Iain Tait - High Scores Talk at Playful London 31.10.08 from Iain Tait on Vimeo.

Iain's talk speaks to the gamer, the nerd and the stat lover in me. I wish I could attend a Playful festival. What a great idea.

It reminded me about this fantastic presentation on Reputation systems by a Yahoo! developer

I have implemented learnings from this into two projects launching next month for video game clients.

Have a look at the the contextual ads on the homepage and the actual article page for the Suiciding Billionaires. Oh dear.

It's worse for the actual article page. The orange banner started with "What would you do if you had more time"

Note for all brands. I don't want my banner shown on anything related to death. ie suicide, dogs killing kids, war etc etc. It's just too much of a minefield.

I guess publishers will lose ad revenue and have to settle for a "happy news site"

On a side note: Also why can I only comment on certain news articles on news.com.au.

Howard calling shotgun to Obama's place = OK,
Babysitters Dog kills little girl = OK,
Guy with pants down on ski lift (very front page worthy) = OK
but suiciding billionaires = NO and
a driver arrested speeding and wanking (again front page worthy) = NO

Contagious Magazine has done a pretty damn comprehensive wrap of some of the best tech/web/youtubey kind of stuff from last year.

You can Download it free here.

Thanks to Iain over at Crack Unit for the heads up.

This is insane.

A tech company in Japan has set up an interface that allows a houseplant to actually blog its 'thoughts'.

The plant interface system, uses surface potential sensors to read the weak bioelectric current flowing across the surface of the leaves. This natural current fluctuates in response to changes in the immediate environment, such as temperature, humidity, vibration, electromagnetic waves and nearby human activity. A specially developed algorithm translates this data into Japanese sentences, which are used for the plant’s daily blog posts.

Of course, it's in Japanese so I can't tell if the plants' blog is informative or entertaining. For all I know It could be just blogging about the Dancing Baby from Ally McBeal.

Kick-ass technology though.

Via Pink Tentacle.

I found out about this site while researching Open Social last month.

While it's no way as sexy as Delicious Library it's web based and I can use it on my dirty PC. Delicious Library is Mac only. Boo!

The one feature missing which is on Delicious library is "loan" which lets you keep track of who you have loaned your books to. Which would help me as I don't know who has my Zombie Survival Guide!

The appeal of tracking all the books you have read and own is two fold. One you get to show off and two you will discover new books. Either by the same author or by looking at your friends books.

It also says a lot about who you are by what you read.

Techcrunch have a few posts about Shelfari as do Mashable.

Librarything (the biggest in this market) let you know what they think Shelfari and how they have been spamming users.

Library Thing doesn't look as sexy but the huge user base is appealing. But I've just spent an hour adding all my books I can;t be assed doing it again.

The Australian Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) has published it's annual list of the most complained about ads in 2008. Unsurprisingly an ad for Kotex Tampons that featured a women taking her Beaver to the beach, shopping and getting a manicure drew the most number of complaints - 185 out of a total 2350 received.

Watch the ad

Despite the complaints, Kotex produced two more sequels -

The ad that received the second highest number of complaints was 'Manning Toppings' for Dominos Pizza which features a Mary Poppins inspired character saying 'It's SuperCalaFreakinAwsome!'. It's unclear whether the complaints were regarding the language or the poor acting. (we hope the later)

With brands spending so much money trying to build communities I find it amusing that one so popular should announce that it is to die. JPG Magazine announced recently (Jan1) it would be shutting up shop by Jan 5th. Wow 4 days to clear your desk and take down your personal photos. Harsh.

What brand will come in and save the day for little old JPG Magazine?

Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Yahoo!/Flickr, Sony hell even Microsoft with their Expression suite could jump in and save the day and buy themselves a ready made community and have them kissing their ass for doing so. Kodak already sponsor the site in some way so why not take the reigns and own that sucka?

Why not start 2009 with a pre-made community and use that to help snowball what ever you had planned to do later int he year. You might even be able to buy it, put a proper revenue model in place (easier said than done) and flip it.

The community response has been huge check out the Save JPG!!! page which is asking if people want to pay a membership fee.

JPG Mag seem open to ideas so fingers crossed someone with some cash and some vision can step in. It's a bad time of year to try and round up some quick cash though.

All I can say is if you buy it slap the people at 8020 Media as they are obviously have no business sense or respect to their community for wanting to pull the rug from the site so fast. Also it seems Minor Ventures (the backer of 8020 Media) doesn't have the moxy to make a sale or maybe wanted too much?

Note: If you're in trouble then ask for help earlier. Oh and losers cant be choosers. Why let the community die. Take any offer you can get hand over the keys and be thankful.

Update: Techcrunch have posted that a number of buyers are in talks. Smugmug is one but this site charges it's users so JpgMag users can expect to get hit with a fee if this goes ahead.

Why is it that some fan made trailers get more views than the actual real trailers for movies? Maybe it's because they kick ass like this one for Thundercats movie which isn't even green lit yet. Fans will be fans.

And some not so good like below

But between them they have gathers 2M views. I think all studios should encourage fans to create trailers for films that have only just been announced. Why not get the marketing started as early as possible? Especially now with so many movies being made from video games, books and TV shows. They all have fan bases waiting to see something visual.

