An intricately and beautifully crafted 19th-century-czechoslovakia-inspired-steam-and-junk-world. An out-of-the-ordinary tale. A little robot. This is the premice of Machinarium, a wonderful adventure game created by Amanita Design, a czech republic independent games developer. If you're a web-based adventure game aficionado, you might know them from independant successes such as "Questionaut" (a point-and-click game developed for the BBC), or the widely acclaimed "Quest for the rest", developed for pop-rock band Polyphonic Spree.
Machinarium is among the winners of the 2009 Independant Games Festival, claiming an award for Excellence in Visual Arts, and not without reason: the game is a pure delight for the eyes, with a subtle blend of humor and adventure, it's suited for kids and adults alike looking for an original tale and an addictive game.
Only 20$ will buy you the full version (mac or pc), and trust me, it's a *very* good bang for your buck - some games selling at 60$ on popular consoles and computers wouldn't even compare at offering the level of "virtual vacation" Machinarium delivers.
Try out the free demo at www.machinarium.net. Like me, you will fall in love.
A nice 3D treat for you this monday morning: "Alarm", a masterfully rendered animation directed by Jang Moo-hyun from the independent team of MESAI. You will be drawn into it because of its soft visuals and life-like environment rendering. You'll be stuck to it because of the compelling storytelling. You will be caught by your boss, procrastinating and drooling over whatever you were doing. You can thank me later.
Dear readers, you're in for a royal treat. You know how we're into this trend of communication authenticity and how consumer-brand conversation is now ever important. Well, I guess after many "conversations" about the matter, the nice people at Gillette decided to finally let men in on "how to properly shave their groins" -- quite the edutainment, I'm telling you. I don't know about you, but I think it's great. I think they have balls (hah!). Whomever came up with the idea and actually had it produced, you're my hero of the day. Let's cut (wee!) to the chase and view this historic piece on the art of trimming your front yard.
Nice TV ad for Evian's Live Young Campaign, directed by Michael Gracey and created by agency Euro RSCG. Music is "Rapper's Delight" by Dan the Automator.
Folks, this is the kind of product that truly will propel you into...TEH FUTURE *insert echo here*
(and yes, I always say it this way. It provides somewhat of a dramatic yet slightly ironic tone to my tech news).
Discover the Vuzix iWear AV230 XL+, a lightweight pair of stereoscopic glasses which provide the same experience as watching a 44-inch screen viewed from 9 feet.
Short of getting yourself a $3000 flatscreen complete with THX sound or a $50,000 full-on VR headset with touch feedback, these glasses might provide a pretty awesome gaming or movie-watching experience. As mentioned on the site, the dual displays provide "crisp images and vivid colors through optics aligned to military specifications", and the glasses feature removable high-quality stereo headphones (altough when a product description features the words "removable" and "high-quality" in the same sentence, I always tend to read "removable quality". But that's just me. I like alphanumeric naming. Feed me XTX-2000 bran and nut flakes anytime, I'll feel like a superhero.)
I haven't had the chance to actually review these goggles yet, but I like the premice this new model offers, just from description. Just so you know, past reviews about these type of glasses featured rants about "annoying scan lines" affecting picture quality, average sound and tired eyes -- all for a steep price. But it seems the good folks at Vuzix heard the cries of our people, and came up with this product retailing for less than $200 bucks while providing a kickass-end experience.
If you own a pair and would like to give me your impressions, go ahead and let the readers know!
I've introduced the incredible work of CG company Image Metricsin a past blog post. But I've recently stumbled across this incredible CG feat on the web: meet Emily: The Tech Demo. She's entirely 3D. Threeeeee-D, friends.
Author and "personal brand" evangelist Dan Schawbel wrote a thoughtful piece about "Why you shouldn't brand yourself as a "Social Media Expert" on his blog, a mandatory read for anyone trying to figure out social media and giving themselves the title "expert" as they do it.
Yeah I know, it's usually "Inspiration Tuesdays", but this was so good I couldn't wait 'til next week to share.
Introducing Nick Bertke, some guy I discovered off YouTube. It appears our friend Nick is a natural talent at producing genius music and films, and if he keeps going at it, might make a decent living being a superstar. Scrounging inside some old Walt Disney animations, Nick came up with delicately crafted, otherworldy mellow tunes. Something Björk-like, with a hint of sweetened Chemical Brothers but with its own smooth flavour. Being a musician myself, I'm no music critic but I know talent when I hear it.
I first got blasted off by this page I stumbled upon, moving on to YouTube where I discovered his other productions. Homemade sights and sounds copyright Nick Bertke. Here are some of my favorites (keep reading after the break):
Nick also has excellent flair for storytelling and film photography. Take your eyes on a ride with Out With It (see at end of post), a short movie about a guy, a girl, and something real bad happening. M. Night Shyamalan could be red with envy on this one, if it was only pursued into a 2-hour flick. I know I was sucked into it instantly.
I don't know of Nick's other talents, but I truly hope he gets discovered by big cheeses - something great might happen. Check out Nick's work on YouTube: search for Fagottron (interesting choice of nickname), and look him up on Last.Fm as well. Google him, for all it's worth, things are getting interesting for our friend. I do expect this guy to get his 15 minutes of fame sometime soon.
Being creative is about generating new opportunities for yourself, and for others.
Every day should be a new, empty slate allowing you to make use of your own creativity: Whether it is as about finding a new or better way to do your work, daring to go someplace you never would have in other times, inventing something you think could generally changeyour status quo.
