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Blink-182 Taps YouTube Fan Clips For New Video

August 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Blink 182Blink-182 hasn’t released an album in nearly 8 years, and for some folks that’s just fine. Judgmental rock-snob comments aside, the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker are back after a few years of side projects, reality shows and near-death experiences, and they’re set to release a new album entitled Neighborhoods.

For the video of the album’s first single ‘Up All Night‘ the band (with some help from AT&T) searched for fan videos on YouTube that had used their music without permission. They cheekily-titled the project ‘The Blink-182 Film Festival You Didn’t Know You Entered’, and edited together dozens of clips from the 170,000 results.

I’m not ambitious enough to start digging through YouTube’s Terms of Service, but I’m not sure Blink-182 can technically use the video clips for promoting their new album either. I’m sure someone got YouTube’s permission. For now, let’s tack it up to a little tit-for-tat between the band and it’s fans.

If you’d like to watch the original fan-made videos, click on the Blink-182 logo that appears as Tom & Mark read out the names of the selected videos.

As part of their partnership Blink-182 is also appearing in ads for AT&T’s HTC Status where they glow like smurfs mimicking the blue glow of the phone.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Music Tagged With: , ,

Use Your Head (Literally) to Navigate Interactive Hugo Boss Video

July 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Hugo Boss YouTube Just DifferentAfter a few minutes watching the Hugo Boss ‘Just Different’ Interactive YouTube experience I’m still not sure what exactly is going on and I have a pain in my neck.

I’m not kidding about that pain in the neck. The interactive movie makes use of your webcam to track your head movements to navigate between the three different versions of the video. Various elements fade in and out as you tilt your head back and forth.

What’s it all about? The interactive YouTube experience is promoting their new Hugo Just Different fragrance. The video itself shows male models in sharp looking suits delivering red suitcases to a secret destination.

Watch the experience now on the HUGOBOSSTV channel on YouTube.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture Tagged With: , ,

Intel & Toshiba present ‘Inside’, A Social Film Experience

July 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Intel & Toshiba present Inside
‘Inside‘, an ambitious interactive film project sponsored by Intel and Toshiba, featuring director D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) and starring Emmy Rossum (of HBO’s Shameless) launched yesterday with it’s first installment. The first clip opens with Rossum’s character Christina waking up in a strange sealed-off room. Within that room is a Intel-powered Toshiba laptop (not surprising) with intermittent access to an untraceable web connection.

Eventually Christina uses the shiny new laptop and dicey connection to ask for help from her friends through her Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts. Viewers are invited to help Christina solve the clues to her location and the reason she’s been confined to the room. The contributions of viewers that best fit the storyline will be included in upcoming installments and will help shape events within the series.

On the first day, Christina’s Facebook wall featured posts from dozens of viewers as they debated the significance of a receipt and torn pieces of a Chinese food menu. One interesting clue came from a closeup of a piece of torn wallpaper featuring the name of the manufacturer. That clue led to the Acorn Wallpaper Company website, where viewers learned that these were Chinese-made wallpapers that were only imported through Los Angeles. Was this a clue to Christina’s location?

Viewers could also get involved as actors. An open-casting call ran from July 11-20 inviting viewers to audition via their webcam. The selected viewer will be featured as a character in a future installment. The Producers have made a good effort to keep the the production’s website and social accounts separate from those of the main character. Keeping the fourth wall intact even on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can be a challenge especially with the character responding to viewers.

You can catch find links to all the clips and accounts at The Inside Experience, as well The Rules of Inside on Facebook.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture, Experiential, Film Tagged With: , ,

Google’s Street View Icon Celebrates First-Day of Same-Sex Marriage in New York State

July 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Google Street View Icon Celebrates First-Day of Same-Sex Marriage in New York State

Today is the first day that same-sex marriage has become legal in New York State. If you’ve been looking around on Google Street View today anywhere in New York State I hope you noticed the Pegman waving his rainbow flag with pride.

New York is the sixth state to make same-sex marriage legal. The others are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.

Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: , ,

Exploring the Cosmos With Bjork’s Biophilia App

July 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Bjork - BiophiliaWhether you enjoy Bjork’s music or not, you do have to appreciate her creative ambitions and refusal to follow the tried and true. And please shut the hell up about the swan dress, that was nearly 10 years ago. Musically though, I’m still partial to Bjork’s earlier solo albums like Post and Homogenic and Vespertine, but her more recent experimental projects like Medúlla and Volta still hold a spot in my music library.

Back in June I posted that Bjork was set to release her new project, album, collection (what the heck do you call these things anyway?) Biophilia as 10 iPad apps within a mother app.

On June 19, the Biophilia mother app was released in the App Store. The opening interface works as a 3-dimensional view of the a Bjork cosmos. Each of the 10 tracks appears within that cosmos and can be found by swiping and rotating the 3D constellations.

The Biophilia app can be downloaded for free and comes with the ‘Cosmogong’ installed. The app features an animated introduction to the concept of Biophilia featuring the voice of David Attenborough. This track explores creation myths and explains that the big bang theory may be this civilization’s creation story. This might be more fun if you could dance to it.

Previews of the track Crystalline have been played on the web for a few weeks now, and now it appears here as the first app/track for in-app purchase. Crystalline can be played as a scrolling interactive stream or as a game, collecting crystals as the user navigates through 3D tunnels by tilting the iPad.

It should be interesting to see the creativity that Bjork and her creative team explore in the other 8 apps. If you’re a Bjork fan without an iPad, don’t fret. The songs will be released as a traditional digital and physical album on September 27th.

The Biophilia app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App store, each of the tracks, or individual apps can be downloaded for $1.99 as they become available.

Biophilia was designed by MSM (Paris) and produced and engineered by Scott Snibbe Studio.

Filed Under: Art & Design, Digital Culture, Music, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Would You Live at Vancouver Airport for 80 Days?

July 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Live at Vancouver Airport for 80 DaysThe majority of people would do what ever they can to get in and out of airport as fast as possible, but to celebrate it’s 80th Anniversary, Vancouver Airport is looking for someone to live there for 80 days and share the stories of the airport with the world.

The submission round has just wrapped up with (I count) 96 video entries on the Live@YVR contest website. The Vancouver Airport Authority judges will select a group of finalists for a public voting period beginning on July 25 and ending August 5.

The winner will begin their 80 day adventure on August 17 and remain there til November 4, but don’t think that the winner will be sleeping under benches in the departure lounge. They’ll have their own room at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel, and meals provided by YVR food retailers. They’ll also be allowed to spend time outdoors enjoying the walking trails around Sea Island.

The airport will provide a mobile phone, data plan, video camera and editing equipment and a $15,000 honorarium at the end of the 80 days.

This is a very entertaining concept to celebrate Vancouver Airport’s 80th birthday, I’m looking forward to the stories.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture Tagged With: , , , ,

Spotify Finally Set to Launch in the US (but not Canada)

July 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Spotify in the USUS music fans are finally set to get their crack at using Spotify tomorrow. The launch has been rumoured as far back as two years ago when I was first granted a handful of press invites for myself and my music fan friends. Over that time we’ve run the desktop version through its paces, accessing the expansive library, creating shared playlists and providing the block rockin’ beats for two raucous Delvinia holiday parties.

According to an article published todays on GigaOm, Spotify will be offered in the U.S. in three subscription models: A free ad-supported service, a basic $5 per month subscription, and a premium subscription service for $10 a month which allows access via a mobile app, higher audio quality and access to exclusive content. You can head over to the landing page now and signup for an invite for Spotify as soon as it becomes available.

In the two and a half years since Spotify first launched in October 2008, several other competitors have emerged in the US such as Rdio and MOG, and services such as Last.fm, Grooveshark and Pandora have established themselves. Is there room left for another music service amongst music fans, or is Spotify simply a tech curiousity?

Below are a few screenshots of the Spotify application.

What’s New: this is the home screen showing which new albums or tracks have been recently added to the service, as well as a feed of news. This view also hosts popular playlists and a Feed of music that has been played by a user’s friends recently.

