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Well, not exactly now, but sometimes this fall. I know one of my client who’s gonna freak out.
PS: Illustration above not super accurate since it’s just a Photoshopped screenshot of a Facebook Fan page Fullsix US realized for L’Oréal Professionnel, that I roughly pasted into an iPhone. Just an excuse for a bit of self-promotion: we’re pretty good at developing Facebook applications so if you need one or if you want to develop an advanced Fan page but don’t really know how to, drop us a line!
Created by Carlos Ulloa Matesanz, Ralph Hauwert, and John Grden. Papervision3D is a open-source 3D engine for flash, that allows developers to change the position, size and rotation of a sprite on its X, Y and Z coordinates.
The results and possibilities for this technology are truly amazing, a website is no-longer a flat canvas but can be transformed in to a rich 3d environment. Recent updates to the engine allows developers to uses triangle tessellation to distort textures and render complex objects in real 3D.
The most exciting area to Papervision3D is the ability to embed video into a 3D environment. Could this open-source technology transform the way established traditional medias allow consumers to view their content. Combing Papervision3D and a 360 degree camera can already achieve amazing immersive video allowing us to take control of the camera and become a character in the environment.
Mattel has teamed up with Hasbro to sue the creators of Scrabulous, one of Facebook’s most popular applications.
The two companies, which between them own the rights to the board game, claim that the online version developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla infringes their copyright. Hasbro asked Facebook to take down Scrabulous – which attracts over 600,000 daily users and gives the brothers $25,000 of advertising a month.
Why would you want to turn your fans into enemies? Why not just buy the company? Why not advertise the Scrabble board game on the Scrabulous pages?
The rush from the toy makers has definitely not helped, they’ve seemed to have forgotten a number of things:
1. There is such a thing as bad publicity.
2. Facebook Scrabulous users love the game, and they are angry for losing it. It is not likely that these people will buy Mattel/Habro toys for friends and relatives.
3. There already are more than 55,000 members in a Save Scrabulous Facebook Group and talk of boycott of Mattel and Hasbro
4. Realize that Scrabulous turns people on to Scrabble and other word games and creates opportunity for Mattel/Hasbro.
Tv junkie or just a big sports fan, Slingmedia can make your dreams a reality. Watch your team play that big game while stuck in the office or never miss a episode of your favorite sitcom.
The SlingBox, a low-cost video placeshifting device that allows users to stream what they’re watching at home to a computer or smart phone anywhere in the world. It sends the signal from your cable box, satellite receiver or digital video recorder to any computer.
The SlingPlayer serves as your interface and features a variety of components, including a favorites bar and customizable remote controls that help bring your living room experience to your computer.
If you’ve been paying attention to what is going on online, the new keyword is “OpenSocial“. Recently announced by Google, OpenSocial opened its doors to developers on November 1st, and believe me, it does deserve the websphere hype it has been generating.
Essentially, what Google did was provide a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites by tapping into 3 distinct sets - member profiles, social graph and member activities. Unlike the Facebook case, that uses FBML (Facebook Markup Language) in it’s APIs, requiring every developer to invest yet again in learning a language to develop a Brand presence in another Social Network, OpenSocial allows developers to use JavaScript and HTML to create apps for Social Networks. Of course, at this stage, the participants are “scarce” - but by no means unimportant! With names such as MySpace, Hi5 or LinkedIn for Hosts (the place where the Apps can be used) and ILike, Slide or Flixter for Developers (the companies that develop APIs for the OpenSocial library and key Facebook App developers), there is definitely an alarm ringing for Brands to check it out. During the initial release of OpenSocial, several examples were presented. Continue reading ‘OpenSocial 101′
Daft Punk decided to promote their new live album ”Alive” with an embeddable widget containing a lot of information regarding the band, the tracks, as well as a photo gallery. This not only is an example of a cheap way to promote a product on the Web as well as it’s still proof that the music industry is still innovating in their promotion efforts.
