Two YouTube takeovers for basketball brands noticed this week...

180 just dropped a new interactive YouTube vid. It lets you control the camera angle as Dwight Howard throws it down. If his Adidas kicks are gonna change the game like he claims, I'd suggest The Commish also raise the regulation height of the rim to accomodate for his freakish frame.

Secondly, Nike has launched D-Wade's new Jordan Brand sneaker with a pretty Goth spot wrapped in a custom YouTube player. The scrub bar falls away as the video plays.

We've seen tinkering with the video landing page before, and switchable camera angles were pioneered years ago by the porn industry (like every other content/tech innovation), but these are both crafted nicely and bang on for the respective brands.

For 2 reasons, that I'm aware of today at least. Although it's possible to justify why 1 of these reasons is not actually that bad depending on your view of the world and humans in general..

Reason 1: I've not blogged, noted or uploaded anything to Bannerblog for a good few months (the last was here) luckily there's several noted geniuses running the site and moderately sharp (like a butterknife after a bong) people like tc here can get away with things, most of the time.

Reason 2: I'm posting about online gambling. Now, wether or not you see this particular example as bad karma or not depends on:

a) if you can agree with me that placing bets, wagers and playing game of chance has been with us since the dawn of time - think old fellas and 2up in the trenches or trying it on with swedish twins at the same time even though their sisters/brothers - that sort of thing

AND

b) if you can also agree that when it's peer to peer, mano to mano, that it's better, far better than TABCORP or the Victorian Government taking the profits and making desal plants with it. I mean the Victorian Government here in AU alone takes something above 1.5 billion ($375 per person old-ish data) annually.

Therefore, betfair is something closer to ok perhaps? I'm cool with it.

Anyway they've launched this site as part of the 8million seconds of summer campaign. It's pretty neat how it works using a Marumushi Newsmap type approach to display using scale and colour, available pools and odds, updating every few seconds.

If you're a betting man/woman, it's a better option than the pokies.

(by M&C Saatchi Melbourne)

This is a 10 meg banner! So rather than strangle your wifi by putting it on the main page, here's a link to it if you want to take a look. http://www.worktobejudged.com/strippause/peca.html

Unless you work at Victoria's Secret or Playboy, this is NSFW.

This is great:

New from CP+B:

Brammo, maker of electric powerbikes, is trekking to Washington DC in an attempt to meet President Obama. The hope is to pitch their Enertia powercycle as a readymade solution to the transportation crisis.

The cool thing is, there's no opulent hotel budgets or corporate jets. The guys are doing it all via Couchsurfing and with the help of electrical outlets in people's homes across the country.

If you can help, with a couch, a charge, or if your best friend's cousin knows a guy who knows The Prez get in touch with the guys as they make their journey.