Creatively, it is always nice to keep an eye on new and engaging formats, so we turn to a couple of sites spotted by Steve Lo Presti: Media Mind (aka Eyeblaster) run a blog which allows users to look at a wide range of differing advertising formats. In the spirit of openness and collaboration, they helpfully provide the code for these, too. Atlas also runs the Atlas Institute and download centre which can be useful sources of information.

Lego announced big profits this week, fuelled by the success of the strategic decision a few years back to develop bespoke Lego sets as part of movie franchises. The fact that Lego has seen a resurgence amongst adults (10% of Lego purchasers sit within a category known as AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego)) has also been a great help. Anyway, Clone Wars is the current hot trend, so this site is quite fun to play with. Watch out for ‘Cars’ which, according to my 6 year old, is the next big thing. Oh, and by the way, I came across this site, which seems to be an interesting set of musings on Gen Y, Kids Culture and Community online. Worth a peek.

Finally, Charlie Sheen has recently broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to reach 1 million followers on Twitter, achieving this dubious honour in just over 25 hours (at the last check, he was standing at 1,489,036 followers) Socially irresponsible? Or just an age old human tendency to laugh at someone else’s misery, whilst taking comfort in the fact that it isn’t us? I’ll let you decide.

Just for fun
•    You are Not a Photographer – a vitriolic commentary on ‘professional’ photography shots
•    City Forward – a mashup from IBM that allows users to delve deep into the detail about their city
•    Red Bull Street Art – a collaborative collection of sites using Google Street View that showcase street art from around the world. Mashups, crowdsourcing and Urban Graffiti – so hip, it hurts.
•    Language Development Live – a bright spark at  MIT has charted the development of his child’s language acquisition from birth to the age of 5. It is a fascinating insight into the human brain (especially for anyone who studied psychology). Watch out for the TED talk when it is released.

The best modern careers sites go beyond simply promoting jobs: they provide content that help a candidate gain a deep insight into the culture of the firm that they are looking for. They do this with a range of tricks and tools: 3d panoramics, games, blogs, microblogs, tests, challenges, videos. And the better ones, the ones that win awards, make the experience of accessing that content part of the brand journey.

As a result, I’ve been looking for examples of interactivity, where the user gets more out of a site experience the more they explore. These four examples show how interactive media can help create an immersive experience that crosses a range of differing senses: touch, sound and sight. Can’t do taste or smell yet, but I can’t believe that it’s too far off… maybe we could do that for Nandos?

Enjoy

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A portfolio site for a Japanese developer, what a better way to showcase your wares that by encouraging a user to interact with it. Some of the pages can make you feel slightly nauseous, but what a fun site! (If you get stuck, select the MENU> icon on the LHS…)

Snowboarding – an interactive experience
We’ve talked before about the use of 3D panoramic in video and I love this example. Drag your mouse around inside the video and watch the video pan out from a range of perspectives. Genius!

Mashup Breakdown
One from our very own DJ Dix. It’s a fun visual way of representing music. You can select different tracks by clicking on the dropdown underneath the page title. Just turn the volume down a bit…

Life in a day: One World. 24 Hours. 6 Billion Perspectives.
A while back, the digerati were asked to help create a feature film that would act as an interactive time capsule that provided a portrait of the world on a particular day (July 24). Individuals were asked to create short videos of some aspect of what they were doing on July 24. User-generated content on a scale that has never before been attempted. In particular they were asked to answer 3 questions and show what they had in their pocket. The three questions were: what do you fear most in your life today? What do you love? What makes you laugh?

The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 2011. With Kevin MacDonald as director and Ridley Scott as producer, its going to be something unique and special. Have a look at some of the videos and see what you think…

It is not simply that fact that the internet has been around, but that the iGeneration approach life and technology in a very different way to us Boomers and Gen Xers – I was explaining this to a journalist last night when he was struggling to comprehend how any individual was capable of concentrating on more than one device at a time…

Anyway, four links today. I’ve looked into the past, the present and the future and come up with some sites that are interesting, engaging and intriguing. I’m sure that there is a great creative term for this, but Andy won’t allow me to use ‘diaspora’…

Enjoy

The magical mystery internet time machine

Want to see what the Microsoft website looked like in 1996? Of want to compare the Hodes website now with what existed in 2003? Simply type in the URL and hey presto, you are presented an archive of the site and it’s numerous incantations spanning backwards over the years. At the very least, it is a good way of seeing how far (or little) a client’s web strategy has progressed.

Twitter Job Search

So the OnRec Awards may have been a letdown for most of us, but they did herald the official launch of TwitterJobSearch. Not to be confused with Twitter Jobs, the official Twitter Careers site. Hmmmm…

An out of this world browsing experience

For those of you who enjoyed the churaumi shark, try this. Enter any search term you like and the site will create a universe of planets out of pictures that have been uploaded to the web. Not only will it provide results for the search term, but also related terms. It’s just a lovely way of conveying information in a different and engaging way. Try typing in G20 or Hodes…

Plug-ins for Photoshop

One of the creatives, really. A veritable feast of tools and plug-ins to enhance your Photoshopping wizardry. Well, those of you who use Photoshop, that is…