That Interweb

Mashup Madness. Great song+cheesy animation+overwrought singing=Internet gold. #gsdm #video #shatner #startrek

Oh my. The things people will spend their time doing. Bless them for creating gems like this. I’ve loved this William Shatner rendition of “Common People” by alt rock UK band Pulp for years. I can’t help thinking that whoever put this together had an immense amount of patience and a scary amount of animated Star Trek footage.

PS  Here's the Pulp version. I prefer Shatner. You?

Posted via email from Idea City's posterous

History of the Internet. From the idea for a global computer network to Twitter. #gsdm #internet

Via: MBA Online

I remember going into the Undergraduate Library (UGL) at UT Austin (affectionately referred to as the Ugly) in the early 90s and seeing all these weirdos typing messages into computers using a program called Eudora. I always wondered what the hell they were doing and thought Eudora was just about the stupidest name I'd ever heard. My girlfriend, now wife and not particularly tech savvy back then, tried to explain it to me as she used it to send "email" to her dad, a researcher at the Medical Center in Houston. Email? Why not just pick up the phone and talk? It sounded like a silly thing to me and I completely wrote it off as a nerd thing my girl fell into. It could have been worse I suppose. She could have fallen in with a biker gang. Or, shudder, hippies. Fast forward twenty years and we have lots of crazily named things we can't do without: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bing, eBay, Woot!, iEverything. Email is our lifeline to friends, family, the world. And places like Idea City and people like me make our living wrangling the strange forces of this "Internet" to our clients' advantage.

So thank you Mr. J.C. R. Licklider. You changed the world, gave me a job, and made me fall in love with my silly girlfriend who looked so cute trying to explain technology to me.

Posted via email from Idea City's posterous

Clippy must die! NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me goes medieval on Microsoft. #gsdm #clippy #microsoft

This bit from “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” had me in stitches. The best part is near the end and well worth the wait. Take a listen if you need a laugh on this close-to-the-end-of-summer Monday. Clippy must die!

PS: Clippy is dead.

Posted via email from Idea City's posterous

The best trailer you'll see all year. And it ain't for some stupid movie. #gsdm #crysis2

Remember when I wrote about how learning to be a good “interactive creative” meant studying the style, sound design, and storytelling of video games? Here’s your next lesson. Crysis 2. Available this Holiday Season (2010).

Posted via email from Idea City's posterous

eArchive: Pets.com, HP, Land Rover. To brand or not to brand? Maybe both?

Over the years, I’ve had countless discussions about the role of banner ads. Clients tend to lean towards treating banners as direct marketing (DM) and focus on click through rates which typically in their mind is one short hop away from a transaction. Account folks usually lean towards DM too because click through gives them a measurable result and “proof” of effectiveness and thus justification for money spent. Creatives, hell, we want to do cool stuff and that usually means branding.

But what do the only people that really count, the consumers, think? They don’t. They see no distinction between branding and direct marketing. They see annoying, flashing things next to the scandalous pictures of the latest pop starlet they’re viewing on Perez Hilton. That is, if they see them at all. Those pop starlet pics can be pretty mesmerizing.

The truth is, there’s room in the world of banners for both branding and DM—sometimes even in the same banner.

2001 Bronze Award
Client Pets.com
Agency Lot21, Inc. / CA
Art Director Brian Tsang
Writer Dan Tamura

This 2001 One Show Interactive Bronze winning banner campaign from Pets.com is a great extension of the brand. It’s got the same voice, the same irreverent humor, the puppet, and it even has a little DM DNA too in that each banner pushes a product. Sure these banners break the basic rule of “don’t do printigration” (print ads disguised as banner ads) but here it seems to work. Probably because of the puppet (may he rest in peace).
 

2001 Gold Award
Client Hewlett-Packard
Agency Freestyle Interactive & Goodby Silverstein and Partners / CA
Art Director Regan Honda, Mike Yapp, Jeff Benjamin, Rick Casteel
Creative Director Mike Yapp, Steve Simpson
Designer Freestyle Interactive
Information Architect Freestyle Interactive
Photo Illustrator Freestyle Interactive
Producer Kim Askew
Production Company Freestyle Interactive
Programmer Freestyle Interactive
Writer John Mateejczyk

These Hewlett-Packard banners, 2001 Gold winners, are all brand and I can imagine fun to play with. They actually let the users “experience” the brand by bringing the “Invent” tagline to life by literally letting them invent. Brilliant.
 

2001 Silver Award
Client Land Rover
Agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg /
Art Director Philip Ireland
Creative Director Philip Ireland
Designer Walter Jones
Production Company TBWA Digerati
Programmer Jaco Gerber
Writer Tony Granger

This 2001 Silver winner from Land Rover uses great animation to get noticed. Then when the user absorbs the image and see what just happened, they’re amused by the playful idea that drives home the brand message of Land Rover as a utility vehicle that stops for nothing. Great branding experience. The one thing I’d do differently is add a “replay” button so anyone that missed the animation could watch it again.

So, to brand or not to brand? Yes, brand. Please. It can be highly engaging and very fun. We can always do some DM banners tomorrow.

The Internet? I think it's just a fad. #gsdm #internet #newsweek

Wonder what's it's like to be the guy that wrote this article in Newsweek back in 1995:

“The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper…”

“…Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

“Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.”

“Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”

“Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee.”

And the ultimate irony of this ancient article is that can be found, wait for it, online. Ah the good old days. Can’t really say I blame the guy. I was there myself not too long ago. The lesson to be learned here is that judging the world by yesterdays knowledge makes you look pretty silly when you get left in the dust. Just ask Ptolemy.

NOTE: I’ve been crazy busy. This is a post I wrote a while back for my personal blog and I’m regifting it to you now. eArchive will return next week, time permitting.

Posted via email from Idea City's posterous