Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Jumper
The sections are typical for the most part. The mythology section does a nice job explaining the concept of the film a bit deeper, but only after you figure out which paper on the wall is click-able. The case history and jumper files are interesting but rather poorly executed. It uses the common legal papers from a file folder but lacks the ability to read anything but the top pages. Making it impossible and frustrating to read the articles and evidence in these folders. As a visitor I really wanted to explore these documents and read them but the site denies this desire. Also I have to add the sound design is rather monotonous. Every item when you roll over has the same sound and someone needs to fix the ambient loop, it times out too frequently. I would have preferred a much more subtle sound effect for the items and menu.
Overall a site for a really cool movie that could be made into a much cooler site, its still early as the movie is about 4 months away so I will check back and see if they are updates.
Rating : 5
http://www.jumperthemovie.com/
Thursday, October 18, 2007
"I Am Legend" inspires iPhone campaign
First off seems you can only visit the site on an iPhone, tried my blackjack, no go, matter of fact I got a 404, since it ran a script and determined my phone wasn't an iPhone. Not so smart. They should at least offer a synopsis. Just for fun I plugged in the iPhone site URL http://iamlegend.warnerbros.com/iphone/index.html to a PC and my Blackjack. You can almost see how the site works using the PC, try it out. My blackjack however could only pull the text content and wallpapers. The rest seems to be iPhone or safari proprietary code, such as the photo gallery and daylight countdown.
Borrowed my friends iPhone and checked it out. First off for an iPhone dedicated site it’s very heavy in size. Browsing on the standard AT&T edge network is painfully slow. Also the navigation doesn't always respond to the first click, also sometimes the data doesn't populate.
Content of the site is pretty cool though, feature synopsis, iPhone sized wallpaper, link to itunes trailer (although too slow to download via edge), photos (with a very smart interface for going forward and back)
Daylight countdown is a smart application, it counts down the days and hours left of daylight. Its pretty impressive that even on the iPhone the countdown functions and is not static.
Overall props to Warner Brothers and Crew Creative for creating such a site, but I think targeting iPhone users only is really missing a lot of potential users and they should have taken the extra hour or two to create a WAP friendly version or at the very least create a hand held style sheet, so mobile users aren't greeted with a page not found error. I think the average consumer wont realize that the mobile site they heard about is for iPhones only and consequently might feel alienated since they don't have an iPhone.
iamlegend.com - iPhone site
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Building Your Own Social Netowrk
A lot of people have been speculating (including myself) that social networks are going to become more niche targeted, and this new service Ning (http://www.ning.com) seems to pave the way. Ning offers a (free?) platform to build your own customized social network.
http://www.ning.com/about/about-us.html
Check out the network someone built for the ever popular Penguins site.
This is the main network
And here is one user:
http://pengspace.ning.com/profile/CODY5575
Notice that he is part of the PengSpace network and does not actually have his own page. He does however belong to mulitple networks, which takes the myspace model and flips it upside down on it's head. Also within PengSpace there are individual groups (similar to myspace) created as well.
Here is another that CW network created for One Tree Hill.
It will be interesting to see how these personal social netowrks grow over the year and what effect it will have on major sites like facebook and myspace.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
BMW Coupe and Convertible Experience Sites
The site also features a path navigation system that is unique but could be confusing to some. Upon clicking "Expand" it will expand the navigation to reveal how far in the site you have traveled and where you can go. Although quite cool and innovative, it fails to show the deeper levels you can reach within the site until you actually get there. Case in point: Until I click on the engine link I do not realize there are two more links below it, describing the 2 types of engines they offer. I think a simple solution for this would have been to show the full site structure, but grey out the areas you have not visited lately so at least you they are there. Also the other features such Ambient lighting are buried 2 levels down under the new sophisticated details sub-nav. Its a cool idea but one that limits the nav too much when the sites main goal should be to let users find everything quickly and efficiently. Also a bit shocking but they need to fix the lack of audio controls. Although ambient music is cool even the best audio loop after 30 times gets a bit old.
In terms of design though the designers did a great job creating a simple and very elegant site. Subtle gradients and design elements are well placed and uses nice clean boxes for layout.
http://content.bmwusa.com/microsite/3coupe2007/E92_landing.html
Rating: 9
The sister site which promotes the hard top convertible version of the 3 series is well done as well but lacks the sophistication of the first. What is cool is the almost full width video introduction which then transitions to the car driving on the screen giving the feel of motion as the wheels spin and the road reflectors wish by. What is really quite surprising is the lack of video showing this amazing top going down. When you go into the section Versatility (which is also is a bit vague) the only option presented is to view a slide show. Really in today's bandwidth and the fact the site has an intro video that shows it, and full video showcasing the engine, this is unacceptable. This section should have had not only video but video with a POV you can change and view at any angle to really drive the selling point of how great this new feature is.
http://content.bmwusa.com/microsite/3convertible2007
Rating: 7
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Geico Caveman's Crib
This was launched quite a few months ago so it is not a new site.
The interaction of this site is very good. The site is another type where you can explore photo-realistic worlds by pseudo camera moves and has great alpha channeled video clips. The site opens inviting you into the crib of the caveman from the Geico commercials, there is a nice video intro where he tells you to make yourself at home while he gets ready. The user is then left to explore the pad out. They designers did a nice job of adding about 4-5 clips of video to keep it random when you interact with objects that annoy the caveman. Some of the great examples are the big screen TV where if you click on it, it flips around the channels showing some Geico commercial and the ending screen which helps enforce the brand. Probably one of the favorite things you can do is flush the toilet while in the bathroom, while the caveman is taking a shower.
