottle of cologne in the foreground.

Couple this type of thing with each fragrance having a prominently displayed "Advertisment" section, wherein lies the commercials or print ads for the product, AND words like modernity...and you begin to think that these fragance companies are self-obssessed, narcissitic cockdonkeys.

But, i've only visited two major sites this week. I'm sure I will be proven wrong with the next site I visit. I'm sure.

/.chow.\

Eau De #1: Calvin Klein

2009-10-05T18:49:00.006-04:00

The was a time when the word "experience" meant something online. Now it means you're going to see a few images, and maybe hear a song.

Exhibit A: Experiencing Calvin Klein CKFree

The best thing to do with a large pretty picture is stick a box of content over top of it.

Having a section dedicated to your Ads, and blessing someone with the chance to download the ads for wallpaper sets the right tone.

Now offer me the chance to put my own picture above your ad, while listening to U2, and send the postcard and the song along to my friends.

It's like some creepy guy has slobbered all over my brain, stuck his picture in my pocket, and gave me permission to tell my friends about him.

/.chow.\

Vroom #3: All State and Harley Again

2009-10-02T11:36:00.004-04:00

There isn't much going on in Motorcycle land. At least here in America.

Harley has a Choose Your Own adventure video site up in Europe.

Create your Perfect Harley-Davidson Weekend. Tour around little towns in europe, camp, etc. How quaint... There isn't any real product info, and all you see are some quick cut shots of a bike. Maybe there's more at the end ... but like any trip, I usually vere off and head for the local pub and never come back out. cheers.

I will probably not being doing a series on the Insurance industry. Something tells me that it would be another boring week. But All State does have some interesting things going on, coicidentally around motorcycles.

At the All State Garage you can build your dream bike from the ground up. While you're picking parts, they use the time to tell you facts regarding All State insurance. Smart use of the journey.

again, i didn't follow through to the pay-off. it's friday!

/.chow.\

Vroom #2: Harley-Davidson

2009-09-30T17:21:00.004-04:00

There is no messing around when it comes to the Harley-Davidson.

The one thing about HD that they just get, above so many others, the owner relationship. They've always had some great things for owners, and not afraid to let the world see it.

Who else will sell you skins for every type of device in your life, from computer to xbox controller?

The Motorcycle maps look even better than triple A's.

If those things were enough to get you interested in a hog, you can use their cycle finder app to find the right one for you.

fuck i sound like an advertisement. i don't even have a bike. that's what smart work does to you though, you find yourself hawking it whether you want to or not.

/.chow.\

Vroom #1: Kawasaki Ninja

2009-09-28T19:43:00.007-04:00

Ninja's happen. It's just a fact of life.

This week is moto-hog-rocket week, and first up is Kawasaki.

Where would we be without the 360 + hotspots? They're the best when they're in an environment like this, as opposed to pure white or studio.

Ninja's race. That's what ninja's do. Usually after totally freaking out on a bunch of dudes.

I love the small details, like being able to put your name on the jacket of your rider before the race.

The game is slick but not very exciting. I'm sure the actual experience is more heart-pumping, rather than heart-plodding.

/.poof.\

Spotlight: HBO Imagine

2009-09-23T16:09:00.007-04:00

HBO has just launched a new interactive campaign, so I thought i'd single it out before moving on to another industry.

If you read my last post (A&E), I was talking about bringing interactivity to the viewing space. Coincidentally enough, that's just what HBO has done with their HBO Imagine campaign.

Turn the box to watch the drama from a different viewpoint.

Or zoom out to choose a different node of the story.

The web of story, flattened for you to keep track of what you're seen.

I wont' go into details on the story I've watched so far....but there is a "drowning mime" scene.

what are you still doing here?

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #6: A&E

2009-09-21T18:53:00.003-04:00

Ok, one more post and then we're done with Cable shows for now.

I was determined to see if the Photo-hunt game-type was a common occurence in other stations sites. While I did find another photo-hunt on the A&E site, it was the following piece that prompted me to add another post. (BTW - the History channel has the best games I've discovered).

AE has an Interactive Investigation that is basically a choose your own adventure through a "ghost-hunter" like show. You choose the people to talk to and the actions the team performs.
I think it's a web-only show and cast.

Why web-only cast though? What excites me about this is the thought of interactive tv. Why limit it?

Here's a crazy test. Take a show like Heroes. It's premiering tonight, and it's 2 hours. Why not put it up the day before online - but interactive. Where you choose a hero/plotline and experience the episode through that perspective..making the choices along the way.

Pros:
1. The viewing experience for fans could possibly go from 2 hours to 3+ (with replays and revisits).
2. Ad impression would be minutes not seconds (see #1)

Cons:
1. Plot revealed a day before. Oh well.

There must be more Cons..any thoughts?

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #5: Californication, Tudors, and the Sho

2009-09-18T15:36:00.006-04:00

Wrapping up this segment I took a stroll over to Showtime.

Californication has a typical QA flash piece at areyouhellasexy.com, but it's executed nicely.

After you answer each question (they're multiple choice) it gives you a clip from the show that features one of the answers in the scene. One nerdy note..the box seen above that holds the clips moves about a little on a Z-axis, and the video will skew along with it. Just slightly mind you, but nicely done nonetheless.

The Tudors has a Tower Defense Game:

The only connection between the game and the show is...cannons and archers maybe? Would be more fun if you were defending against the zombie horde of Henry's dead wives.

Apparently Photo-hunts are in this fall. Showtime has a whole Flash experience that features most of it's shows in a Photo Hunt game.

This one seems better put together than the one for Crash, and harder. Good soundtrack too.

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #4: Crash, Head Case and Party Down

2009-09-16T20:55:00.007-04:00

Starz has a neat orderly system for each of their shows. Sections on the cast, videos and a predictable bookend "special" section.

For the show Crash, the special section is a photo-hunt game.

For the show Head Case, the section is an interactive video couch session with what I assume is one of the characters:

And for Party Down, a time-management game:

I haven't seen Crash or Head Case, but Party Down is a great show. And this interactive piece does it no justice whatsover. It's flat and phoned in. This is what happens when you get too formulaic with your sections. When putting together the content for your site, the thought is "Ok, now we need to put something in the special section" instead of "how can we extend the entertainment and soul of the show interactively?".

that sounds awfully idealistic i know. but a photo-hunt game?

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #3: Deep Blue

2009-09-14T15:55:00.006-04:00

I think the Wire ruined every cop show for me for the rest of my life. If something better comes along, I'll be very happy though.

I don't think Deep Blue fits that category, but I'm only judging it by it's previews, I could be wrong.

I like the Deep Blue promotional site however.

The site is an interactive experience where you join the Deep Blue team and go undercover. What you see above are the organizations I have infilitrated so far. A new chapter comes out every week, and you can sign up to win an "Undercover" trip for two to LA.

A chapter consists of:

Video clips of the show's characters briefing you on the jobs you need to do.

Interactive conversations with the bad guys. If you look at the upper right corner of the text box there's a litte spectrum device. This determines whether or not you are close to being caught, or being "flipped". Which leads me to believe there might be multiple endings to this.

And there are multiple games for each chapter. The games are simple but fit very well in to the story-line. Like hot-wiring a car, or, as seen above, wire-tapping a house.

Overall it's a little cheesy, but I'm a sucker for episodic interactive.

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #2: HBO Comedy Fetishes

2009-09-11T16:36:00.005-04:00

Do you laugh at very long awkward moments? You may have a comedy fetish.

I laugh at the word pickles. That's me being honest about my pickle fetish.

Enter HBO's Comedy Fetish site

Basically it's just a stylish clip portal. Pick your fetish, and see clips from their shows...fetishes like Full-Frontal Confrontation, Nasty Comebacks, Premature Evaluations, or Redneck Raunch.

Throw in a way for you to collect your favorites and send a play-list to your friends...

Top it off with a co-promotion with Funny Or Die.com. Never seen this particular promotion before - Submit your own funny viral video?!

Sarcasm aside, it's a tight little package. Like a virgin hobbit. (another fetish of mine).

/.chow.\

Cable Ready #1: Mad Men

2009-09-09T16:57:00.006-04:00

"Did you watch TV last night? Good. It's your job." - Sterling Cooper

I will not gush on, over, around or near Mad Men, but we likes our precious. It doesn't have the bite of True Blood (groan), the sharp edge of Dexter (oh jesus stop), or the comedic meat of Hung (ok killing myself now), but it's got the monopoly on flavour.

Seeing as how the 3rd season just started, there's a few things going on at the AMC website for Mad Men.

The first is the option to "Mad Men" yourself.

This is a bit familiar. Build a Character.

Choose the scene and then download the wallpaper or avatar.

I'm the one on the right. Not sure who the jackass with the eye-patch is.

I'm a bit disappointed with this piece. Not only is it a common mechanic, it just doesn't seem to fit Mad Men. Smells corporate to me.

The other thing going on, you might be interested in....grab yer camera, Annie.

Film yourself doing a part from Mad Men and win a walk-on appearance. Or just vote on the ones that have submitted. I counted 60+ entries, all available to watch.

/.chow.\

Power Up #5: Dirt 2

2009-09-07T17:42:00.003-04:00

I was going to move on to another industry when I came across this site. I just had to share.

