Ukoko

Diesel have been running this international, giant sized art competition for 5 years. The premise is simple: Paint, draw, photograph or design something to go on a really big wall. The results are then displayed, on location in fantastic places from Barcelona to New York….. and it’s finally come to the UK, specifically Urbis in Manchester.

I must admit I’m a bit disappointed by the choice of location. This isn’t because I’m a soft southern bastard and would’ve prefered a London location - although I am and I would have - but because they’ve chosen some unusual building shapes and striking urban environments in the past which gave a real sense of dressing a space. With Urbis, you get a rectangle on the side of an exhibition centre that’s not especially dissimilar to a standard advertising hoarding and you can’t help feeling it’s going to look like an advert whatever you do. Still, creativity likes nothing more than something firm to push against, it’s a great brief and opportunity to show off your work and ideas.

More info on the links below

http://www.diesel.com/cult/wall/manchester/

Manchester Deadline: 18th May 2008
Exhibit: June 12th - July 20th
Canvas Size:29×18m

Just watched a wonderful, refreshing, down to earth presentation by David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals‘ - the people who brought us Basecamp, BackPack, Highrise and that awesome Omnicom spoof site back in the nineties and one of the people behind Ruby on Rails.

As someone brought-up in Essex with a family in the second-hand car trade, my idea of business has always been at odds with the VC backed, buzzword driven valuations   (I mean how can Twitter be worth 75 million USD) and we all have a friend trying to create the next myspace or youtube and giving it away for free ;), this presentation on good business sense is like an affordable photo on GettyImages, a rare and precious thing.

There are no secrets in it, you don’t need to buy the book or subscribe to the service and, in fact, you won’t learn anything that good old common sense won’t tell you. It’s just clear, simple, straightforward old-skool business talk, updated for the digital age. Genius.

Startup School 08

Just discovered the awesome WPhone, a plug-in for WordPress which formats your admin nicely on iPhone/iPod Touch. Haven’t given it the full run through yet but seems to have solved a few Ajax hassles I had. Given the sudden rise to dominance of the iPhone as a mobile browser (number 1 in US, number 2 in UK) it’s an excellent complement to ContentRobot’s iWPhone plug-in, which displays the public side of my WordPress blog neatly in an iPhone stylee.

So the “Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations” comes into effect in May 2008. For those of us even remotely involved in the creation and practice of buzz marketing, word of mouth and some aspect of Viral marketing, it could start flashing warning lights and we should probably all read-up on the new laws coming-in next month.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising is warning that this law represents greater restrictions on commercial communication via the internet, social networking and word of mouth communications. In some cases, such as Seeding viral ads on the internet without clearly stating you are a representative of the brand, it could spell trouble.

Now, while this has the best of intentions and really should be a good thing, it does make it hard for some of the more original areas Viral marketing to get going. Take , for example, the viral and extended reality concept behind the new Batman campaign:
http://ibelieveinharveydent.com

Is that clearly related the new film? How about the site at:
http://www.ncc-1701.com

Is that obviously a film site for the new Star Trek movie? Or is the latest Lost viral, another from the JJ Abrams camp, which uses an unfolding narrative to told a backstory in the run-up to the new series of Lost
http://www.find815.com

These may not be breaking the law, because they aren’t UK based, but it might prevent us UK based folk from using the same kind of engaging and creative narratives in future if we have to explain the punchline upfront. None of these are harming anyone. In fact part of the fun and engagement factor of these is *being-in-the-know*. People join-up to be one of the select few, the insiders, the ones who actually went out and campaigned in Seattle, Denver, and all over the US for Harvey Dent, a fictional character - and possibly made an ironic and important political statement at the same time. I’m not convinced it would happen if it had Batman logos all over it.

You can get the IPA’s take at:
http://www.ipa.co.uk/news/news_archive/displayitem.cfm?ItemID=2237

At Do Tank we pride ourselves on the creation of innovative and intelligent examples of digital media and, as a digital creative agency, we like to put these examples to good use. So we were massively chuffed when “White Noise“, an interactive TV application we developed for innovative Dutch broadcaster 3Voor12 won a presitigious Spin Award (the Dutch equivalent of a BAFTA) this week.

The application is a next-generation mash-up that picks-up the keywords that iTV viewers send to the TV, runs them through Flickr and broadcasts the resulting images synchronised to a Dave Clarke DJ set. We’d call it VJ2.0 but we already did one of those a few years back with a bluetooth app for clubs.

Do Tank are currently working on the next, extended and improved version of WhiteNoise ready to launch early summer.

The judges’ report ( translation stolen from Patrick Rushton’s blog! ) reads “A silver SpinAward goes to VPRO and Chellomedia for Whitenoise. Within the 3VOOR12 brand, VPRO and Chellomedia have pioneered development of interactive applications on digital television, and Whitenoise is the next step. The Whitenoise concept brings together television, interactivity and internet. Via the remote control, the user chooses search keywords from the popular internet site Flickr. The result goes further than polls or voting and the collaborative creation is a true innovation on television and is therefore worthy of a SpinAward.”
http://www.spinawards.nl/

While trying to track down a particular game for a project I have in mind, I found this from Finnish developer Petri Purho - but the site has gone down. For one year Petro a grand plan: to create games in 7 days (12 in a year) and it produced one of the simplest and most beautiful games I’ve ever seen - Crayon Physics Deluxe - reminiscent of the complex mousetrap like drawings some of us drew as kids.

Petro’s tenet that all games should be made “within a 7-day limit, …. made by me alone and test some new form of gameplay” might not be everyone’s cup of salmiakki but it seems to have produced some fantastic results, earned him the respect of his peers and got him nominated for numerous awards - I just wish I could find the games now!

Jaarko Laine did a short interview with Petri Purho in 2007 which gives more detail but the relevant links from there are dead now. Pixelrage a download link, but as I’m Mac based, I’ll have to wait till I’m back in the studio and can borrow a PC to have a go.

Oh well, I’ll have to make do with the highly addictive flash games at the Science Museum’s Launchball site, part of thier Launchpad section, and made by the folks at Preloaded