Radio View: Similar to Pandora, the radio functions allow a user to create a stream based on genres and decades.

Album View / Playlist View: Shuffle and repeat are available at the bottom of the screen as well as the audio controls. Tracks can be selected for a new playlist or dragged to an existing ones. Right clicking allows a user to grab the HTTP link, Spotify URI or simply share the track with another Spotify user.

Local Files: A user can mix and match your own locally stored music files with tracks from Spotify to create playlists.

Spotify Screenshots

Now, what’s this thing about not coming to Canada?

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Music, Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mosquito Report App Gives Swedes the Latest Buzz on the Outdoors

July 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Thermocell - Swedish Mosquito ReportIf there’s one thing that Canada and Sweden share besides short summers, it’s the bugs especially mosquitoes. Who hasn’t come back from a picnic, camping trip or even an evening on the back deck covered with legs and arms covered in itchy mosquito bites. Wouldn’t it be great to know what the mosquito conditions are before you head out.

In Sweden, Thermacell, a maker of mosquito repellent devices may have a solution with their Myggrapporten (Mosquito Report) iPhone app. Users of the app can report the mosquito conditions at their location, helping others who will be visiting that spot help prepare.

The app is ready to make recommendations about the type of mosquito repellent device that will help with the reported conditions. It quickly became one of the most popular apps in the Swedish Appstore.

This app is only a hint at what we see in the next few years with users reporting weather, traffic (or mosquito) conditions at their present location. Sensors that attach, plugin or are built-in to mobile devices will make self-reporting easier.

The app was created by Stockholm agency Deportivo.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture, Mobile Tagged With: , ,

Incredible Numbers from 60 Seconds of the Internet

June 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In 60 seconds on the Internet

We all know that the Internet is a essential part of our everyday lives. It’s where we work, where we play and how we stay-in-touch and share information with our family and friends. This infographic from GoGulf.com illustrates just how incredible the numbers are when you break them down to just 60 seconds.

For example in the last minute:

  • 600 new videos were added to YouTube
  • 13,000+ iPhone applications were downloaded
  • 20,000+ news posts were added to Tumblr
  • 98,000 new Tweets were posted
  • 6,600+ news pictures were uploaded to Flickr
  • 695,000+ Facebook status updates were added

Can you imagine your daily life without the Internet?

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Social Media

SocialGuide is Your Social Media-fueled TV Guide

June 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Social Guide iPhone App

It should come as no shock to anyone who watches live TV events such as the The Oscars or weekly shows like Glee or Mad Men, that viewers are using both the internet and the TV at the same time. Increasingly that internet time is being taken over by mobile devices (smartphones & tablets) rather than a traditional computer.

Neilson and Yahoo revealed that 86% of mobile phone users use the internet on their device while watching TV. Of those people, 33% were using mobile apps, 37% were browsing the internet and 40% were interacting with their friends on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Checking-in on TV shows

Applications such as GetGlue, Miso and Into_Now have been launched to allow users to ‘check-in’ to TV shows in the same way that they can check-in to real-world venues using Foursquare or Gowalla.

One of the latest apps to cater to these Internet/TV multi-taskers is Social Guide, recently included in Time Inc.’s 10 NYC Startups to Watch.

How SocialGuide Works

Unlike the other media check-in apps listed above, SocialGuide works like a Social Media- fueled TV Guide. Like any interactive TV Guide it first identifies your local cable company. (The application is US-only, so I used DISH Buffalo as my default).

Users can choose to view all shows in each time period or filter them by Regular Series, Reality, Movies, Sports and News. The shows are listed in order by how many mentions are being shared through Twitter and Facebook (I only saw Twitter posts in my time using the app). All the tweets mentioning the show are visible in the default view, or they can be further filtered by Friends and tweets by the Cast.

If you are just interested in which shows are being discussed the most, then SocialGuide will help you out. It’s amazing (maybe shocking) to see just how many people are posting comments on a Sunday morning while watching Spongebob Squarepants, iCarly or Yes to the Dress.

SocialGuide is available for iPhone and Android.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Mobile, Social Media, Television Tagged With: , , , , ,