Dirt 2 is dirt-biking game, and to promote the game they offer dirty tat making...

Use a needle, or select some pre-made stencils, and make a tat on this woman's expansive chest.

/.oink.\

Holiday for Brains

2009-09-02T14:23:00.001-04:00

Will be back next week.

Power Up #4: Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-08-31T15:18:00.007-04:00

The newest Batman game is getting a ton of great press. You play Batman sneaking around an in-mate controlled Arkham Asylum. Sounds like a recipe for greatness indeed.

I haven't played the game yet, but the online effort is worth a good word.

This is the Gotham City Municipal website. You'll find current news, links to how to pay your utility bills, and other facts/info on Gotham city. Breaking News - there's been a fire at Blackgate Prison and all the in-mates have been transferred to Arkham. Read the full story.

Then check out the comments. There are some internet forum in-jokes here, but there's also an odd message about strange things happening at the asylum..and an email address to find out more. I emailed of course, because i'm like Mulder up in the shit.

I received a rather long email from a doctor. Long email short, she gave me access to a FTP site where she had put a security video for Blackgate prison that she'd found.

The gothamcitydigital.com FTP site.

The security footage (amongst pictures of her family, house and fireworks). It looks like in-game video.

If you carefully watch the video you can find a guard ID number and a password...which you use to hack into:

The Arkham Care site. Where you can snoop around and find files on people. From what I've seen, there are multiple areas to gain access to, and you must find a password for each one. Videos and villian interviews from the staff are just some of the extra content you find.

If you want to spoil it for yourself, or join a conversation - i found info on it here.

ARGs are such a great way to extend the entertainment experience.

/.chow.\

Power Up #3: Pokémon Ranger

2009-08-28T18:18:00.008-04:00

Friday I'm in love.

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia for the DS has some tasty clicky tidbits on their site.

Here's a simple and elegant example of some interactivity synergy between game and website. As you know the DS is a touch-screen system that you use a stylus with to play most games. This game apparently revolves around using the stylus to catch pokemon. Maybe that's how all pokemon games are..i don't know i'm admittedly ignorant on das pokemon. Anyway, if you look to the slight left of the blue bird inthe middle of the screen you'll see a stylus and a little pokemon. To get access to the downloads in the site you must catch pokemon through-out the site by circling them with the stylus (which is your mouse pointer of course).

Hunting these little guys opens up wallpapers and downloads of the such.

Ok so sometimes i'm easily amused. Even things like this intrigue me:

The disc in the middle swings around and the balls go from white to yellow as you see all the pokemon in the game.

Hard-hitting exploration here eh? Heh.

/.chow.\

Power Up #2: Wolfenstein

2009-08-26T19:29:00.006-04:00

Wandering around the dark halls of an ancient german castle, blasting away Nat-zi's, was my first FPS experience. The latest in the 17-year old franchise was just released last week.

I miss seeing more sites like this. Just pure design flexin.

Couple of interesting bits here. The first is a graphic novel webisode series that extends the story line of the game. You can watch it in full-screen as well.

The second strikes me as a very cool idea. The website offers missions to members of the community. These missions earn you points, although I'm not sure what the points get you, if anything (not that it matters...i present xbox achievements as exhibit A). Missions include creating a wallpaper from a picture pack or finishing a story that has been posted.

The web is a perfect place to extend the entertainment of a game, whether it's the story or interactivity. I like to think we're going to see the online advertising and actual games begin to merge into one complete experience.

/.chow.\

Power Up #1: Wii Sports Resort

2009-08-25T14:11:00.004-04:00

Ah, America's real favorite past-time, the video game. You would think that being in the business of making games, your online presence would overflow with interactive goodness. But that's not really the case for the majority of video game sites.

Nintendo has been really smart however with the Wii online. Everything is about showing you how much fun it is to play.

The new Sports Resort site does simply that with full-screen video of a family playing all the activities in the game. There is a whiney part of me that wants to click around, but it's also the part of me that stares with it's mouth open at pretty objects so they've canceled each other out.

Each activity has a demo video and a person playing it. And that's it. I tried to find more, I really did. I tried to take control of the guy playing the game, and tried to play him playing the game. No go.

I'll see what else we've got out there..

/.chow.\

Add Milk #3: Shredded Wheat

2009-08-21T15:13:00.005-04:00

"Progress is overrated. Any polar bear will tell you that." - Frank Druffel

The webisode is alive and well, and Shredded Wheat (of all brands) comes sauntering into the arena with confidence and charisma.

The webisodes follow the efforts of Frank Druffel, imagined CEO of Shredded Wheat, to keep the brand from moving anywhere further than where's it's been for the last 100 years. The episodes are clever, humorous, and worth a watch.

Most of the characters have their own Facebook page, and you can watch all the episodes there as well.

I like June the marketer. I know her from somewhere...i just don't know where...

/.chow.\

Add Milk #2: Raisin Bran Crunch

2009-08-19T19:43:00.008-04:00

2 scoops of scrumptious shriveled grapes. Raisin Bran Crunch is more of an adult cereal, and it site is slightly more adult as well. (slightly)

Welcome to Crunch Town. Population 1 bobblehead farmer and 1 large cow. There's an interesting thing going on at the bottom of the scene, with the purple and yellow bar. If you click you are asked to vote on whether your favorite part is the raisins or the crunch, and the bar reflects the outcome so far (purple for raisins, yellow for crunch).

Each section is a different part of town, and you're stalked by the cow and the shakey head farmer. I like that in each section the cow tries to convince you to visit the herd at Facebook, and there's always a box of Raisin Bran that clicks through to the pure product page.

This here is a cow-gram. Put a hat on the cow, and type out a message to send to a friend. I typed "I'm a Party cow" in the hopes that it says the words, but it just moo's.

And here is my favorite part. This game involves having the man jump onto a giant udder, and then moving the mouse rapidly up and down to jerk..i mean milk the cow. While this is cartoony and meant to be fun, i felt like I should be hidden in a bathroom stall to play it.

udder fun i suppose. Now that I think about it, I don't see the connection between the cow, farmer and Raisin Bran. Cows don't make Raisins do they?

/.chow.\

Add Milk #1: Trix

2009-08-17T18:35:00.009-04:00

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Where else do you get all the sugar you need for the day?

Let's talk about Rabbits. Silly ones:

There's no adult end of this pool. It's games games games all around the world.

This is a fun little exploratory section. Clicking on the colored billboards allows you to download coloring sheets of that image. There's rabbits to click on, rabbits riding bicycles, and even a giant T-Rex like rabbit that wanders through occasionally. You'll find odd little scenes if you click around the windows of the buildings. Would be fun to see an adult version of this (i mean adult, not pr0n, dirty rabbit).

No kid's site is complete without a "build your own character" section. You can add your character to the scene, but it doesn't really do anything but sit there on the street.

I just included this because the bowling game has some interesting art.

So much to do on these sites, when do kids find the time to be ADD anymore?

/.chow.\

Furniture #3: Ikea

2009-08-15T11:30:00.006-04:00

Ikea has always been an innovator in the interactive space. Which makes perfect sense considering their shopping experience.

I found another room planner, and while it's not Ultimate! (there's an echo when I type the word), it's got a more playful personality than any of the others. Actually it's got a bit of personality...where the others don't.

This planner is made specifically for planning a door room:

There's a How It Works section that plays videos showing you how to use the app. This section is mainly going to be for the parents.

There's preset themes you can modify yourself. The menu is below where you can drag and position the items in the room. This is the Dance Machine theme. It's just missing the huge bong hookah.

Here's what I ended up with. You can't really see it in the pic above, but they tally the prices. Just over 500 bucks for this. Not counting the xbox, computer, stereo system and plasma tv. Which I would have wanted, but not had.

And we close the chapter on furniture. What fun we had.

/.chow.\

Furniture #2: Haverty's and Thomasville

2009-08-12T18:54:00.004-04:00

You are on the edge of your seat, wondering if I found the ultimate Room Planner, yes?

Well, I may have.

You must wonder, why Snamo? Why do you selflessly search so that I may eagerly consume these interactive morsels brought from the depths of the business web? I do not know kind reader. I only know that i must.

Before we get to the ultimate, there is Havertys furniture:

This one is a combination of the two previous planners we saw. You can view the products, and you can add all the typical things found in living rooms. (besides cats crying for food, lazy dogs and destructive 2-year olds). Like the others the interface is incredibly easy to use, you can place, resize and save your layouts for future reference.

I liked this one the best so far, and noticed it was powered by Icovia. Popping over to their site I found that they create Room Planning software....and this:

sweet. I don't know if this really is the ultimate, but it's a game-ender for me. Build your room and see it rendered in 3D? Done and done my friends.

The above image is from Icovia's site. I went over to Thomasville's site to play with the app first hand but they require you to create an account before you get access to it.

Are you fucking kidding me? I have enough fucking accounts on the web. I don't need to remember another fucking password. alkdgja;lgd. So, I didn't sign up.

And one more thing, they don't hint at this delicious app on their site at all. In fact I had sniffed around this site Monday and left because there was nothing that seemed interesting. If I had an app like this for people to use, I'd advertise that on the homepage.

