Saturday 7 March 2009

This Happened... in edinburgh


I attended the event "This happened.... in Edinburgh." Picture above - Jamie Allen

(Unfortunately I missed the first two speakers. As I was organising an event for work that was happening the next day and I didn't manage to leave work in Perth until 5:45pm and this was starting in Edinburgh at 6.00pm! I did actually manage to get to Edinburgh by about 6:30, although I then took about 30 mins to cross town and find a parking space, alas I arrived and I was glad I made the effort)

However, There were talks by a diverse group of people:
I must admit that it was the talk from Yann Seznec, aka "the amazing rolo" that really caught my imagination...his energy was infectious! The development of his software is through a great story, which he told with a true passion and enthusiasm. As a musician he saw a possibility with the current technology on the the market (the wii remote) and set about designing a software to allow him to mix using though movement.



It just begins to show the endless amount of possibilities there are by cultivating existing technology and transferring its use into an akternative business area. I think the great thing about this Yann's product, as it allows the Dj's, to mix great music, whilst enjoying their environment through dancing and movement... a real innovation.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Viral interaction take 2


Another inspirational interactive and viral piece of design that I discovered tonight.

"Appeel is a virus spreading through interacting individuals. Surfaces are covered by thousands of coloured stickers laid out in a grid."

"Appeel inherits basic principles of interactivity and generativity applied to purely analogous means. Its immanent potential of penetrating regulated public and private space counterpoints its apparent plainness. The dot spreads with the promise to ironically mark its carrier as a symbol of sale and possession."

This is the work of the greeneyl + segewald. Simply a group of guys whom like to explore unconventional interactions.

This discovery has just made my evening, or rather morning,as it is now 00:21

A new facebook phenomenom!

So I have fallen victim to one of the latest facebook viral games. It is titled, make your own album cover. I was introduced to this idea by a friend. So then the following steps were taken:

1. I was tagged in a picture...although I was not actually in it. (This caused me to look at it and find out about the game)
2. I was intrigued by the rules, so decided to take part
3. I completed the instructions - which included;
- Hit “random" on wikipedia - to get the band name
- Go to "Random quotations" choose last four words of the very last quote for the album title
- Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days" Third picture is album cover.
4. Post it to FB and TAG the friends you want to join in.

So there we go, I normally ignore these things....but I was so intrigued with this one, which made me buck the trend....and wham, 30 mins later I have an reasonable attempt at an album cover! I think that result, was partly due to the quote and image that I received coincidentally matching rather well. I don't know what the odds of are for getting such results that match up. However, I found this to be rather exciting.

So a succesful viral game, I think so yes. It not only got me to take part, simply by sparking my imagination...it also got me to use to website/ features that I have not before. Therefore, not a bad viral marketing tool if it were to be used in the correct manner! Particularly if you happened to make the links relevant to your website.