The Medusa Project site launched

The Medusa Project is an exciting new series from Sophie McKenzie and we've just launched the new site. Featuring character profiles, with Spotify playlists for each character and details on their special powers, about the books, and a competition where you can win iTunes vouchers.

http://www.themedusaproject.co.uk/


Following this up, here is an interesting article discussing why young adults like reading book about character with supernatural powers:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/06/28/young_adults_feel_affinity_with_supernatural_characters_in_books/

Pixar's lamp comes to life

Check out this cute video of Pixar's logo lamp "Luxo Jr" as he comes to the real world.

http://gizmodo.com/5303312/pixars-animatronic-luxo-jr-melts-our-hearts-in-live-action

Useful implementation of augmented reality

The US Postal Service are doing the first useful implementation of augmented reality that I've seen. You can find out which size bracket your parcel falls into. You can see a video of how it works here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc

I've seen fun uses of it, the best being the music video for Ride My Star:
http://www.julianperretta.com/ride_my_star/

More information here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/augmented-reality-technology-brings-useful-service-to-usps-044353/

Community site for kids on Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network's new site is being launched on June 16th, with a social networking site "My CN". I like the idea of letting kids communicate through pre-written messages. It means that they can still express themselves and their emotions to each other, yet there's no chance of any unsavoury messages appearing on the site. It's a bit like letting them communicate via emoticons.


Read all about the site's new features here:
http://www.netimperative.com/netimperative/news/2009/may/cartoon-network-gets-community-site

Social Media Trends

The news is that whilst Facebook is expanding, Bebo and MySpace are contracting. Facebook is continuing it's world takeover, with more and more members each day. Also on the rise are LinkedIn and Twitter, although I believe Twitter will be a passing fad for the masses I'm sure, remaining popular only for the insecure celebrities and the geeks.

MySpace is a great place for bands to host a few songs, tour dates, and advertise themselves, but as a personal profile social networking site I never though it had any longevity. And Facebook sealed their downfall in this area I think. I would love to see MySpace evolve into an online directory for bands, artists, creatives etc.

Bebo I feel has just not provided a high enough quality of service. The site has always been behind in changes to the way it works and the support is reportedly not to a high level. I think it might just be a case of the better person winning when you compare Bebo and Facebook.

Interestingly FriendsReunited is mentioned. They made the massive mistake of making you pay, which Tagged doesn't seem to have learned from. They "entice" you to buy VIP memberships to give you extra functionality on the site. A mistake I think.

Read more with the full stats:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/11/myspace-bebo-social-networking

Epix: Hulu for film

As Hulu grows and grows and in the wake of it's deal with Disney, it seems that other film studios are getting in on the act of online films. Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM studios have got together and developed epix.
Working like an on-demand TV channel, the service is currently in beta, it will only be available to those with the epix TV channel. This means that your cable provider will be a deciding factor in whether you have the channel or not.

Read about it here:
http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/epix/

Flash coming to Android

Flash is coming to Android and probably before it appears on the iPhone. Flash has been sorely lacking on many mobile devices. With Android being open source, it was only matter of time before someone enabled Flash on it. Although Apple and Adobe are working together to get Flash onto the iPhone. The Palm Pre (which I'm quite excited about) will also support Flash.

http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-will-flash-come-to-android-before-the-iphone

new iPhone ad units

Ahead of version 3.0 of the iPhone and its software, AdMob have announced three new types of ad unit.
The new units will be:

• Mobile Social Networking, which lets consumers access advertisers' social content from an ad, including their Twitter feed, Facebook page, Digg, MySpace account, Flickr photos, and Linkedin.
• Search, whereby users can run searches within an advertiser's mobile site straight from an ad unit.
• Multi-Panel Banner, which delivers multiple calls to action in one rich media ad unit.
• Scrolling Canvas lets audiences access more information about a product or service without clicking away from the application they're on.

Read the full story here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/new-iphone-ad-units-focus-on-social-search-fresher-rich-media-044269/

Window's 7th Heaven?

So Acer UK's boss let it slip: Windows 7 will be released on 22nd October this year, not even 3 years since Vista was released.
I haven't had a play with Windows 7 yet, but it can't be worse than Vista. Nothing was compatible with it, the user interface was all wrong and the Aero-preview certainly didn't make up for it.

Read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8081003.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/02/windows7-october

Germany and Turkey are biggest online

Germany has the most unique visitors of any country in Europe and Turkey is the most active, viewing the most internet pages.

Marketing Vox does a nice summary of the stats:
http://www.marketingvox.com/germanys-online-audience-europes-largest-turkeys-most-engaged-044230/

Homepage Takeover tips

This is a great article on homepage takeovers.

10 keys to a homepage takeover that works:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23305.asp

Bing launched

Microsoft's new search engine bing has been launched. Now I didn't like live.com (now redirects to bing) but I've had a play with bing and it's actually a decent search engine. They've got a lot of ground to make up, but Microsoft might actually have something worthwhile here. Now they've just got to convince people of it and probably pull something out of the bag in the next year or two - to give people a reason to use them over google.

Read more: (Make sure you read the acronym note at the end. LOL)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/searchengines-microsoft

Pixar launched UP to top of US box office

Pixar's latest film UP has gone straight to the top of the US box office, taking $68.2 million. All I've got to say is go and watch it. This film is beautiful, funny, emotional and cinematic!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8076541.stm

Adobe UK price raise

Adobe is increasing the price of its software. Creative Suite Premium 4 will rise £123 to £1,372 (all ex. VAT). This means that it will cost £1,578 incl. VAT a total of £480 more than in the US.

Quick summary:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/254173/adobe-hikes-uk-prices-by-10.html

Lots more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/adobe-price-rises-pound-dollar-exchange