Maybe it's all a hoax. I can live with not knowing. Make me register, ha.

/.chow.\

Furniture #1: Lazy-Boy and Modern Line

2009-08-10T16:51:00.009-04:00

I seemed to have been sucked into a black hole between last Wednesday and today. Somewhere along the way I lost Friday's blog post. It was incredible, but lost forever.

We're starting off this next set with Furniture. Exciting!

No different than most industries online, Furniture is pretty straight forward. Product on display, buy product online, smile and repeat.

One piece of interactivity that pops out though is the Room Builder. I think I'll focus on that for the next few posts to see if we can't find the best one out there.

Lazy-Boy's Room Builder

Simple to use, nice thumbs of the furniture on the left. You can click "more info" on them:

Seems like a no-brainer.

The only thing I didn't like is that you can't select TV's or other none furniture items to put into your room. I assume it's because they don't sell TV's etc. But they could at least offer plain boxes that you could size to give you an idea of room placement.

Modern Line's Room Builder

This builder is a bit more involved, and has that snazzy measuring tape thingy. This one allows you to put in a lot more types of objects. The only con is that you don't have thumbs of the actual merchandise.

I'm going to keep looking for others, but I'm wondering how long before someone makes the end-all Room Builder app. Or if i'm just very late and there is one out there. Seems like nowadays you could add a Room Level view and see the room in 3D from different angles.

i guess like this

/.chow.\

Shampoo #4: Aussie and a little Pantene

2009-08-05T19:04:00.008-04:00

Ok, this is the last batch of hair-product sites. While this is not the worst industry so far, it's definitely been a bit boring.

The post isn't about Pantene, but I had to include a screenshot ...

Black! That's 4 for 4. I've yet to see an industry that sticks to one color like this one. I've seen designs killed because so-and-so brand owns such-and-such color. But not in Hair. Black owns hair.

Then there's Aussie -

Purple baby. I had a creative director once that hated the color purple online. I'm sure this would've caused some mouth-frothing action. I can forgive the color, but I'm a little worried about the creepy kangaroo and his intentions with the lady. Like a plum Grima Wormtongue.

Saturation aside, the one thing I really like about this site is the navigation on the left. "Tell Us Why You're Here", and a drop down with reasons you may be visiting. I've been wanting to do a nav like that for awhile, but it's hard to break people (cough..clients) out of the standard sectioned menu. Actually, and honestly, I had forgotten about it for years now..and I think it's time to ressurect it.

A nav like this makes sense. Instead of bucketing your content into single words or two, give someone an option more in line with what they may be thinking. Use single words when that's the best option of course.

I'd like to see a video game site that had a menu that used this sort of navigation instead of industry terms like "FPS, Action, Adventure" etc. Aren't all video games Adventure? Maybe the nav could be "I like to break shit.", "I like to put on my wizard hat and talk in a funny accent", or "Mindless jumping and shooting.".

just sayin.

/.chow.\

Shampoo #3: Paul Mitchell

2009-08-03T20:14:00.006-04:00

The third hair-related product site in this series boasts another all-black site.

There must be some magical connection between hair and the color black.

Ok, but it's not all black:

This little flash microsite hightlights green or humanitarian hair-dressers. All wearing black. Wizards, all of them.

Nothing here that couldn't be accomplished better with a solid Facebook or Myspace campaign. The microsite is just a few profiles and a few sections on the things you could be doing to better the earth/society etc. I will admit that, other than that odd little game on the tresemme site, this is a step above the competitors.

I guess this makes Paul Mitchell the philanthropist shampoo. and me sleepy.

/.chow.\

Shampoo #2: Tresammé

2009-07-31T15:24:00.007-04:00

There are not many reasons to use the color black as the background of your site. It makes text harder to read, and is generally uncomfortable. The wonderfully sarcastic saying "CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE-CONTROL FOR COOL" could be used for the color black as well.

And..on to Tresamme:

Style news, How-To videos and Expert advice. The trifecta for any self-respecting hair product site.

The Styleseeker portion is a blog for beauty/fashion products. Looks up-to-date with postings just a few hours ago, and has been around for over a year, but is missing any notable comment activity. This made me interested in seeing what kind of activity was going on in the Community section.

No post since last fall that I could see. If you read some of the posts you might find a clue as to why.

"Love the Simply No Frizz Spray Gel. My hair is curly, which I totally love, but it can get really frizzy, which I hate! This product works the best for me."

This is what the Social Media evan's are talking about. People talking about your brand. To themselves mostly. Imagine a thread of ten posts like that. I wouldn't stick around either..it's kinda creepy.

A Forum isn't a Field of Dreams. And a Game does not equal more time on site.

Yes I said Game!

This is an interesting little piece. It's a time-management game where you have to balance helping people in a salon, money and products. The product fits seamlessly into the concept. When you click to work on someone's hair, the game offers you the choice of Tresamme's products.

There are hundreds of Flash game portals out there. If you make a unique and interesting game for your product..why not post it on those portals?

/.chow.\

Shampoo #1: Redken

2009-07-29T16:11:00.006-04:00

The word Shampoo doesn't make any sense. "Sham" is "something that is not what it purports to be" and "poo" is..well. Put the two words together and it's a product you use to wash your hair.

I will admit that this is the first time I've ever surfed a shampoo site. You might be sitting there judging me, but I am not ashamed.

The first brand into the shower is Redken:

If you missed the lower half of the page - Redken is on Facebook. I'm going to make an assumption here, most shampoo sites will have input from Experts, How-to's on the latest styles, and Fashion do's and don'ts. Here are a few things that might set Redken apart from those other shampoo sites.

Do you have hair? Do you want to set up a hair profile on Redken?

This guy will walk you through the steps to figuring out what your hair needs to be the best it can be. He is an "Education Artistic Director" for Redken. Odd grammar aside, there are a lot of video bits strung together here. Might be more effective to make this piece your Masthead instead of hiding it in a section.

You can also visit the Redken news-room of sorts:

The Hair Files are also featured on the Redken channel on Youtube. 100k+ views.

I didn't find a game..but I did find a widget!

Finding a widget is like undressing someone you've just brought home and finding a small stubby tail sprouting from the small of their back.

/.chow.\

Fizzopolis #3: Pepsi

2009-07-27T16:17:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned friday, Pepsi has a lot goin on-line.

I'm just going to point out a few things I found. The pepsi homepage has always been a product of Flash and love. If I remember right, I think Pepsi was one of the first big commercial sites to create a noteworthy Flash homepage.

One thing Pepsi is doing online is a series of pages based around the idea of Refresh X. X being Culture, Music, Sports, Goodworks or Everything. Each of these pages highlights activities or deeds done that fit the refresh theme.

There was an abandoned elevated railroad track on NY City's west side that 2 guys turned into a small park. This above is a virtual tour of that park. It's first-person view and feels like your following along with the person holding the camera.

Pepsi is also all over the YouTube front. They have their own channel called PopTub. The description is: "We make YouTube videos about YouTube videos on YouTube. It's not that complicated." Reminds me of Rocketboom, but just for YouTube.

And lastly, to further cement Rock Band into our cultural psyche, you can now win an MTV Video Award for your own Rock Band video submission. thank you Pepsi?

/.mass.\

Fizzopolis Sprawl

2009-07-24T23:54:00.002-04:00

I didn't get to the page here until late tonight, or yesterday rather, and thought i'd pop over real quick to Pepsi and see what they've got going on. Ha.

Then I popped over to Coke.

Nothing quick about these sites. These sites have their own zip codes. Cavern systems where, if you don't have a map or a native guide, your bound to find yourself with bruises on your skull and the flitter of ad bats in your ears. Ok it's late, I'll be back monday with more specifics.

/.flyinrats.\

Fizzopolis #2: Dr. Pepper

2009-07-22T20:35:00.006-04:00

I took some time to look at the coolers today in my local market to refresh my memory of the brands of soda (or pop) available. Not much has seemed to change since I was a kid. Different flavors of the same ol' soda.

Today in the arena is an old gladiator we've all grown up with:

I didn't get thirsty, but it's a classy display.

Found two especially interesting pieces here:

This app is for building things out of Dr. Pepper 12 pack cases in a isometric tetris setting. I wasnt sure what to build so I checked out the gallery.

Smart and sexy with a simple scrubber that allows for X, Y, and Z viewing.

There's also an Augmented Reality portion to this, where you can see your creation in full 3D. AR is enjoying a bit of an underground buzz right now. I'm guessing every agency has some cool renegade digital creatives trying to pitch an AR concept.

The second piece is a driving game to coincide with their Camaro give-away.

I'm gonna make a list at some point of the best tailor-made games I've seen so far, and this one will be in the top 5. Not for gameplay, but for concept. You drive the camaro through a google-maps generated satellite view. The best part is that you can supply your own route and race the Camaro through that. Great combo thinking and could've been it's own site...

/.carryingyourshieldoronit.\

Fizzopolis #1: Mountain Dew

2009-07-20T20:20:00.007-04:00

The O.G. of Energy drinks.

