Live Video Stream & Twitter Integration

Jarvis Cocker is a British musician probably best known as the former frontman for the band, Pulp. He is currently (as in now through tomorrow) set up in the London Underground for a series of ongoing performances that are being streamed live on the Web. Interesting idea from a publicity standpoint, but from a design and web perspective, I’m more interested in the integration of the accompanying Twitter feed. I’m starting to see more examples of these across the Web and believe they’ll become even more ubiquitous as marketers strive to get more real-time conversations happening around their brands.

With the companion Twitter feed, it's not only the artist that gets to share the spotlight.

Interactive Visualizer of the Recession

The New York Times brings the unemployment rate into focus with this engaging piece. Turns out education, along with race and sex, plays a large part in whether or not you may have kept your job in this economy–not that anyone would necessarily be surprised by that.

It's not just what you know, but who you are

Guerilla Marketing: Best Of…

From a blog I listed last week as one I turn to for frequent inspiration, Francesco had outdone himself with this compendium of 80 terrific guerilla marketing tactics. As a big fan of street art, I think there is a very fine line between it and guerilla marketing. I also find it interesting that one is commonly accepted while the other is often looked upon with scorn (admittedly, I’m not a fan of mindless graffiti scribbling). I guess society finds corporate messaging more palatable than artistic endeavors.

Effective Use of Twitter

I’ve never been a huge fan or advocate of Twitter, but this video relates how one company, P.F. Chang’s, capitalized on the real-time nature of the medium to make one customer a fan for life.

Awesome Design Inspiration

So we all turn to different places for inspiration from time to time, and over time I’ve come to realize that there are a number of blogs that I visit more frequently than others. Some of these, in fact, I visit daily. Enjoy:

http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/
Today this blog has a feature on the works of Banksy, my all-time favorite street artist. But there’s much more cool stuff and thought here than that.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
No surprises here to anyone actively involved in the Web design business.

http://ffffound.com/
Not a design site, per say, but rather “a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!” Emphasis is theirs, and I’ll forgive the double exclamation points because I like their site that much!!

http://www.coolhunting.com/
Objects, videos and other cool stuff that you could buy (they’re not selling it) if you were rich and fabulous enough. 

http://www.everyoneisanartdirector.com/
I might go so far as to call this site “edgy.” Artistic endeavors served fresh every day. 

 

I have seen the future of the Web…

I recently came across the ground-breaking (my word, maybe not yours) website for digital agency Modernista, at modernista.com. It’s a pageless concept that utilizes the existing framework of the web to serve it’s information. Want to see their work? They take you to Flickr and YouTube. Want to know about their history? See their page on Wikipedia. Press releases, news? Served up on a Google news feed.

Modernista.com: page-less website awesome-ness

 

 

From an experiential and design perspective, there is room for improvement. The navigation device could be more elegant and I’d like to see it move more quickly and have a more persistent location as it moves from site to site, but I’m not here to hate. Frankly, I find this to be a brilliant example of work and an approach that anyone developing a site should explore.

Many of the clients I work with are rebuilding their 3-4 year old sites to better align with current technology. But why? As the modernista site so clearly articulates, there is no reason to invest in infrastructure when you can serve your entire site and experience on the existing backbone of the web. From a UX standpoint, your users are simply finding your content on sites they, probably, already have at least a passing familiarity with. 

I like this approach for portal and aggregator sites as well. But in fairness, I think the challenges of maintaining the content might prove to be more challenging than your own content management system, but who knows? Maybe in the long run, at least from an economics perspective, it would pay off to have more effort in content posting and updating than in technology maintenance and infrastructure redevelopment?

Life in advertising

Let me first say, I LOVE MY JOB. I LOVE MY INDUSTRY. Whew, now that I have that out of the way I couldn’t help by love this cartoon series that shows no mercy in skewering the ad industry. In fact, I think they have set their sites on the online pharmaceutical advertising industry which is so close to my own heart. Do check it out…http://businessguysonbusinesstrips.com/

Favorite hot sauce

 I came across a fantastic hot sauce over the weekend at, of all places, my local IHOP. Cholula is fantastic stuff, and while I’m sure it’s no secret to anyone who loves hot sauces, it was new to me and I’m now crazy for the stuff. The flavors of the peppers are fantastic and this Frank’s Hot Sauce guy is now fully converted. They have some interesting recipes on their Web site, and I think I may try out the one for chicken wings. 

Since I also have an interest in Web design and related things, let me say that while I’m not generally a huge fan of Flash-based sites, the Cholula site is pretty nice and has some interesting and fun features. I particularly like the loader graphics and, of course, the recipes. Check it out at cholula.com.

Environmentally-friendly street art

This remarkable street artist makes beautiful images by taking something away from walls…dirt.

Creepy cool stop motion video