An almighty noise on Tottneham Court Road

Half the office have been hanging out the 4th floor windows looking down on to Tottenham Court Road to see what the fuss was about. At about 3pm very load music began to literally shake the office and came blaring through the windows.

I went down to investigate and was greeted by the following site - the britbus tour. Which appears to be a battle bus with various bands touring the country competintg to be signed.

Anyway, despite the name I thought it was a promotion for Guitar Hero as they seem to have dominated the sponsorship and the BritBus logo was a bit hard to read.

Whatever it was it was good fun.

Banksy & Bristol

Not much to say about htis other than a great real world mash up - Banksy has teamed up with Bristol Museum to add a little flair to the pieces they have on display.

Ikea wins the award for consistentcy

Lots of brands do brilliant work online these days but I have to take my hat off to Ikea for consistency. It seems someone at Ikea or their agency just 'get it' and encourage great work.


The latest piece of work uses the time lapse camera technique they have been building on for a while and it basically follows two diner parties but the films are played in reverse. Simple yet captivating.

Here is an incomplete list of the great work I have seen, some of it is just an evolution of an idea over time but there are a few things they all have in common:

1. They are simple ideas
2. They are all beautifully executed
3. They all link back directly and seamlessley to the product - but in a very natural way


http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/tcb/index.html
http://www.designyourownlife.nl/
http://www.ikea.com/ms/sv_SE/rooms_ideas/PS/
http://embracechange09.com/
http://www.ikea.com/ms/sv_SE/kampanj/fy09/julklapp/julklapp.html
http://kominigarderoben.se/
http://www.ikea.com/ms/de_DE/aktivitet/Nils.html
http://www.bebravenotbeige.com/

Google Wants you to get involved with Chrome

A year or two back they ran a competition very successfully btw to get people to visualize how an Gmail traveled around the world.

Well now they are asking people to get involved in making a video of the chrome logo - see the video for a taster.



Interesting to see how this goes and how many people get involved but a nice simple idea. Will be good to see what turns up.

Dr Johnson would approve..or would he?

Wordnik looks like a great little site that has just been launched in Beta.

It is essentially a bit of a combination between a wiki and a dictionary. It aims to keep up with language as it evolves via crowd sourced references definitions and importantly contextual feeds. So if you type in a word it brings back a variety of definitions, references, pronounciations. It pulls in statistics both historical and real time, pulls examples off twitter and blogs etc and looks like a nice experiment.



I couldn't help but reference the infamous episode of Blackadder with Robbie Coltrane as Dr. Johnson.

Wave hello to the future

This week lots of innovation occurring, the NATAL video I just mentioned, and then Google Wave.



Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. It's hard to explain and this video is 1hr 20 long, someone should do a cut down video but it combines IM/ Email / and Google document sharing all in one with a really flexible interface that links in to blogs, apps and social media sites. It is clearly going to be something special and if you have 10 minutes skip through this video to the following time codes:




1. 8.00 - 12.00
2. 12.30 - 14.00
3. 19 -23.00
4. 35.00 - 37.00
5. 47.00 - 48.00
6. 49.00 - 51.00
7. 52.40 - 54.50
8. 1.12-45 - 1.14.00

The Empire Strikes Back

Microsoft have just released this technology called Natal, very much like the Wii but you do not need controllers. The video below despite being incredibly cheesey Americana pretty much speaks for itself.



But you will be blown away by the video (do watch this its worth it) on the BBC showing how characters in the game can be interacted with, voice recognition, true interaction between gamer and on screen environment.

I'm liking it but also because it brings back the physical element to gaming - I can see kids wanting to be able to do stuff therefore exercising more.