It's amazing to me that with all the talent we have in the web design world, we still have major brands with sites like this:

All the personality of algae. Other than a quirky low-budget video on the History of Dew (ok it's a little charming) there isn't much to the site. Ok, I lie, there's games! Small strange little games that skitter about in the moss. I caught a couple of these odd creatures and pinned them up for you -

or

Move over EA.

I almost decided to explore a different industry when I clicked through to one of their promotional sites.

Now this was more to my liking. The "Check out our brand art done by featured artists" thing is as common as .. mold? (i've stretched my metaphor and hear it's skin tearing). But the site has an old-school flash feeling that made me want to click around a bit.

I'm glad I did because this is a rather advanced design tool hidden in the site's depths.

\.Rant./
Why do we continuously come up with great ideas to shove into sites, instead of making that great idea the whole site. Want to kill a good idea? Make it a section of a website. Sections of websites get a fraction of the budget. The website gets the full budget. I'm not going to visit the artist pages...but if you showed me the artists while I designed something with your tool, I'd probably check them out.

How bout making the tool the homepage. The information you have (ie. artists, events) could be expand/collapse boxes on the right. The white drawing area could serve both as a canvas, and an image area for the artists bottles. Ah 20/20 or some shit.

I see this in sites everywhere. There are great ideas suffering from sectionitis. A tragedy.

/.Rant.\

Beep Beep #6: Mazda

2009-07-17T21:15:00.003-04:00

This...

plus...

are just a few pieces of a rather extensive ARG Mazda pulled off in Quebec. TV spots, live events, and a ton of interactive bits....the full details are here.

I'm a bit late to the show, as this is already over, but commercial ARG's are such exotic and rare beasts I had to report it. If you ever get a chance to work on one, take it, they're quite a ride.

That wraps up autos for now, although I know there's a lot more out there. I'm sure I'll cycle back to them soon enough.

/.wheelinthesky.\

Beep Beep #5: I'm A JEEP

2009-07-15T10:45:00.007-04:00

Jeep's site has personality peeking around every corner. Sad to say, it's a factor that is overlooked in most manufacturers websites. Jeep also has a thriving community base, but today I'm more interested in clicky/draggy things. Take what we saw at BMW yesterday and then see how pro's do it. (gotta give props where due).

This is a masthead demonstrating features for the Grand Cherokee. Fluid, clean and oozin with clickosity (the factor that makes you want to click things).

The DVD section has you picking up the remote and changing the channels (Nickelodean, Disney etc) before the "Backseat Attention Span" runs out.

Heated seat demonstation. Starts out with tons of snow (above), but when you click the heater the snow melts. KISS.

This section is the jewel for the interactive junkies. You drag and drop an object onto the road and watch the wheels run over it. Of course, the coffee never spills.

Now isn't all this better than some video?

/.wildfrontier.\

Beep Beep #4: BMW

2009-07-13T19:08:00.007-04:00

If BMW has a fancy pants microsite or big web endeavor going on right now I didn't find it. Ah the days of BMW films...still the best commercial webisodes yet IMHO.

I did find a quirky bit of flash though. If you've been following the blog here you know that I've been calling out certain over-used interactive mechanics. This piece has not one but two!

Number #1: The Ol' "Objects Laid Out On a Surface" Trick!

Number #2: The "Book"

When in doubt, these two tricks can bail you out.

I almost left to see what other sites I could find (remembering my perhaps ill-stated promise from Friday), but then I saw this.

You can't really tell from the picture, but you drag and drop an engine (thumbnails at bottom) into the car. The hood opens and everything. Then the comics to the left change depending on the engine you chose.

Amazing? no. not at all. refreshing? a little. In a world of hotspots, a guy misses a little drag and drop action. Most often you do not see anything beyond a click in B-flash pieces. You only get that kinda of weird shit in the A-flash. It's been years since I saw commercial pieces like this. Either this was done by a newb, or someone nostalgic.

Check this action out:

This image leaves a bit to the imagination, but if your imagination is telling you that lines on either side of the vehicle move back and forth to reveal different images of the car, listen to it!

lol. This is a trick I haven't seen in a long long time. Suddenly i'm having fun.

The last bit tip the scales from fun with a smirk, to fun with ... well.. writing a post.

When you select a color, the jet turbine behind the car turns on and blows the color onto the car. Not something I've seen before.

Reminds me of an idea I had a bit ago..and now i'm sad. But it's a happy sad.

/.ode.\

Beep Beep #3: Lexus

2009-07-10T14:05:00.006-04:00

Mastheads are getting big play nowadays. This one from Lexus is where you end up from following a TV spot link.

Some ideas just never die. I think it's due to new people turning their TV and Print minds towards the interactive side. Ideas that were tossed around 10 years ago, some tossed out, come shambling back like zombies, hungry for your clicks. Like the "Let's give the visitor the ability to change the color of our page!", or "Let's ask them questions!".

This masthead is an example of the latter. You click a hotspot and watch a short video, and then you're asked a question like: "What would keep you warm when the top is down?".

If your answer is something the masthead recognizes..

The top pops and you get a witty answer.

If you type in something dirty...

The car drives off.

Simple stuff. It seemed a bit more fun when I was actually doing it, but now that I'm writing about it, i'm thinking about taking a nap.

Better things from the auto industry to come...next week.

/.101.\

Beep Beep #2: Saturn

2009-07-08T15:18:00.006-04:00

The website "masthead" has become a pillar of standards in commercial websites over the years. Typically this is a place for announcements, promotional slideshows, and the occasional video. Saturn took their masthead above and beyond the typical paginated slide presentation.

Their masthead is a neighborhood, complete with joggers, cars passing by and people busy in their yards.

You can click and drag to scroll the scene to the right or left and see what the family next door is up to. Of course every house has a Saturn parked out front, and sometimes one passes you as you move through the neighborhood.

Each moving piece in the neighborhood is clickable, leading to other portions of the site for more information.

I count at least 16 different scenes before you completely loop.

In a world where "interactive" has taken a backseat to "social", or in some cases, regarded as the same word (ugh!)..its' nice to see some people are still experimenting and creating things other than just buttons or videos.

/.undiscovered.\

Beep Beep #1: Honda Fit

2009-07-06T18:04:00.010-04:00

Advertising for cars online has a unique set of challenges. To me, the biggest challenge is taking a product with up to, or over, 100 features and producing something that is informative but engaging at the same time (and isn't an infomercial).

Today, the Honda Fit's "Race To Defend Fit City."

If you remember the campaign from a few months back, you saw vicious cgi bug-like vehicles chasing the Honda Fit in the TV spots. Online they took this a bit further and created a simple game that has you racing and out-maneuvering the Fuelivores. The game is set up to allow you to play from the Fit's point of view, or the bad guys. However, you cannot play the bad guys until you've finished the Fit's story line first.

The game's intro highlights features that make sense within the context of the story, and none of it feels out of place or forced.

The gameplay is simple, you use the arrow keys to move right or left to dodge things in the road. Every now and then you have to press the spacebar to make your Fit turn into a giant blowfish and lose the Fuelivore on your tail.

A real cool feature to this game is that pressing W or I at anytime will create a Wallpaper or Icon.

Pressing "I" will pause the game and give you a target box to use to catch the perfect icon.

At the end you can check out a 360 0f the vehicle, and some close-ups of the Fuelivores. And of course there are hotspots. You don't see hotspots so much in other industries as you do in the auto world. They are the dry-hump of interactivity.

There aren't any hotspots on the Fuelivores, which makes me slightly sad, but I won't complain.

/.106milestochicago.\

Holiday

2009-07-03T12:02:00.000-04:00

I vill be back next vonday.

Crunchy #4: Crumbs in the Bag

2009-07-01T15:53:00.007-04:00

It appears there is a large drop-off after Doritos and Cheetos when it comes to online deliciousness in the Chip/Crunchy snack food arena. I have learned that most everything is owned by Frito-Lay, the Clear Channel of the crispy world.

So today we'll wrap this topic up with some bits and pieces.

Cape Cod chips concentrates most of their web effort on promoting the Cape Cod area itself.

There's video tours of Cape Cod's history, e-postcards..and even a crappy little trivia game:

I say crappy because if you don't live in the area, you won't know the answers and there's no clues.

I had great hopes for Rap Snacks. I thought the site might exciting, yo. But the intro movie of someone climbing out of a sewer to grab a bag of chips off the ground...ew?

The best the site has to offer are some downloads of indie hip-hop singles.

And finally, after some sweat and maybe a few tears...i found a quasi-360 of a bowl of chips. Pita chips to be exact:

This may be a world first.

The site is rather elegant, but is just a product display, nothing more.

/.i'mfull.\

Crunchy #3: Doritos

2009-06-29T11:44:00.009-04:00

Where Cheetos goes random, Doritos puts on it's construction hat and builds a city.

Using a city scene, or any environment, as a menu interface is not a bad technique, it sets a solid metaphor and atmosphere. But what is usually overlooked is the potential for strengthening the experience even more. Just because you're using specific objects as doorways to other sections, doesn't mean they have to be the only things you can click on. I've just come to your site, I'm clicking around, I'm in the mood to explore. For example, why is there a ship in the lower right? If i mouse-over it, nothing happens. How disappointing. Just something simple like that could set me off to spending a few more minutes clicking on everything.

