Watching commercials on purpose
Posted: Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:36 PM by Will Femia
Filed Under:
Games, That thing in the news
Wow, the
video game on the Audi Ironman site is actually pretty fun and challenging. Better than the Nokia one the other day. Given those two plus another that comes to mind (
ahem) it seems safe to say that no online ad campaign is complete without a video game component to help it go viral. (I was less impressed with the actual car part of the site. Though visually cool, I'm more impressed by the product placement on Dirt than on Ironman.) [And yes, I realize I'm the only person who watches Dirt.]
Speaking of efforts at viral advertising and watching commercials on purpose, it's also apparently the season for banned ads. I was thinking today as I clicked to a couple that while it's always been the case that banning an ad has brought it more attention from the media (on a slow news day at least), with the Internet a banned ad isn't banned at all and a ban assures a certain amount of viral distribution just for the "do you think this ad goes too far?" factor. To wit:
Does this ad go too far? (Note the lack of a NOTE: indicates my opinion.)
Apparently Abercrombie & Fitch have already gone to far in the U.S., so far that they don't bother producing a catalog here in the U.S. anymore (instead they
stand behind presidential candidates during nationally televised speeches) but they're still doing it in the UK and waddaya know,
it's drawing interest from some Americans anyway - or at least the naked guy photos are.
NOTE: This link has censored versions of the images which you then have to click the see the uncensored versions which are frankly nearly SFW anyway. Still, it's a naked guy so...
Speaking of trying to harness the viral,
TechCrunch's description of the new Blowtorch initiative
is easier to understand than the actual site. The idea is to bring some
order (and hopefully some viral energy) to user generated Web videos by
issuing challenges or themes.
Also in the "viral" vein,
Twist lets you track trends in Twitter. Enter the terms and see the frequency of use of those terms graphed comparatively over time.
Lastly on the viral topic, I'm going to be at
ROFLCon this Friday and Saturday. Let me know if you're there as well.
Google Me the movie - A guy Googles his name and finds a bunch of guys who share his name so he films a documentary of himself going to meet them all. He asks them all the same 30 questions.
Have you heard about the Dutch traffic experiment in which they
removed the road signs and somehow traffic ended up running more smoothly and with fewer accidents? Apparently not everyone is feeling moved by that spirit. How'd you like a traffic signal that
throws a holographic wall in front of your car? I vote no thanks.
"PETA is now stepping in and offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to
produce and bring to market in vitro meat." This is kind of like the challenge to find a way to produce stem cells without having to fertilize an egg (or take whatever step is defined as creating human life). In this case they want to find a way to "make" meat without having to cut it off an animal. I want to say this sounds gross, but really, given what I eat I have no grounds to say anything.
(
Slate says the whole thing is a publicity stunt because part of the requirement is that the product has to be brought to market, which kind of defeats the utility of the million bucks.)
Nuclear explosions since 1945 - Interesting to see the one North Korea did in 2006. I remember some pundits deriding it s a dud.
That college student who got in a fight with John Ashcroft over whether U.S. waterboarding is comparable to Japanese waterboarding in WWII. I'm not sure how widely this made news but I caught it on Olbermann last night.
The "leave me alone" box - (When you turn it on it turns itself off.)
The most interesting part of this explanation of
how to identify a Persian prostitute is this weird marriage option:
"But there's a loophole in Islamic law called sigheh, or temporary marriage. According to Shiite interpretation, a man and a woman may enter an impermanent partnership with a preset expiration date. There's no legally required minimum duration (a day, a week, anything goes) and no need for official witnesses..."
'Til 3:45 p.m. do us part.
"Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of
using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft." Somewhere there's an African Seinfeld episode waiting to be written.
Type racer is definitely the best typing game yet. The speed of your typing is reflected in a little car that moves along a dotted line. You play against other visitors to the site to see who can type the same piece of text the fastest. It's like those carnival games where you roll the balls into the holes to make your horse move faster. I lost the first one miserably but won the second game. I haven't tried to play it as a registered user yet so I'm not sure if gameplay changes once you're signed in.
I'm not sure what this video is about but it's pretty amazing to see
a railroad tanker implode in an instant. The explanation: "Hot gas/air in a sealed container and you let it cool. The air pressure difference inside is so great that the structure is compromised."
The idea behind the inchworm shoe is sound. Stretch the shoe as your kid's feet grow. I'm skeptical about two points. First, I don't believe it doesn't get all floppy after a few months of use. Second, so far my kid needs new shoes because he wears out the bottoms as fast as he outgrows them, so this would need a retread feature to appeal to me as a consumer.
Pictures of Dell’s Eco Bamboo Computer - You know I'm a sucker for the natural cased technology.
