P=Pretty. The flames are pretty. They make the school look nice. They make all the hurt go away.
We are having a lot of fun reading the MyFirstDictionary blog. Go and do the same!
Filed under: Design | Tags: butchers, cartoon characters, cool, Design, fun, Korea, Korean art, KT3, New Malden, retail, shop, shutters
Yes, it really is 4:30am – benefits of faulty burglar alarm and baby son… I’m out on a run and it seems that our local Korean butcher has updated their shop shutters. I just loved these too much not blog them!
Happy as a Pig in... a butchers!
Take a butcher's at these!
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Coffee Break, Cool & Online | Tags: clubman, fun, mini, my other car is a batmobile, viral
new mini clubman - check out the viral
New viral launches for Mini which is a parody of all things viral. It’s small and fun but well worth a look – just like Mini!
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: adverblog, build world, but is is second life?, comcast, comcast town, cool, dream big, fun, god, goodby silverstein and partners, habbo hotel, nexus productions, sim, triple play
I think one of the brands that uses interactive in a really wise way lately is Comcast. The awareness they’ve gotten since their 2005 fantastic Comcastic (not online anymore?) and other pieces like Tripleslanguage has made the brand being known even in places where Comcast services are not available, so i’m always kind of expectant what they will be releasing next.
Comcast world
These days, and again done by Goodby Silverstein and Partners, working together with Nexus Productions, there is a new campaign called Dream Big. Presenting a fantastic website using a look-alike of isometric view Sims-style games, you can join the so-called Comcast Town, choose a neighborhood and then build your own space, using the capabilities of the Triple Play feature (tv, phone, internet) and inserting the product in a really smart way inside the experience.
Comcast empty
Also i liked very much the way in which user interacts with others in the website and also through social networks like Facebook making a good use of Facebook Connect to get users logged onto the site, and doing it in a way that really makes it not so disruptive as i once wrote.
I won’t extend very much, just visit the site and discover it because it’s worth a good time spent on it. I found that there’s also some TV commercials:
*Credit to Adverblog for blog content
Filed under: New Technology, Ping.fm update by Neoco, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth, research | Tags: activity, fun, grader, interesting, Japan, ranking, score, technorati, tweets, Twitter, USA
Twitter Grader logo
http://ping.fm/URbiG is a nice tool that grades your Twitter account based on users, activity, etc. Think Technorati for tweets!
Check out your own or well known tweeters and see how they score: http://ping.fm/t1P52 – not to make too big a thing of the fact Neoco tweets score 90 out of 100 (up from 89 just 2 days ago)!
You can also check out the Twitter elite (http://ping.fm/TAlgctop/countries) for some interesting stats – like Japan being almost 10 points clear of the USA for quality!
Filed under: Coffee Break, Cool & Online | Tags: Aldridge, Bronson, cancer, Chaplin, charity, chuckle brothers, Dali, Einstein, everyman, Flanders, fun, hitler, Hogan, Hussein, Kitchener, Lawrenson, Marx, mercury, Nietzsche, Seaman, selleck, tache, Thorburn
Every September, thousands of men neglect their upper-lip and grow a sponsored moustache to raise vital funds for Everyman – the UK’s leading Male Cancer Campaign.
- Tom Selleck
About Male Cancer
The incidence of male cancer is rising rapidly, yet we still do not know why. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men the UK, with over 32,000 cases diagnosed each year and one man an hour dying from the disease. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in younger men aged 15-45. Despite this, research into male cancer is severely under-funded and all money raised through TacheBack will help fund vital research at our Everyman Centre, Europe’s only research centre dedicated to male cancer.
This September I shall be doing my bit by taking part in the Tacheback ‘Tache Warriors’ campaign. Check out my page at Macho Man Randy Alex, sponsor me some money and vote for me in “The Arena”, it’s all for a good cause, and don’t forget to check back for regular picture updates to see how i’m getting on.
Add some comments to this post if you think that Benn should get invloved!
Filed under: Cool & Online, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: Big Ben, browse, cool websites, Flickr, fun, london, Londoner, Lost in Space, my view from space, photo, planets, Search, space, stumble, tag cloud, Tag Galaxy, tagging, universe, visit Earth, waste time
The universe according to a true Londoner
Well, rather lost in Galaxy. A Tag Galaxy to be more specific. A nice new Flickr search tool from some German developers. A simple interface belies an engrossing site and slick animation touches that will have you hooked for some time.
Start by entering a tag for Flickr – being a Londoner my imagination stretched as far as ‘London’.
You can then zoom in to London or choose a ’satellite’ tag. Big Ben was my next obvious choice (my name being Benn, of course). The camera pans through space and shows the combined tag cloud.
Big Ben is my stage name...
The nice thing here is that planets are positioned based on the amount of relevant links they have. They also orbit your central tag. It’s all very pretty. You can go further by clicking a planet. Clicking the central planet produces a flat render of the planet and then the images start to appear in a quite majestic/ Matrix way…
What Big Ben looks like without any clothes
The photos are coming...