The funniest video reactions come from the bugging him while in the shower.
The Geico tie-in is pretty thick but effective, after all it is a website advertising for them. There really is no payoff to the site though, so I found myself quiting out after about 5 min the first time.
Rating: 8
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
IBM Blade Center
When you visit the site you see a much longer version of the video which really plays up that this ball of cables is almost alien-like, and in my opinion the video is too long, especially since i saw it already in the ad. What caught my eye was the call to action to "Watch Very Short Demos with Ned." This is done in a fun 1950's style instructional video format. I liked and disliked the content in this area however. The first video was kind of funny, it showed how to reduce power costs and featured a box fan in lower corner, the tech slides the blade into the server and turns the fan off. Simple and to the point and mildly humorous. There is another one where an It manager asks if they upgraded the infrastructure and then he simply plugs in the blade which is also quite humorous. There are probably about 20 some videos in there which promote the features of the product. Where the piece fails a bit i think is the payoff of these videos. With the exception of the two mentioned, the rest are mild variations of the tech plugging in the blades. If they had been more creative and come up with some more minor variations it would encourage users to explore them all and spend more time on the site. The overall concept of 15 second videos to showcase how simple the product is to use is great, the execution could have used a bit more finesse.
http://www.ibm.com/outwithcables
Rating: 8
Monday, April 16, 2007
Moment of Silence...
I will say this though, I give great kudos to the online programming team at abc.com. while watching the live coverage, they said they are going to take a break and come back with more coverage. I was bracing myself to be bombarded with senseless advertising spots. Instead i was pleasantly surprised that they ran very touching PSA's about being a big brother and spending time with family and loved ones. Bravo ABC, nice to see the news has a heart.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Bud Light Apology Bot
http://www.budlightapologybot.com
Rating: 9.0
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Kickin' it Old School
Update (5/1/07):
Two new sections have been added to this site since review. First is the poster generator. This could be the most innovative way I have seen to mask user submitted photos. Its a bit confusing at first because it shows an outline that your picture will fit in but offers no masking guides like most sites do. The second step then allows you to paint a live dynamic mask complete with brush stroke size options. The only think they are lacking here (and would have been easy to add) is a reverse, so instead of only painting out the image, you could paint parts of it back in, the exact same way you paint masks in Photoshop. Still though being that is Flash and not Photoshop its quite robust in masking.
Another great addition to the site is groundbreaking contest called the Green Screen Challenge where the user is encouraged to download the footage from the film and mix it up with their own backgrounds. These types of contests are actually getting to be more popular rather quickly, as there is another one for the band Modest Mouse http://www.modsetmousemusic.com/video is being promoted by Apple. It will be interesting to see what the users create. This is a really great showing the leap of faith advertisers are more comfortable with the consumer completing more difficult tasks. Such as cutting together there own trailer for Disturbia.
http://www.kickinitmovie.com/
Rating: 9.5
Stardust - Teaser Site
http://www.stardustmovie.com
Preliminary Rating: 8.5
Monday, April 9, 2007
Nissan "Don't Push It" Ad
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2007/03/nissan_button.php
Rating: 7.5
Fracture Movie Site
It has a cool feature that allows you to collect evidence and displays how much evidence you have collected on a percentage scale. The only problem is that I tried about 3 times and the first time it went to 119% and the other two times it wouldn't go past 87% and 92%. Also there is some confusion as it seems there are 2 percentage counters. Either way it's frustrating to users when the readout says 150% and the the text says you need 100% of the evidence to open something up. The treasure/scavenger hunt with rewards is a fairly common with entertainment sites and usually fun engaging experience. A while back the site for Night at the Museum did one as well where you had to collect artifacts and that one never worked either, they had the opposite problem, seemed the cache would remember what you had collected and display it but in actuality the variables had not been set, so you really had not collected the items after all.
Here's the link to the Fracture movie site
http://www.fracturemovie.com/
Rating: 7.0
Porcupine Love
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2007/04/vw_porcupine.php
Rating: 9.5
Perfect Strangers
The video blogs are very well done ala lonelygirl15 style and dive into the pre-story of the film, before the murder happened. Looks like they started the Blogger account back in January although the blogs are post dated to Sep 2006. All the blogs make a reference to the other characters blogs so you can find them. Also on the site when you access the computer on the desk and go into the pseudo chat program it also gives links to the blogs. What is very cool is the subtle hyper linking they did on the keywords from the movie, almost like the paid ads you see on sites like the intellitext hover windows to define words, which almost makes it look like the linking was done automatically and not intentional. Most of these links drop you off to ActionsHaveConsequences.com which is a re-direct to the film site.
If you visit YouTube most of the videos all have about 2000-5000 views and there are almost 30 videos total. There are also a few on there that have 50,000 and 75,000 views, pretty impressive for a campaign so far out.
All the YouTube pages carry a banner ad for the film as well
http://fastfilly413.blogspot.com/
http://need2no413.blogspot.com/
http://samesame413.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SAMESAME413
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FastFilly413
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=NEED2NO413
Overall really an intelligent and well thought out campaign. If anyone knows who did it I would love to know.
Rating: 9.0
Pong in a Banner
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2006/06/tfal_cooking_pan_pon.php
Rating: 10.0