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Facebook has recently released a new feature which allows application developers to actually evaluate the virality of their product. This allows the developer to check if the users add the app via friends, search, mini-facebook, etc… Thus providing an actually interesting tool for the developers. What I find most fascinating is the strength that Facebook has acquired for the rise of metrics inside the SNW itself - a single website is giving rise to new forms of evaluating consumer engagement.
Definitely worth reading.
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Browsing through the Internet demanded originally some previous knowledge when you wanted to find something. Sites were scarce and they were too oriented towards information depots – you knew that there was a clear distinction between real life and the virtual web, as contents you’d find in one were different and required specific search logic to find it. I’m talking about the time of the Web 1.0, of course, where you could find some static non-interactive information regarding your traveling needs, for example.
The evolution in the Web was so amazing that searching for information on any given search engine is a natural input of keywords – users no longer have to devise careful anagrams and keyword combinations to find the page they needed. Essentially, they have to think what they need, type it in and find it. This shows how the fusion of the virtual and real world has evolved – you know you’ll find those tickets you need, the hotel you want to book and information regarding what other users thought about the services you are using.
This leaves a lot of room open for the transition of offline services to the online world – that’s what people are expecting to find – but, of course, taking in account the whole sociological and societal evolution that is occurring online. In this logic, a great amount of services online are appearing in a daily basis, taking advantage of the tools and spirit the users are immersed.
This entire introduction serves as a basis to explain a type of website that is a perfect example of real world meets virtual world in web 2.0 logic – Social Lending Sites or Microlenders. I’m not talking about lending services for objects or services – I’ll approach those on another post. The Peer-to-peer lending focuses on two axis – people who have money to lend and people who want to borrow money. Each user is a bank on its own and can gain interest off a loan while users who want “small” amounts and that wouldn’t be eligible for a loan in a real bank have an opportunity to get that investment cash! Continue reading ‘Can I borrow a dime? - P2P Lending Sites’
Facebook was one of the first and major Social Networking Websites to display the power of supporting third-party API investment. More recently, Apple has released the IPhone Human Interface Guidelines, providing in-depth information on the workings of the IPhone, how to design and program for it. The Open-Source logic applied to programming, or how I like to call it the “linuxanitsation” of platforms, is opening up a whole new world for Marketers to plan and devise strategies targeting more specific audiences. Although leading to the ever-growing gap in the audience’s fragmentation, this is definitely another step towards a Long Tail approach to Marketing.
You are no longer advertising on the New and Old Media - we are talking about the version 2.0 of New Media, where you have to go beyond the 360º approach and into the virtual X + Y + Z axis approach. A whole new dimension in the making!
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User-generated content, also known as CGM (consumer generated media) or UCC (user-created content) is essentially content produced by the users for other users. Other than having flexibility with acronyms this way of sharing also has flexibility in its delivery. Its potential and current uses span the blogosphere, podcasting, and any new web 2.0 application. The newest application is from Orbitz TLC.
You might know Orbitz from its ridiculously huge pop-up ads on CNN selling discounted airline tickets. I’m guilty of simultaneously disliking their ads and giving them business. Previously one could buy a plane ticket through their site and opt for text messages with flight status information. Flying out of any of New York City’s airports always seem to result in several text messages.
Now the company introduces their UGAA (user generated airport advice). Patrons can choose to contribute both while logged into the site or anonymously — airport conditions. (This has the potential of being bugged like Wikipedia, but we’ll give it time.) Updates include wait times, weather info, traffic (via Google Maps), wifi, and a host of other pertinent travel details. It just launched Sept. 3 and already passengers in Chicago have been “generating” away. The service serves two purposes, really:
a.) To share with others and
b.) Fight boredom
Oops. Perhaps those not already on Facebook will be more inclined to use the service on their fancy Dell’s from those overpriced airport hotspots.
The question I have is how many more text messages will be sent?
Regardless I’m willing to give it a try, and like any other new technology it will either pass, fail, or progress but either way our lives are getting easier!
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