Half the buildings in the scene are in-site content:

And the other half lead out to promotional microsites.

The above is the beginning of a "Myst"-like puzzle game called The Quest. You solve puzzles in order to compete in a live action version in Las Vegas. It looks like this whole promotion happened last year though.

The best thing Doritos has online right now has nothing to do with the brand, chips or snacking. If you visit hotel626.com before 6pm, you're told that the hotel is only open at night. If you make a reservation, you get this in an email later that night -

What follows when you revisit the site is a survival-horror game. Using video, clever puzzles, your microphone and your webcam, this is my new favorite commercial site. How this idea sold through Doritos I have no idea. I'm not going to go into any more details about it though...this is one of the ones you should visit yourself.

But I will leave you with this:

This little guy didn't like the song I tried to sing him to sleep with.

/.stabitwiththeirsteelyknives.\

Crunchy #2: Cheetos

2009-06-26T09:36:00.011-04:00

If you haven't seen the latest Cheetos campaign, you're missing Chester re-cast as, what appears to be, a Bond villian. How can you not love that? I was hoping that the same irreverant and somewhat surreal fun would be carried on to the web.....and shit yea...no disappointment there.

The Cheetos site is the biggest collection of beautiful absurdity that I have ever seen on a commercial website. That jumble of TV's you see is on a platform you can spin, and every minute or so odd things happen..like the above, or a clown reading sad poetry. And that's just the menu.

Highlights:

Feed Katy. You click and drag a cheeto to her mouth. I only fed her four, but if anyone has found out how many you have to feed her to get her to lose the shirt, let me know. (oink).

Chester's voice modulator. "No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die."

Legend of the Cheetocorn. A platformer game...with a story line that made the lol. Dr. Picklehands??

This part is pure brilliance. Upload a webcam video of yourself eating cheetos and it gets added to the 24 hour Cheetos channel. I wish I'd thought of that, and I may steal it.

That's 4 out 10 sections of random fun. And that's just the main site, if you click on the Orange Underground...

RAOC. Random Acts Of Cheetos. Clips and unlockables from the rebellion.

There is so much good stuff in the Cheetos netmind, I almost didn't want to post it as #2. I hope some of Cheetos competition can hang.

/.awkwardbackrubs.\

Crunchy #1: Pringles

2009-06-23T11:29:00.010-04:00

It seems natural to follow up Energy drinks with it's companion the snack things. I say snack things because some of the places I go might not qualify as "potato" or "chips".

First up is Pringles.

After having my eyeballs assaulted with content, a simple page like this is somewhat of a relief. However, like a single Pringle chip, this site is incredibly light and not much of a snack. There are product pages:

Fancy-pants "star-glows" are abundant through-out the animations of the site. But these don't provide the salty-ness needed to make me crave more pages. (forgive me please).

If you noticed on the homepage there is a button for a Design Your Own Can promotion. I thought this would give me something interesting to talk about...but it's a 404. That's not good.

What is good is their implementation on Facebook.

Pringles apparently uploads low-budget video shorts of people singing about their chips, dancing, running with bulls etc. It's hard to tell if these are spots, user-generated or scripted. But it looks like they get a lot of comments and thumbs up. This is a great example of how to "talk" to your community..it's not so much talking as it is entertaining. There isn't a youtube channel that I could find..but why worry about that when you have an audience this big on Facebook?

/.lightsnak.\

Twitch #3: Red Bull

2009-06-21T20:11:00.007-04:00

Where the previous entries in the energy drink topic felt frenetic and chaotic, Red Bull is more refined and focused.

Like it's competitors Red Bull is involved in everything from bmx, video games, to break dancing teams. Navigating between info and video content on these areas is through a simple Flash interface that keeps the amount from being overwhelming.

The videos are indexed and set up to make it easy to actually watch them.

Other than that there isn't much to offer. There isn't a Red Bull community here, but there is definitely a presence on the major channels.

Pharmaceutical? Weird.

/\../\

Twitch #2: Rockstar Energy

2009-06-19T14:31:00.005-04:00

I think i've got a handle on Monsters and Rockstars internet strategies.

Step 1: Load up an out-of-work kid with as much of your product as possible.
Step 2: Lock him up in the basement and make him design your site and your myspace pages.

I can feel his heart racing, and his eyes bulging just looking at this page.

This page is what happens right before the crash.

Step 3: Find athletes to sponsor in any sport that isn't already saturated with class 1 brands. Find any musician that has long hair or looks creepy emo. And in Rockstars case...find da breasteses.

This page puts the jack in jacked up.

Step 4: Knock on the basement door. Is the kid still alive? Have him make Myspace and Facebook fan pages every day for the next...well fuck it...forever.

"welcome to the human race." - Snake Blisken

oh and one last thing - http://www.rockstar69.com. 69? Be careful your boners don't explode.

/.upsydownsy.\

Twitch #1: Monster Energy

2009-06-17T21:55:00.004-04:00

Monster ain't my poison, but I might be too old and wouldn't pass the fitness test for the Monster Army.

Monster Energy plays the community card as their main strategy. Updates and news on their sponsored athletes, and then a closed area just for the members. Something sexy in secret communities.

It must be working for them - I searched Monster Energy on Facebook and found 500+ results. The first ten pages were all pages/groups with the Monster logo. Their youtube pages has over 1,500 subscribers.

What do you do with the community after you have a strong one? You see so much talk about "starting" the conversation, but I'm more interested in really great ideas of what to do when you've caught that bus. Maybe i'll join the army.

/.privatesnam.\

Prepare to Flash #3: Nikon...again

2009-06-15T23:03:00.007-04:00

Sir Richard Branson once said, "We (Virgin) look at markets where things have been done the same way for a long time and we ask whether we can do anything different.". After searching for even a hint of a Camera industry online strategy I'm coming up with nothing. It appears to be 90% retail/product sites, 9% un-sponsored community, and 1% larger channel promotions or presence. I'm in no position whatsover to judge, this might be the most reasonable approach for these products - but I can say that it's all rather dull. And an upstart Camera company could make a killing just by harnassing the tools online.

I almost gave up looking, and looked to the FWA as a last ditch effort and found the following microsite. I had looked all over the Nikon company site and had found no doorway to this, or at least completely missed it. I hate that I have to go to the FWA to find something interesting a company has done.

The imagery appears crude at first, but an atmosphere is created using an interesting blend of voice talent and background music. And once you start exploring, the motion only adds to the atmosphere creating something that feels more like a video game interface than a menu for videos.

Video content is the core of the site, full-screen of course. But the videos were built into the site, rather than housed by the site. It's great when the content in a site feels at home rather than placed in a "bucket".

/.fleeting.\

Secret Sleep

2009-06-12T18:23:00.002-04:00

Last night was spent working, so I'm a bit tired and wholly unprepared for exploration. However, I've been tinkering around in The Nethernet for the last week or so. I would highly recommend a visit to anyone.

/.iwillreturn.\

Prepare to Flash #2: Nikon

2009-06-09T16:41:00.008-04:00

Today's post is mostly about Nikon, but I did want to include a quick shot from the Polaroid site --

It's the "collection of objects sitting on surface" interface! This is almost as popular as the Rock Band / Guitar Hero mechanic. I'm excited to see how many more we find!

Nikon's US homepage has considerably more life to it than the Canon one. Probably due to less products, but still...
Full-screen images with a filter for searching them, and notes including who the photographer was and what Nikon took the picture. Feels very modern and clean.

Sniffing around a bit further I found the Ashton Kutcher CoolPix site.

This here is their take on demonstrating and contrasting the zoom capabilities of the CoolPix models. You can either choose a camera, or use the zoom toggle in the bottom center to zoom further into the scene.

I really like this - I get it. This is something that would influence my purchase. The zoom technique..not Ashton..just to clarify.

Other than a section for uploading your photo for a chance to get on Ashton's CoolPix ( I don't know that means..but it's creepy for some reason), the only other real meat to this stew is your friend and mine...

The product 360. I haven't seen one of these in awhile. This creature tends to lurk in automotive jungles.

Ok, onward, I go. Hopefully we'll find that one perfect photo before the week is out.

/.skilla.\

Prepare to Flash #1: Canon

2009-06-08T14:43:00.005-04:00

This is not a sudden epiphany for me, nor is it surprising, but goddamn there is a lot of retail on the web. I'm not knocking it, but there's a whiney part of me that's not happy seeing my web-of-a-million-surprises stacked high with lists of items,prices, descriptions, reviews, fuckity-blah-for-blah. Between Amazon, Ebay and every other company with a product to sell, the internet is 90% catalog. Thank god we can't see it all at once.

Strolling through the cramped Canon store I managed to take a few interesting shots.

Canon teamed up with VII Photo Agency to create content for the micro-site above. This makes three sites in the life of this blog that use the "collection of objects sitting on surface as interface" concept. The last two were illustrated, and this one, of course, is photo-realistic. I think I'll put together a collection of most over-used techniques later.

The fellows from VII provided photos for the site, and guess how the photos are displayed...
Seems like a logical interface. However, the buttons are set up for "photo-gallery" navigation. You would think that this would be an excellent spot for getting familiar with the actual controls of the camera.

