[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=nl&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

The TV Ad complimented the web aspect, but was really only a teaser for the full clip, which required user interaction.

Recently in The Netherlands, this trend has continued with, an equally amazing performance in Antwerp.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=nl&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Our view? Events like this are great for exposure and creating buzz but also deliver some great branded content. Here at Neoco, we love events like this, and being specialists in Social Media we can help make them happen – giving your audience a new reason to talk about and engage with your brand.

My colleague pointed out some interesting websites to me that she wanted a designers’ perspective on. No point just keeping this to ourselves so here’s what I thought about the most relevant ones. There’s so many sites these days that are trying too hard and failing and so many that ignore aesthetic design all together – it’s always a discussion point in the office. Most of the following is subjective but it’s a more than educated opinion and if you disagree go ahead and tell me why…

This promotional Panasonic website is based on their philosophy that “everything matters.” It uses a very creative approach to a potentially boring subject matter. There’s loads of experiencial user involvement – very slick and well designed. The amount of exploration needed to find information may put some people off, but then that’s not the point – its all about interacting with the site as a whole rather than clicking through to read a load of boring blurb about the latest camera. Every detail seems very considered, and every link brings you to a slightly different experience.

This site from Belgian web designers is essentially a flash-heavy portfolio site. The design creates a clear brand identity using lovely typography. Full screen imagery is also a nice touch. I personally like how minimal and easily usable it is. The direct links to their work online gives them a very open feel – there’s no dicking about with thumbnails and pretty pictures, its real balls on the table. Call me boring and old fashioned though, but it would be nice to see some sort of snap shot of their work in one place rather than going to the effort of clicking around endlessly.

The next site is for the Museum Of Modern Art’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. It’s very different to what I expected – modern art connotes minimalism in my book. That isn’t to say its ugly – it seems very unique and different. However like so much modern art it’s a case of form over function. Does it please the eye? Yes. But practically how am I supposed to find the information I’m looking for? The lack of navigation means I need to scroll across and down the page – which is unnecessarily long and wide – squinting at semi-transparent fonts that seem a couple of point sizes to small for screen legibility. It’s a very print based approach. I’m sure it would make an amazing poster, but its an impractical website.

Type Tester does what it says on the tin. It’s a useful tool, for designers, by designers. It lets you see how text appears on screen with a lot of control over the settings – something you don’t see on other font sites. The addition of a ’safe list’ of web fonts is a nice touch. What else to say really? Looks pretty and does the job.

I like this website, it’s the most straightforward one of the bunch, and from a user perspective possibly the most ‘expected.’ Everything’s in the normal place you’d expect to find it, it’s all quite conventional and usable which means I can get the gist of the company in a hurry with no messing around. And it looks pretty. The only thing I’d say is that it seems like an overuse of Flash for a simple site that could have easily been built in html to a greater effect. There’s an awful lot of type on here that’s getting them zero SEO.

Neoco Sketch

I recently stumbed upon a site that does one simple job – it takes an image and then produces a representation of this image by simply writing words on a page. My explanation is clearly rubbish, so here’s what it does, straight from the horses mouth:

Textorizer takes a raster image in a format such as png, jpeg or gif, detects edges using a Sobel convolution filter and replaces them with supplied lines of text.

You can click here to see my “textorized” version of one of LB’s Neoco sketches.

The output of this process is an SVG XML file – where SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics (click here for more details from Wikipedia). In terms of the usefulness of this process, I will say what I said to eveyone in the office – usefulness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I think it’s useful. Kind of!

http://textorizer.whatfettle.com/

TokBox, the web-based video chat tool is bringing video chat to Facebook via their TokBox Facebook application. TokBox’s current app is just like any other chat facility, but their new functionality takes them into a new league – enabling users to have a video chat within their Facebook chat.

TokBox’s web-based platform is a Flash-enabled browser plugin. It makes the video chat process really easy to use – there are not downloads or any difficult setups – as long as you have a working webcam or computer microphone, you are ready to go…

You just need to install the TokBox plugin for Facebook (which is only supported for Firefox at the moment). Underneath each of your friends’ names there will be a link which will give you the option to start a video chat with them. Then you just need to tell the app that you allow access to the webcam, and you’re off. As with all TokBox video chat conversations, you’ll see your screen on the left, and the screen of your friend on the right (so it will look like below…)

TokBox also allows you hold multiple video chats at once, with each chat in its own window (like standards chats).

“Just in case you think Adobe’s Flash Player (which powers YouTube and an enormous number of other sites) isn’t ubiquitous enough, Adobe is pushing for even greater adoption from developers and designers. Through an initiative the company is calling the Open Screen Project, Adobe will lift a number of restrictions on Flash in the hopes creating even greater usage, especially on web-enabled devices.”

Read the full article here.

According to WSJ, Adobe are going to develop Flash for the iPhone. And they’re not just going to use the existing Flash Lite – they’re going to develop a new version (or tweak the existing one) especially for the iPhone.

Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen had said: “We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone…We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

It seems Adobe’s on a roll. First, they signed a deal with Microsoft, who licensed Flash for Windows Mobile-sporting phones. Then, they posted fantastic financial results for the year. And now, they’re probably going to conquer this last, crucially significant, corner of the smartphone market.