... like flies around (ahem).
The transformation is complete.
Then you just browse around the globe to find the image you want and zoom in – you can even go to the Flickr page.
corny Big Ben image
OK, so you can search on Flickr just as easily and a lot faster but who cares. This is a much more immersive and fun way of doing things and if you have the time to play and search for images then why not? You’ll soon find you’ll be clicking on planets, spinning them, rotating them on their axis, and thumbing through all the images contained inside. I wonder if they do an API of this? I feel a widget coming on…
Filed under: Coffee Break, Industry news | Tags: AOL, dirty secrets, fun, Google, gossip, internet rumors, love affairs, micro-hoo!, Microhoo, Microsoft, MySpace, soap opera, speculation, web, Yahoo!
As Microsoft and Yahoo! look to merge, this is turning in to a real soap opera…
Microsoft & Google actually fancy each other; Microsoft loves Googles youthful energy and dynamic rise to wealth and Google loves the established, ‘old school’ power of Microsoft… but it’s a forbidden love. They can never be together, which drives them crazy and makes them want to constantly hurt and out do each other.
In the latest ’series’ of their forbidden love, they pull Yahoo! in to their destructive love-hate relationship…
Microsoft has a one night stand with Yahoo! and then proposes, though not because Microsoft actually fancies Yahoo! – it’s more to get Google’s attention! Something about hurting the ones you love.
Ironically, Yahoo! doesn’t want to marry Microsoft either, but she realises that she’s at a stage in her life where her looks have long faded and her living expenses are a bit higher than her income. Whilst popular, she may not get the chance to bag another rich suitor like Microsoft… but she could hold out to find someone who loves her for who she is. Dilemma.
Yahoo! is unsure about Microsoft’s proposal and decides to think about it, but Microsoft is used to getting any girl he wants and this ‘playing hard to get act’ is something he’s seen many times before. Normally Microsoft would just flash some more bling and the girl would get in the car, but this time, Microsoft feels he’s already flashed enough to Yahoo! so he just goes for the affirmative act of ordering Yahoo! to get in the car. Yahoo! runs crying in to the night…
Confused and upset, Yahoo! seeks solace in the arms of other men. The first to hear about her vulnerability is MySpace who decides to take the opportunity to have a quickie with her (because he’s that kind of guy), but in the morning Yahoo! is back out in the cold. Now she’s feeling really dirty, who should come along but Google. Google knows the situation and wants to get back at Microsoft for hurting him with the initial Yahoo! proposal. Google tells Yahoo! what she wants to hear. Google will love her for who she is and promises to share everything with her – unlike Microsoft. But Google wants to take things slowly, one step at a time. This way Google can really get back at Microsoft without never really needing to commit to Yahoo! (as soon as Microsoft has had enough and the proposal is withdrawn, Google will drop Yahoo! like a sack of potatoes).
Poor Yahoo!. She may be desperate but she’s not stupid. She knows she can’t marry Microsoft or Google as her parents would never approve. So Yahoo! agrees to Google’s ’slowly, slowly’ relationship as rumours surface of stolen kisses with other lovers, notably AOL…
Will Yahoo! actually marry anyone?
Will Yahoo! come home from work early to find Microsoft and Google in bed together?
Does anyone still care who AOL sleeps with?
Will MySpace ever clean up it’s act?
Tune in next week (at this rate) for the next thrilling installment of the MicroHoo! soap opera.
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Coffee Break, Cool & Online | Tags: cadburys, chocolate, creme egg, fun, microsite, viral
Huzzah! Its that time of year again (y’know, that narrow margin between January and November) when the all that familiar chocolate covered loveliness hits your local news stand. Yep, its creme egg season once again. And if, like the rest of us at the office, you need your daily fix of the aforementioned-tooth-melting-goodness, what better site to check out than cremeegg.co.uk
This somewhat bizarre site investigates the psychology of the humble creme egg, helping them to embrace their mortality and release their inner goo. There’s a lot to explore here, and if you’re anything like me the frustratingly ambiguous navigation will leave you clicking around for a while before you find the ‘free chocolate section’ (having done the hard work, I can report that is under ‘competitiveness’). However, I love the thought that’s gone into designing each section in a different part of the lab, and the cleanness of the page is refreshing, since all the navigation works from a pull down map. There’s also a lot to catch your attention in each area, with as much detail going into background shenanigans as the foreground elements.
Having said this, I can’t help but feel Cadburys have missed a trick by not enabling any real user involvement or content. The best part of the site by far are the stop-frame animated creme egg ‘deaths,’ which, despite not being particularly original (I refer of course to similar bunny related escapades) nonetheless warrant a good laugh and would have been a great gateway for user content. Suicide jokes…always funny. If you’ve missed them on TV up until now, it’s well worth a look.