It can be big, it can be small, but you never know how far an idea could go in creating some "new" in your life, generating new goals for yourself, and making you feel in charge.
Creation is change. And in the words of Winston Churchill: "Change is the essence of life. Be ready to surrender what you are, for what you could become."
If you've been followingmarketing circles on Twitter recently, you're likely to admit there's a lot of talk about social media in business communications. I can't count all the "10 tips for this", "Tools for that" tweets, or various miracle uses of tweet-related 2.0 apps that abound in the worldwide nest.
It seems like the discussion around using social media in business has garnered more attention and spilled more digital ink than its actual use. Influent marketing Tweeters have taken upon themselves the responsibility of evangelizing their followers; said followers are on a del.icio.us bookmark craze on the subject; Bloggers flourish in profound studies and in-depth analytics on the phenomenon, and one doesn't have to look far to find a plethora of so-called social media experts on LinkedIn -- fighting to deliver the next great piece of insight.
Everyone's on the hunt for the great Social Media marketing ElDorado. And it's particularly true within marketing circles on Twitter.
What is behind this social media information-sharing craze in the Tweetosphere? Is it truly driven by the noble search to better serve one's clients, or rather by the need to build a personal brand? I guess the latter is the hidden truth. Twitter is about the need for one individual or corporation to stand out. Talking to a mass of followers. For marketers, Twitter is social media's social media.
Twitter is composed of thousands of individual mass mediums (the Tweeps) adressing their own communities of thousands, who most often are passive listeners. There's nothing truly "social" on Twitter - it's actually more like a cable TV of people selling their personal brand on their own channel. A lot of TV shows. By creating or hunting for information, these "show hosts", are trying to generate critical bits of information to use them as perceived advantage, contributing to building their own individual mass media potential, their own personal brand. The success of their daily show.
Which is to say that the current social media tweeting trend among professionals seems to be biased. It isn't really about "Social Media And How It Does Miracles For Your Company's Marketing". It's about "Social Media And How Talking About It Empowers Your Professional Credibility".
When Marshall McLuhan said the "medium is the message", he probably didn't realise how social this notion would become.
Tolkien fans, you will go crazy on this one. The Hunt For Gollum is an entirely independent movie created by (very technically adept) fans and directed by writer-director Chris Bouchard. And this one will keep your stomachs full until (unafilliated) Peter Jackson goes crimson with envy and creates three more.
Production began in early 2007 when Chris started adapting the script from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and was released on May 3rd for public viewing *entirely free* (most probably with the hope that some huge distributor will notice and buy the distribution rights).
I've watched it. It's surprisingly well done. All along you wonder, for every element that comes on scene, "will they get it right?". Well for an indepedent short that, as for every indepedent short, usually deals with limited budget and rests on the talent and passion of its makers, trust me, "they get it right". It hits the spot much more that anything George Lucas recently made, if I have to make the sorry comparison.
An open letter to my Social Media Marketing group on the LinkedIn network, from group moderator Michael Crosson (a typical user, not a LinkedIn employee). If you're on LinkedIn and are using groups, this concernts YOU. You be the judge.
"Hello, everyone - I am using a new feature on LinkedIn to contact you about something very important to all of us - social networking. I'm sure you joined in order to find information and resources, get feedback and network with other people interested in Social Media Marketing.
But LinkedIn has just made some policy changes that have severely restricted what group managers can do and makes the functionality of this group much more limited.
What they have done:
1. Taken away my ability to send you the monthly email newsletter that I have produced in the past. I can no longer access the group's email list.
2. Taken away my ability to send you individual welcome letters or direct correspondence. I can't even view who is a member of this group, it is limited to seeing only 500, not the entire 15,000+.
3. Forced advertising onto profile and other pages - but the group managers do not profit. There is no revenue share. I don't make a dime from any of the work I put into LinkedIn. [Note from Ed: This is just like you creating a web page, and some company putting web banners on your page without you getting any money from the advertising. Cheap.]
4. By disabling the email list download, I now have ZERO visibility into group performance reports that I used to have through my email management system. I can't tell how many people are unsubscribing, how many undeliverable emails there are, etc. etc. LinkedIn has NO reporting capabilities whatsoever.
They claim they had to do this because some unscrupulous managers were building lists for spam. Their response is penalize all the legitimate group managers for the actions of a few bad apples. There are far better ways to deal with this issue.
I pride myself in moderating and managing this group to the best of my ability. For almost a year, we have grown at 25% a month. LinkedIn overall has grown almost at much. The fact is, it is groups like ours that makes LinkedIn successful. But now they are biting the hand that feeds them. My ability to interact and network with you as individual members has been completely hamstrung. This is the only way to reach you individually.
I URGE YOU TO TAKE ACTION AND VOICE YOUR OPINION. Ask them to rescind this heavy-handed and totally unnecessary tactic. Send an email directly to the Founder, Chairman and CEO of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, directly on his LinkedIn page: http://snipr.com/eke5g
Thanks for taking the time and for participating in Social Media Marketing. Let's keep growing and improving it, and that means growing and improving LinkedIn, too."
Powerful video about change, created by a Chicago student for the American Association of Retired Persons's U@50 challenge (it placed 2nd! I'd like to see what came first...). It was based on "Recrear", a message created by agency Savaglio\TBWA that won a silver lion in 2006.
But that's besides the point: the adaptation is simply outstanding. Well chosen, and well done my Windy City friend -- you chose the right vehicle to get a powerful message across.
I'm a freelancer and free thinker in the field of marketing and communications, trying to continually expand the known universe in my little mind -- and yours.