The camera as an interface is used in other spots in the Canon site as well -
I've never researched camera's before, so I don't know if this is a common mechanic. I guess I'll know more by the end of this week.

/.darkroom.\

Bier #5: Stella Artois

2009-06-04T14:46:00.009-04:00

Europe takes their Beer sites seriously. Which isn't too surprising, since the beer tends to be better than most American brews. The last site for the week is Stella Artois.

The site starts out with clips from the variety of video that was created just for the site. An earlier edition of the site has a 2-3 minute movella (like that? i do) that followed a timid beer man trying to get his bottle of Stella from the brewery to his bar in 19th century Paris. (i'm guessing on both the year and the city). This movella would stop at certain parts to allow you access to vere off into a subsection of the site. It was done really well and I'm sad to see it chopped into clips. I wonder if it was the public, or a client who didn't like watching the movie over and over when they visited their site.

Other than the video crafted just for the site, and it's many sections, my favorite part of the site is the games. They're done right.

The first set of games are based around the hardships of making beer in the 13th century. Everything from the literal end of the earth, to the wrath of gods, plagued the poor villagers who only wanted to make a good beer. You play 5 games to see if you could keep the taps flowing. The games are beautifully simple and perfectly contextual. The first one, seen above, has you saving the villagers and the hops from tipping over the edge of the world. The villagers and moving objects in the game are actual video layered on an almost painted landscape. You move the mouse to the left or right to balance the world as it begins to tip.

Another one has you saving the barley fields from warring gods. (hint: when the storm hits, click in the clouds).

I won't go into the other ones, but they're all as sweet looking as the ones above.

The other set of games also have a interesting spin on the "send to a friend" mechanic.

There are 4 visual puzzles involving gears, pulleys, nicks and skizzlewits. Although you can solve the puzzles yourself, the real intent of this is to get you to challenge a friend to solve one. If they lose, they owe you a Stella and vice versa.

All of them seem tough. I wonder if they're fixed to always get you a beer. Crafty.

This site is worth a visit. I don't plan on saying that very often in the course of this blog. Not because everything I see isn't worth it, but because I'm more interesting in reporting/exploring than being a "Hey this is cool go look at it" site (which makes up about 95% of blogs it seems). But this site is something else.

/.cheers.\

Bier #4: Bit and Zoogami

2009-06-02T20:13:00.008-04:00

The two fish i've found today are flashy darting things that fly by so fast you're left with only the bright trails burned in your imagination.

Bit beer, a German fish I think is only found in European waters, tells you that if you turn on your webcam and scan the label of your bottle you'll get a music track specific to that flavor, as well as a unique light-video to go along with it.

Light video exhibit A.

Gallery exhibit B.

Unfortunately I can't run to my local store and get the beer (at least not where I'm at). If the store down the block did have it, I might consider it. If the site offered to give me a handful of tracks from the person who created the track, I would definitely revisit the site.

Zoogami is an Italian beer, and the site simply asks you to put in a word or phrase that is contemporary in your mind.

I, of course, put Zombies.

What follows (after you enter the word or words and click drink) is a multimedia show pulling in images, videos and music from the web. My show featured The Zombies "She's Not There" as the soundtrack, and alot of interesting visuals....

As quickly as I chanced upon these fish, they were gone. Good thing I brought my camera.

/.preparetoflash.\

Bier #3: Corona

2009-06-01T16:30:00.007-04:00

As I pilot my submarine around the sea of beer sites I'm finding a lot of exotic and colorful creatures. Beer might last the rest of this week.

The Corona Beach site is based on the simple principle of relaxing.

Perfectly in-sync with their advertising, you are placed on a virtual beach that you can click around, and move the camera to the right and left.

There are a few simple activities that garner no award other than to waste time (at least I think - having done them all I didn't find anything new as a result).

My favorite being this one. Where you click and throw your phone into the ocean. KISS.

The content is minimal, except for a section of commercials and wallpapers.

I'm showing this because I'm curious about their presentation of commercials. They offer an embed link, a PSP version, a IPOD version, HD and Standard download versions. For a commercial. I would love so much to see the stats on how many people downloaded these to view later...or forever. I'm being cynical, but if the stats were favorable I'd be overjoyed.

/.tuskan.\

Bier #2: Blue Moon Brewing

2009-05-28T20:17:00.007-04:00

Every ten sites or so I come across one that feels like a lot of love went into it. Sure there are a lot of ones that look expensive, but those don't necessarily have the charm that sites like the Blue Moon Brewing site have.

There's atmosphere and texture you can only get with Flash, and it's nice to see sites that try to squeeze as much as they can out of it. We saw the same concept with the Rowling site, but it's hard to knock someone when they do it well. The site's content is in a tabbed notebook, with the appropriate page flipping sounds and movement.

There's is a lot of attention to detail, even in the writing. Little tidbits like "We made the intern clean it out" add more flavor.

There's a Beer brewing app that's just like the Cadbury chocolate mixer app, sans the odd little parrot.

And there's an gallery of fan art that's full of display worthy pieces. The chess set made out of bottles and labels wins for me.

There's nothing new here, but the style trumps. However, it does make me think of how you would take the basic concept (ie. table top, book/scrapbook) and give it a twist. What would it be like to have a book you're looking at come to life? If the contents of the book exploded out at you, like some crazy pop-up book. Hm, that doesn't seem original to me either. Zombies? Ok this post is officially over with.

/.ain'tbroke.\

Bier #1: Heinekin Draught Keg

2009-05-26T13:20:00.007-04:00

May is the new October!

I think I'm going to start posting every other day from here on out, if anyone has a problem with that feel free to post a comment and I'll cherish the fact that there are, indeed, readers of my little blog out there.

It's still a micro-site world out there, and Heineken is no different. There isn't much to the main site, but a click away is the Draught Keg microsite.

Walking out of the commercial, the robot lady struts her stuff on the site while you decide if you want to hit the dance floor or learn more about the keg. I was slightly worried that Hit the Dance Floor would be yet another Guitar Hero-ish game, but it was just another Upload Your Photo or friends photo app.

The upload puts your picture(s) into the faces of these odd dancing robots. I have to admit I uploaded co-workers photos and watched them dance.

The other portion of the site is the information on the keg itself. This ends up being just a regular hot-spot oriented info dump.

All in all the site is fair, and must've had a decent budget to create the CGI dance sequence. I would rather have seen where and how the robot lady lives. A peek into the party lifestyle of the silicon jetset, where the keg is getting used, and the some of the people/bots are dancing and some are making-out on the couch. Allow me to upload my friends photos to throw them into the party as the participants. Show me how well the keg fits into a normal setting, how many cups you can get out of it in practice, etc. Better yet, just send me a free six-pack :)

/.binarybuzz.\

Fast Food #5: Chicken Dances and Frosty Posses

2009-05-22T13:47:00.008-04:00

Wrapping up Fast Food week are a couple newer campaigns from KFC and Wendy's.

KFC wants you to unthink what you thought about their chicken (ie. they're selling grilled chicken now). It took them how long to start serving grilled chicken?

They have a few things going on here, first is a Chicken Dance video upload. Film yourself dancing to their song and put it up on their YouTube page. Looks like 35 members so far. I'm interested in seeing how it does so I'll keep checking in.

And of course they have a game. AND it's another rip-off Guitar Hero mechanic. No one's getting tired of that yet.

They also have an Iphone App. You put the iphone up to your face, covering your mouth, and talk into a microphone. The mouth, complete with a gem-studded grill, moves to whatever words you speak. I wonder if there's a game in that idea somewhere. A two-player. One person speaks while the other watches the screen and directs them?

That wraps up the interesting bits on KFC. I'm not sure what to think of the Wendy's Frosty Posse. I dont' know if i feel dirty for having even watched this. I realize it's tongue-in-cheek, but....well you take a look.

It's the Frosty Posse. The poll on the right asks "Who do you want to get 'Frosty' with?"...and "Mom" is the first answer. That's just...weird.

/.timemachine.\

Fast Food #4: BK

2009-05-21T12:36:00.006-04:00

The general BK site is just one small step above it's McD's counterpart.

It has better design work and small transition videos between sections, but not much nourishment. However, we know that Crispin Porter & Bogusky do not disappoint, so it wasn't surprising to find the Kingon Defense Academy training site.

If you've missed the commercials, Kingons have been stealing BK/Star Trek cups, and using merciless tactics like nipple twists. If you're worried about having your cup stolen, you can watch the 10+ videos on tactics to use against the Kingons here.

Like, if you're worried about getting a wedgie. These videos will show you how to defend yourself.

Of which, hitting the Kingon in the balls is a tactic used most often.

Nothing interactive here, except as you progress and gain rank (by watching videos) you can 1-click Tweet your success.

A few years back, CP+B put up a site for Chicken sandwich that unlocked video clips based on the amount of traffic the page got. There was a measurement bar that would show the amount needed to open the subsequent videos. I thought that was a great idea at the time, but never heard as to how well it did. I have no real reason for bringing this up :)

/.karatechop.\

Fast Food #3: Sonic

2009-05-19T17:10:00.007-04:00

Sonic advertised in my neighborhood for what seemed like years before actually building a location nearby. At that point I was gibbering saliva monkey banging my head on the tv every time one of their commercials came on. There is some sort of evil genius at work here.

