Ukoko

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/

With recomendation and shared bookmarks like stumbleupon and ffffound! and listings sites from the dreamer to phirebrush all vying to fulfill our every spare desire for inspiring design and interaction, it’s easy to forget the gems that turn up when you step outside and just look in the local charity shop. This guy found box of 35mm slides of old advertising posters from the fifties and sixties and took the time to scan and share them on flickr. Glorious.

FFFFOUND! is like having a mate who sends you amazing, interesting & inspiring images. Hundreds of them. Every day. And, if you’re an aesthetic ephemera junky like me, you probably can’t get enough of it either.

Basically it’s an image-bookmarking service that allows users to post and share their found images and it dynamically recommends others to tickle your fancy. The “everyone” feed is a cornucopia of eye-candy from FFFFOUND! and enough to trigger a good hour or so wasted a day.

Currently invite only, but you can still get the public feed.

FFFFOUND.com

Year of the rat! Taking the little-one down to Trafalgar Square for some dragon dancing and dim sum.

And those are Reebok Year of the Rat Omni Lites in the pic. Random. Yeah.

You’d have to be living in box not have noticed Producer/Director JJ Abrams viral campaign surrounding Cloverfield. Slusho, a recurring meme in Abram’s projects, has made cameo appearances in Alias and Heroes and one viral site for Cloverfield for a bit of cross-fertislisation so he’s not just limiting it to the web. The TV show Lost (an Abrams production) also had a sucessful extended reality called The Lost Experience and, in the run up to next series of Lost, there is currently is another campaign called Find 815.

Now it seems he’s at it again with the launch of the teaser for upcoming Star Trek film. Apparently starring Chris Pine in the James T Kirk role, the teaser can be seen on the official website but if you scroll down to the “Under Construction” banner there’s a small red dot. Click it to go through to another viral website and watch the “live” video stream from the construction site of the Enterprise NCC-1701 (under construction, get it? I’m here all week, folks).

So what else might be in store for the long run up to Star Trek movie’s release? It’s certainly an audience up for another extended experience or alternate reality game and Abrams certainly earned the title of a master at exploiting cross-media to tantalise and tease his audience. We have nearly a whole year of waiting to find out.

Do Tank Digital Creative Agency created an interactive TV mash-up for Dutch TV channel 3Voor12’s weekly White Noise music show. The iTV show features a DJ set from Dave Clarke where the audience are given the ability to become the VJ by pulling user-generated images from Flickr. Our Flash-based iTV application spools the images and plays them back, synched in time with the music. It rocks, seriously.

Watch 3Voor12 on YouTube