Hasta La Creative!

Apple filed a patent last week for a “fully fledged digital liefestyle fitness companion” reports Apple Insider (via Zeus Jones). I must admit being a regular(ish) user of Nike Plus I’ve always thought a heart rate monitor would be great (being an old fart and all). I’m not sure what some of the other monitors […]

Google Analytics have released the beta of Benchmarking reports. See the full article here. You’ll need to Opt in to share your data anonymously though, which is a fair trade.

So now you can compare your travel site with the industry average. Sadly no way to compare via country, only “Category” but it’s nice to compare. The more sites that opt in the better the results will be. Give it a few months for all the major players to opt in before you start to use the benchmarking as gospel.

This amazing cube is the first cubic interactive gaming platform in the world. In the video, one of its many games: The Fentix Cube, an emulation of the always grand Rubik’s cube.
 
Via: TrendHunter.

Posted in the category of It-Doesn’t-Need-To-Be-Done-But-When-It-Is-Done-It’s-Pretty-Damn-Cool, mega advertising conglomerate Dentsu of Japan has an interesting little SWF embedded on their website – a visually synched representation of the lifts being used in their building, shown in real-time:

Amazingly, browsing their otherwise pretty dry site, I read they service a total of six THOUSAND clients.

Widgets are big business. A recent report on Techcruch showed that 81% of the US web audience were exposed to a widget. While I doubt their metrics the fact is widgets are generating a stack load of impressions and it’s all unpaid media and most times in content or prominent positions. No one complains about “Widget blindness”.

Gigya and Clearspring are two new companies that both offer the widget creator a simple one click way of embedding your widget on the huge variety of social network sites out there. It’s the “build once” mentality and then let these companies worry about the implementation hassles. So you create your widget, add their code and then you’re ready to roll. It auto creates the jpegs for iGoogle and Facebook, users can login to many of the networks form the widget and post without leaving the site. It even imports their email contacts to make sending an email simple.

We’ve used Gigya for a little over 2 weeks now and have found it an invaluable tool.

You can also use Gigya custom reports as a replacement for Mochibot tracking (although Mochibot provides more detailed info for what we need.)

Gigya also allows you to fully style the format of the buttons and size. Although I prefer to keep it generic.

Here’s what the reports and interface for Giya looks like

Clearspring’s “Launchpad” tool looks similar and I’d say it’s worth checking out both.

Clearspring offers a page based way of embedding the Widget and also an in WIdget version. These don’t seem to have an option to style the look and feel though.

So if you’re still using a simple Youtube style of embed code text field in your widgets then do yourself a favor and check out Gigya and Clearspring.

What about poor old paid media?
Both companies will be in a position to offer ad serving through the widgets. While the better way to go is to create a branded widget that actually enhances the user’s experience there will always be money to be made from paid media. Revenue share is one way to greeze

I find it funny that both companies present themselves in a similar fashion. Way to differentiate yourselves.

Widgets Smidgets:
If Widget’s aren’t your thing but you like this idea of a one click solution for the myriad of social networks out there check out.

Addthis.com: Let’s you put one button on your site instead of the 20+ you need to hit Digg, Del.icio.us, Redit etc etc

Flux.com: A way to have your content shared across users Myspace blog, Facebook accounts etc etc

Agency Spy points to the “fascist regime” north of the border that would dare to limit Crackberry addictions among its workforce.

According to Newswire.ca, Frank Palmer, chairman and CEO of DDB Canada, has issued a new company-wide policy that discourages staff from using their PDAs and other mobile devices, like BlackBerries and cellular phones, during both client and internal meetings.

Inspired by the penalty system used in soccer games, DDB Canada staff will be issued yellow or red cards for PDA misconduct that ultimately may lighten their pocketbooks via a system of fines.

“Over the past year, I’ve become increasingly aware of and annoyed by staff who use their BlackBerries during meetings,” says Palmer. “Whether it’s done openly or covertly under the table, using a PDA during a meeting is completely unacceptable, disrespectful and hinders the progress of the meeting. While these devices are considered time-savers, they’re also extremely intrusive.”

DDB isn’t acting alone. Recently, Canada’s Department of Citizenship and Immigration banned employees from using their BlackBerries between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. in an attempt to reduce work stress.

Aaaaages ago, when the ‘pc on every desktop’ meme still had to be dreamed of and DOS wasn’t coded yet, a company named the Philco-Ford Corporation launched a pretty foreseeing prototype video of the technology they would see arrive in the homes of people. Philco-Ford was funny enough an aeronautical company, but the devices they’ve placed in the living room or in dad’s home office look a lot like the ones you’d see in the early Bond movies. Despite the age of the movie, things like online shopping, home surveillance, automated backups and online payments were already being discussed. The movie is estimated to be of 1967. Enjoy the flashback.

Video: Digital Life in 1967

via

One step better than Google Street View is EveryScape which allows users to actually go inside buildings. It’s a nice fusion of Google Street View and Google Local in a way – which I suppose is really the best way for a company to develop an idea better than a Google idea: put two of […]

I’ve seen a few campaigns that use the web and mobile interaction but none as engaging as this example. LMFM have created a site for an upcoming book 3 Para that marries film, a mobile application and a voice recognition system, so you dictate what action the soldiers take. Since I’m not in the UK […]

We’ve all seen a touch-screen. But now it’s the turn for a touch-screen scanner that, oddly enough, records the content of an object from the face that we see, not the machine. I think there must be some sort of special camera installed on the ceiling above.
 
The part with the moving mouse is specially cool.
 
Via: ComputerLove.