The Sonic site further proves this theory.

The homepage is a full-screen gallery of visitor uploaded photos of themselves enjoying Sonic. You can tag the photos, search them, or upload a library of your own. Did I say homepage..my bad....every page on the site uses one of these photos as the background.

On monday I mentioned the Taco Bell 4th meal skits, and how Taco Bell didn't bring those to life on the web. Sonic created a whole section around the two guys from their spots. These two give you Sonic 101 lessons, and are just as entertaining in these skits as in the commercials.

The menu section is a full-screen display as well that you explore with your mouse. If you've been to Sonic you know the menu's are rather big, so this a fair representation of what you'd expect when you visit.

From start to finish this site ties in the Sonic advertising, the feeling of being there, and all info you'd need.

/.muha.\

Fast Food #2: McDonalds

2009-05-18T22:04:00.004-04:00

It looks like the McDonalds strategy for the web is being frugal.

I sincerely hope a freelancer somewhere made a fat check off this. There is nothing to the main site, but there are a few paths leading from it into more colorful territory.

They are currently campaigning for their McCafé line of coffee beverages. This micro-site would probably have felt more at home in my Coffee series a month back, but since McD's is offering slim pickins at the moment, it, like the pig's herding, will do.

The site is a collection of sketches explaining the difference between normal words, like Lame and it's more flamboyant cousin Lamé. You see the shadows of the people setting up the stage between the quick sketches, which gives the site a living feeling. There isn't anything very remarkable here, but that living feeling could be used to create an interesting bit of interactivity. Even something as simple as creating a flashlight effect with the mouse to show the people while they're working, perhaps having them freeze in the light, or showing something completely different than what you expect. Probably not the type of technique that fits the Beatnik flavor of this site, but could be interesting for something else.

The only other path off the main site is to a kid's microsite at .. ronald.com. nice score on the URL. It's got everything you'd expect on there, games, activities and learning games. Basically, games games and a few more games.

They all float down here, Billy.

/.tag.\

Fast Food #1: Taco Bell

2009-05-17T11:41:00.010-04:00

Back when most of our money went to bills and rent a friend of mine would save all his sauce packets from Taco Bell. When he had enough he'd put them altogether in a pan, heat it up and then put it over noodles. He called this concoction "spaghetto". I never tried it, as these packets for me always ended up covered in dirt in the dark recesses of my car; cleaned out at the car wash, usually slick with the contents of some other packet that had burst in there as well. In other words, the packets=gross to me.

I'm sure most of the world sees the packets as little packages of intense flavor, and that's why they're used as a menu system on the Taco Bell site.

Most of the site is a large display of the product:

I'm disappointed there isn't more personality to the 4th Meal section. It's basically just a photo-gallery. The radio spots get me to smile, and my first thought was that they would translate that to the web somehow. The campaign is a bit old, maybe I'm just late.

The "Feed The Beat" section houses music videos and songs from various up-and-coming bands.

I can't help but feel that I'm looking at a dying breed. The age of "every site is a channel" is approaching a turning point, we'll either start seeing more interconnected pages with the major channels or a complete drop-off of these singular channels. I am most certainly repeating myself here.

Oh and there's a game...

My kingdom for a "Hide the Taco" game. heh. In this game you maneuvar a taco (seen at bottom) up through the row maze to finally deliver it to the singer (in hat at top). The rows at the top are moving ala Frogger.

Finding games on commercial websites has become something of a fascination for me. If you have been following my blog you'll know that at first I was critical of the use of sub-quality flash games. These games are usually thrown in for no other reason than a hope of increasing stick time. While this all remains true, I can't help but be drawn to pointing them out, and even...describing them now. It's like watching a few consecutive episodes of WWE, and finding yourself waiting for the next. Dear god I'm becoming a connoisseur.

There's another game on the site for Taco Bells Fruitista line:

You chuck fruits at different targets as they pop-up in the scene. The great part about this game, is that you can upload pictures of anyone or anything and use those as the targets. This customizing, which is absent in console games or most pc games (not counting MODS), is a great example of the unique features the web can bring to your interactive.

The last noteworthy part of the site is a Web-Cam Surf Spot section. You can flip between, what appears to be real-time, web-cams of surf spots around the country.

Nothing too exciting goin on at the moment.

/.hydra aiieee!.\

Brain Vacation

2009-05-13T17:34:00.003-04:00

Be back next Monday (May 18th)!

Enjoy a Zombie Pin-up :)

/.love it.\

Fashion Armor #5: Lacoste

2009-05-11T15:49:00.006-04:00

To finish out the Fashion Armor set I took a look at the newly launched Lacoste Red site. The site just recently won Site of the Month at theFwa, so I figured it be a shame to skip it.

"Make the shopping experience vibrant and fun" had to be the strategy brief for this site. Or i'm a young guppy.

Am I wrong so far?

Here you choose what style of person-jumping-in-air-pose you are.

Many many years ago there as a really great Flash site called Homewrecker.com. It was that site and Gabocorp (if anyone remembers that one as well) that drove me to what I do now. Homewrecker was a clothing site as well and had these great interstitial scenes between sections of content with music clips that glued the experience together. I've included the image above because Lacoste Red has the same type of interstitials. Taking the time to design each part of the site, even the quick parts between content, can help strengthen your execution.

After you click a style, the site really begins to shine in my opinion. The elegant simplicity might not show through enough in the image above, but they make the "jump" between browsing and shopping feel natural. A colored box for "I want it Now" reveals store locations in your area (drawn from your IP) and icons for sharing via email, blog, etc. Select accessories are given a small space, but you can't miss them. The layout has that "click-around" quality that only comes from careful design.

And... Play with Me is a game. I would never have guessed!

I played the game and began thinking about how it could be better, how it could tie in better with the shopping experience, blah blah blah. I then saw the "put it on your blog" feature. Could .. not ... resist...

/.for shame.\

Fashion Armor #4: Giorgio Armani

2009-05-08T12:35:00.008-04:00

The Giorgio Armani site is a great example of connecting the brand to the visitor.

The site opens with a video of a catwalk show of their current season of clothes. Right here they set the tone of why you're here. Armani makes no apologies, they are a fashion company, that's why you are here. They don't try to pawn themselves off abstractly (like Reserved) or as the Tudors (like the homepage of Dolce&Gabbana).

Nothing interactive here, just the introduction to the site. However, if you click on Jeans you're taken to a fully interactive experience.

This section is basically a way to look through the jeans catalogs for men and women, and accessories. Here, the site connects to you personally. The setting isn't fabulous, it's just a series of alleys in "any-town" europe. You basically explore a video of friends moving through these alleys.

From an executional standpoint it's impressive. You can zoom-in to the majority of the video, and look 90 degrees right or left as the video is running.

The video stops at certain points where you can click on certain people to see the catalogs.

While obviously you're not a clothing model, this portion of the site takes you away from the over-emphasis on the fabulous fashion world, and instead, focuses on a fabulous execution.

/.any town in europe for me.\

Fashion Armor #3: Dolce & Gabbana (with a Reserved cherry)

2009-05-07T12:32:00.010-04:00

If the Adidas site is a content kingdom, then the Dolce & Gabbana site is a loose federation of states that desperately want their own identity. I expected an expensive experience to go along with their high-end line, but it looks like they're spending their money on new microsites every time they have something to show and trying to keep them contained under one roof.

It starts out looking like it's got everything under control. But then you click something.

Apparently the Federal Government of D&B requires all it's states to open full-screen, even if they don't have full-screen content. This above is just a little purse display.

If you're going to force someone's browser to open full-screen, show your photos full-screen.

90% of these states are just different photo galleries, with no remarkable navigation beyond thumbnails and arrows.

I did happen upon this however,

Bask in the glory of our wall of sun glasses. Interesting display idea, but put together like it was an afterthought.

To see a more cohesive display of a fashion collection, one can go to Reserved.

Their Abstracted 2009 is contained within a simple narrative, and effortlessly escorts you between choices and full-screen reveals. You do feel more at a fashion show.

/.work.\

Fashion Armor #2: Adidas

2009-05-06T14:36:00.007-04:00

The Adidas site isn't so much a site as it is a content kingdom. Just a look at their homepage tells you that there are no quick visits.

Each of the images above opens up on roll-over to reveal a call to "Experience", giving you the feeling that they're all doors to other worlds (or mirrors to other worlds). The "Experience" calls take you to a wide-screen scrolling area where you can enjoy the content in a more linear fashion.

As you peruse these screens smaller pop-ups will appear occasionally pointing out Adidas products within the images. For example, Kary Perry is wearing an adidas shirt, and a pop-up asking if you want to check this out will appear. Clicking on that will expand the lower panel to reveal products along those lines.

What first seems overwhelming actually becomes comfortable. This site blends the advertising in with the shopping, giving you the feeling that you're exploring the adidas kingdom, where you can buy what you see, or just enjoy it, instead of being forced into more typical retail buckets. I entered only as an observer, and found myself shopping...not remembering the moment the change took place.

I even started building a shoe. Which is a great application btw.

