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« October 2007 | Main | Archives | December 2007 »

November 26, 2007

Hotshop Awards 2007

hotsop_awards_07.gif

Australian Creative magazine are again running their Hotshop award for 2007. This time they remembered to include "Digital/Interactive" in the official entry form!

It's $110 an entry and entries close Jan 23, 2008 so plenty of time to get a sexy looking entry together. Last year there were around 11 interactive agencies who entered. Let's see if we can boost that up for this year.



Munk Yourself!

munky.jpg

20th Century Fox wants you to Munk Yourself for Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Create your own chipmunk character and record a custom message (which gets chipmunkatized) and send it on to friends. It's similar to Simpsons avatar or Simponize Me, except the emphasis is on recording your own message and the users voice rather than uploading your face.

Designed and built by Soap Creative using Oddcast technology.



November 24, 2007

Online advertising for the Federal Election

Today in Australia we vote for who we wish to be our next Prime Minister.

Following on from Tobie's post below, this year is the first time the Internet has played such a big role in the campaigning of the major political parties.

It's interesting to see the difference between the two candidates, and how they've embraced YouTube, Facebook and even MySpace.

John Howard (Liberal) made some attempts at spreading his message on the YouTube, but didn't seem to grasp the medium too well. He was often addressing his audience as though it was a specific time or place, saying "Good Morning".

Kevin Rudd (Labor) at least achieved some notoriety with his footage of picking a piece of earwax out and eating it.

The polls favor a Labor victory, but without getting into the policies, I took my own mini poll by assessing a few characteristics of their online campaigns...


Homepage Design

Kevin Rudd (Labor) has used a fresh color palette to go with his "Fresh Ideas" mantra, shown a full embrace of the social-networking tools available to him, and allows for the page's text size to be increased.

ruddpage.jpg

John Howard (Liberal) however, has used a not so appealing "Infra Red" style effect and has disobeyed classic Jakob Neilsen advice in going with a red text on red background motif.

howardpage.jpg



MySpace Design

Rudd (Labor) has forked out the dough for a custom template which aligns nicely.

ruddmyspace.jpg


Whilst Howard (Liberal) has gone with your stock standard MySpace ugliness.

howardmyspace.jpg



MySpace Friends

Kevin Rudd (Labor) - 23,602
John Howard (Liberal) - 9


Facebook "Fans"

Kevin Rudd - 20,130
John Howard - 121


W3C Code Validation errors
Neither campaign sites validate completely, but Labor has the least validation errors with 23, versus a whopping 122 from the Liberals.


Use of photography

Kevin Rudd appears to have borrowed heavily from the stock photo category for the keywords "smooth + businessman".

rudd.jpg

I wonder if "Rebecca" below, would be disappointed in real life if Kevin and her met after cyber-dating?

rebecca.jpg


Whilst John Howard has used a poorly compressed JPEG at tiny thumbnail size, and not a very inspiring pose.

howard.jpg

All adds up to a pretty shoddy effort from the Liberals.

VERDICT: LABOR TO WIN


In all seriousness though, Labor's campaign does seem that little bit more progressive in their understanding of the web, and that is obviously a big issue in terms of Education and Innovation. Their policies also include improving Australia's woeful standing in broadband uptake too.

Generally speaking, the Labor Party appeals to a younger demographic, whilst the average Liberal voter is probably a bit older. But Labor still seems miles ahead.

In about nine hours we'll see what the real outcome is!



November 16, 2007

down with the kids

greens.jpg

mmm - I'm sorry, but I can't take these things in combination "seriously".

Australian politics. Facebook. the word "Luv". the word "serious".

comments please.



November 15, 2007

Spamusement

Following on from Tobie's post on those nice spam one-liners, I wanted to share these.

If you haven't seen Spamusement - Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines, check it out.

Some examples:

spam1.gif

spam2.gif

spam3.gif

spam4.gif



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