Then there's Adidas TV

I've grown away from the idea of having your own channel of videos on your site. This is best left to Youtube. But a quick check revealed that yes, they have all these videos (or most of them) on their YouTube channels as well. Yes..channels with an "s".

I checked Facebook....1,849,953 fans. damn.

/.onthestage.\

Fashion Armor #1: Diesel

2009-05-05T15:56:00.006-04:00

Monday hit me like I slept with it's wife. So, today I'm gonna start looking at clothing sites. First up this week is Diesel. I haven't been to Diesel's site in quite awhile, to my chagrin. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who promotes their brand in such a beautiful mind-fugging way. I went in search of some interactive advertising and ended up clearing out cobwebs I didn't know I had in my lizard brain.

Diesel's site is one big video display, with 4 or 5 videos running one after another. The first one is an advert for their foray into furniture, it's got a good soundtrack and even better visual flow. Being the desensitized viewer that I am, I was about to click on to Collections when this came up after...

It's "The Rise and Fall of Pete the Meat Puppet". It's a ballad/video of Pete's search for the meaning of life after coming to life by suckling at the breast of the lonely butcher woman who made him (and then died from shock at having her meat puppet come to life). The site had it's dirty meat hooks in me.

After Pete came three episodes of "Dance Party". The first episode (seen above) introduces you to the contestants who look like their being interrogated in prison. The third one, which I feel is a must-see, is the "Solo Dances". The contestants (all in Diesel underwear) are put into a large room and called out individually to dance in the middle. I don't think i can say anything else that will do this shit justice.

Video isn't interactive advertising, but I seriously can't see this stuff on TV. It's a great example of how the internet has given the reigns to the mad scientists of advertising and we're all bouncing around the carriage, struggling to hold on, some of us puking off the side, others of us laughing and having a great time.

You can check out all these videos on their Youtube page as well.

/.rubber johnny.\

Silver Screen #5: Monsters vs. Aliens

2009-05-01T12:42:00.005-04:00

The last site for the week throws a helping hand to evolving A.D.D to brand new heights.

On the surface it's a full-screen beauty. You use the arrows on the left and right to take you to new scenes, and each scene has it's own clip of the movie. I think i've seen at least 20 minutes of the movie by now.

Once you start clicking around...remember Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson, where he plays the Russian defector? There's a scene where he's trying to buy toilet paper, and when faced with a whole isle full of choices he goes into an almost epileptic fit. That would be me as a kid, on this site. It's big, it's bad, and it baby-sits your kids for two days.

Games! Monsters Creator! Trading Card Creator! Activities! Secret ID badges! Download and create Cootie Catchers, Cards, Stickers, Party Favors.....whew..that's about half of it.

No longer does Mom and Dad have to go to Walmart, or Burger King to get all the fixins for turning their kids life into the current cartoon o' the day. This is a one-stop shop. It's actually quite impressive.

Most of it was created for quantity vs. quality, but then again thinking of the target -
This probably works just fine.

Or this:

Yea i've got one. It works at all the hot clubs around town.

The Monster Creator is interesting once you download the "Unity plug-in" and install it. Seems like an odd disruption of flow, and unneeded with all the Flash creators we've seen around lately.

I think you can get the same style of cel shading with flash, but maybe there were other reasons for using this plug-in. The way your build your monster is a bit different, and more contextual as far as their target "creator". The machine asks you questions like "What did you eat for breakfast" and "what's your favorite school subject", and gives you funny or real options depending on the question. It takes your answers and builds your monster. Then you can add color, or a bowtie (my personal preference).

Yesterday I was talking about ARGs extending the movie experience, and this site does that in one big treasure box way.

/.what would an arg be like for kids?.\

Silver Screen #4: Terminator Salvation

2009-04-30T11:46:00.007-04:00

It seems like only the geek's get cool stuff online when it comes to movies. Yay for us.

Full-screen video seems to be the weapon of choice. The scrub bar is neat, it's worked into the design - you can see it above the video in red.

Like Star Trek and Wolverine there's a lot going on here. There are two web games, one your more traditional "game" and the other is an Alternate Reality Game. The traditional one had some troubles connecting right away, and I was too interested in the ARG, so I can't report much about it.

The Alternate Reality Game asks you to choose between:

The Resistance

Or Skynet:

There's a strategy game connected to this that has the two communities building resources until they have enough to go to battle. I didn't dive in too deep, but you can check out more here. A quick stop over at unforums.com leads me to believe there's an undercurrent of complexity going on here, more so then what you see on the website.

ARGs completely fascinate me. At their heart, they're just a game. But there's something about them that falls beyond your "Advertainment" genre. When an ARG is created for a true "creative" product, like a Film or TV show, it not only promotes that product, but extends the entertainment. I would say it's actually more of an extension than it is a promotion. An ARG takes a 2 hour movie, and makes a 20-100 hour "experience" depending on the depth at which they take the story. That's a helluvah lot of value for a 8 dollar movie ticket (if you even go to the movie).

I missed this the other day, but there seems to be a Star Trek ARG as well. I think it started off with this photo:

No joke. There's a really odd URL on the wall to the right of..the...hot green lady. You can see more on this here.

/.arg means i love you in pirate.\

Silver Screen #3: The Multiplex

2009-04-29T20:34:00.005-04:00

Today is tough, I'm working late so I don't have too much. However, it was designs and some nice flash-use that stuck out today while I was quick-surfing movie sites. Here's a few of what I found:

HA. Did you think I was kidding yesterday! This site was very true to it's chick-flick roots. Light and fluffy. The use of large individual shots in the foreground, and side-scrolling was something i might steal some other day.

Next up:

This site is both Fast and Furious. Faked full-screen video rages while zooming you to each section of content. There's not much loading time that I could tell, which is probably why they made the half -screen video look like it was full-screen. Nice trick.

The navigation for the site was worth mentioning as well:

Menus are the new pre-loaders.

And to finish us off today:

I liked this because it's got a Saul Bass kinda feel to it.

/.and run.\

Silver Screen #2: Star Trek

2009-04-28T17:10:00.008-04:00

I will try to defend myself to say that I am not picking particularly geeky content, even though I am indeed a geek at times (most times). It just so happens the only movie site I looked at today that had anything interesting going on, was Star Trek. Tomorrow I'll swing by that Matthew McConaughey "A Christmas Carol Gone Chick Flick" movie site. Just to even things out.

The Star Trek homepage looks like it started out really cool and then some account person forced it into it's current Bargain Basement attire. The site opens on full-screen, and after you choose a section from the nav the site reveals itself to be full-video as the camera zips you down the halls of the Enterprise to the appropriate room holding the content. Bargain Basement look is gone, and at that point the technique does it job of making you feel like you're on the ship.

The Enterprise itself was always one of the primary characters on the show, and it seems that this was where a lot of the work went online. In the "Panoramas" section you get quicktime 360's (don't see those that often anymore) of certain sections of the ship:

Like the Bridge:

Or the hallways:

I show them both because they're pretty cool. I don't think they're CGI but actual sets.

Taking the focus on the Enterprise even further, it looks like they asked designers around the world to give their own take on the classic ship.

25 different designs, each a different take on the ship.

I think this one is my favorite.

Lastly, finally getting away from the ship, is something I haven't seen before. Paramount set up photobooths and had fans(?) get their photos taken. Then uploaded them and created mosiacs of the characters with them.

The interface is interesting, you can mouse over to get the actual images used (seen in upper right), you can also zoom in, or adjust the detail of the picture. The only fail i found here was that the "Locate a Photo Booth" link just says "Coming Soon" when you mouse-over it. I'm guessing there won't be anymore.

Facebook fans: 183k
Myspace friends: 14k

Wolverine has Star Trek beat in those channels pretty badly. However, Trekkies probably have their own versions of Myspace? I'm really interested in seeing how these differences in numbers correlate to ticket sales.

/.tribbles.\

Silver Screen #1: Wolverine

2009-04-27T21:12:00.007-04:00

I don't watch enough TV (as I should), but even I cannot escape the bombardment that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So much that I rode like Doctor Strangelove onto the web looking for its aftermath there as well.

Flash and Movie Sites are like peas and carrots. Your usual movie net-gear here, wallpapers, some trailers, character bios. And a link to a web game...

That is one of the better ones I've seen. The game has you playing Wolverine through 4 major wars, collecting "intel" in order to open exclusive content.

I couldn't help myself, I played at least one level to see what the exclusive content was. The first one was just a trailer with scenes I hadn't seen yet. The second one was a coupon for a blowjob from Storm. I stopped there to mail it in.

What's better than a fancy web game? Two fancy web games!

The X-Men Origins facebook game asks you to create a mutant, pick powers and then challenge your friends to battle. Upgrade, battle, repeat.

This game looks good but I couldn't really find any strategy behind what moves you pick to battle your friends. Interesting for a few minutes, then it's the same grind you get out of Mob Wars and all the other games of the same type on Facebook.

With 2 web games, and a console game coming out soon, we are officially red-lining the game meter. Makes me hope the movie is interactive too.

The movie itself has 57k fans on Facebook, which is good, but pales next to the 1.6 million it has on Myspace.

/.bub.\