Twitter is great don't get me wrong but it's not perfect. With all the post's praising it as the next coming I thought I'd point out a few areas in which it actually is shit. Well maybe shit is a harsh term but the following are areas where it's not that well suited. I feel these are valid but feel free to correct me where my logic is broken. 1: Having a real conversation: On Twitter you reply to the @name system and if you're not using the Twitter website or a more advanced twitter app you miss even the post they were referring to. Also 140 characters is great for status updates but not conversations. You become shorter in replies and it's worse than email for feeling "distant and rude". People are only now working out how to send emails without sounding like demands. 140 characters means you must remove these niceties and often subtle uses of language. Note: I said "real" conversation. If most of your conversations in real life are "I like this book" and then you get "yeah me too" then Twitter is good for you you rude bastard :) 2: Crowd Sourcing: Crowd Sourcing or Friend Sourcing same thing. Let's say you want to find out what the best type of laptop bag or what's the best taco place in New Orleans. (both examples I have seen asked on Twitter) this seems like a legitimate use of Twitter, however I feel this is not the case. Main problem: No one can see or respond to other people's responses. So you end up with heaps of the same replies (not that bad) but you also don't let people comment on other replies. Someone might say "X is awesome" another person on a blog might see this and say "X is totally shit, I used it for a week and it gave me a rash" On Twitter you miss this analysis. If you are driving around New Orleans then you need a quick answer but if you're researching a laptop bag you don't mind waiting a few days or a week to make an informed choice. Twitter only offers you a very short time line to get an opinion. No one (sorry for the hyperbole) checks Tweets from a week ago and if you're a constant twitterer they probably cant. So you only crowd source the small percentage of your followers checking at that time. The best addition to blogging comments in the last year has been "threaded comments." Disqus, Intense Debate, JS-kit all offer this with their comment systems and it rocks. It makes blog comments that much more like a real conversation. You can reply to a direct comment and read that comment thread instead of the usual "hey 12.34 you suck" which ends up happening on many blogs with the standard comments implemented. Also with a blog you could jump in and say "oh I don't mind paying $500 for the bag if its good" which might help people with their comments. Twitter's 140 characters limit the amount of info you could have first tweeted. The best way to handle this is to just Tweet to a blog post with threaded comments. Problem solved. 3: Getting to know the real person: I thought Twitter would let me see a side of friends and people I admire that would not come across on their site. I actually believed the Twitter in 2 minutes video that everyone would post like the video suggested. How gullible. The majority (maybe it's who I follow?) just tweet links to their blogs like it's a news bulletin and link to articles. Very little insight, very little "so what are you doing" just link pimping. That's normal I guess but if someone like James Cameron was on Twitter I'd want to know what he thought of the catering on the set of Avatar or what he thought of the latest episode of Lost. Not just the latest poster for the film. Which would you find more interesting? Shaq seems to have done it right. Note: If you run a big news based blog lets take Destructiod as an example I'd love to know what's happening at the office. Who just go drunk and pissed on a console at the xmas party. What games the editors are playing, who lost at foosball. I know it's weird but it'll be more insightful than just links to each posted article. I guess #3 isn't the tool itself like the other points are it's the mindset of the user. Well that's all I got. I love Twitter and I check it religiously when I get home from work (too much distraction during work hours) and I'm inspired by the number of inventive uses for it by individuals and companies. I just think it's not perfect like it has ben made out to be. I look forward to what other people think. Oh and you can follow me (Ashley) on Twitter @100ftzombie

This is not new. But it looks pretty swell. The new online campaign from W&K for Old Spice. Perfect for boosting your self-esteem if your self-googling results are less than satsifactory.

Swaggerize Yourself.

***** Note : Safari users will see an error. You need to change your cookie security settings in preferences to 'Always Accept'. It's a known bug Disqus are working to fix *******

Disqus have implemented Facebook Connect to their comments system which means Bannerblog is now using Facebook Connect for comments. Hazahh!

if you run a blog and don't use Disqus for your comments you are seriously missing out.

Facebook Connect is the "killer app" that we will see spread through sites in 2009 like wildfire. It also strengthens Facebook as "the" social network.

Ummm yeah. I hope this is a student competition entry.

D&AD has released a bunch of their President's Lectures for free online. You used to have to be a pom and drink weak lager to see these, but no more.

A few are on Digital Advertising, a few are on other sectors of design and advertising.

Here, Nik Roope from Poke talks about judging the Digital Installations category:

How the hell did that get in? - Digital Installations from D&AD on Vimeo.

mUmBRELLA is a new Australian based marketing blog by Tim Burrows the former editor of B&T magazine.

It's actually quite good with more than the regurgitated press releases which you'd expect from someone with a magazine background. Sorry Tim :)

B&T missed a a good opportunity to compliment their mag with a blog like Creative Review did with their blog. They have changed the format of the magazine so it works hand in hand with the blog.

Oh Christmas eve BlueFreeway investors got a nice present when then found out BlueFreeway has bought the remain shares in Mass Media and sold their stake in Deepend.

What I found interesting was they sold back their 50.1% share of Deepend and then told everyone "while giving BlueFreeway 50.1% equity, actually did not provide us with management control"

I wonder how many other deals like this they did? Why buy 50.1% and not have management control? Why not just buy 50% or 49%? Oh the 50.1% implies you control it without doing so. I'll have to remember that.

With BLU sitting on 4c and HYO on 2c, 2009 will either spell the end two these two listed companies or it could be the year they were looking for. The credit crunch and economic downturn doesn't bode well for companies looking for a hot cash flow injection but it could also mean they actually try and turn a real profit. I hope they either both start kicking some ass or just die already as this prolonged death curdle has gotten old.

Full Disclosure: I used to work for Hyro from 2000-2002 in the previous incarnation of the company (before they were sold to Ferrier Babcock in 2000 under receivership) owed me $10,000 which went unpaid as I (among others) was an unsecured creditor. I did get to keep my job though.

I am also not a financial advisor nor do I own shares in either company. We only have 5c coins here in Australia. The 1c and 2c went out long ago ;)

We have added JS-Kit's thumbs up and down rating system across all the banners on the site. This replaces the old Rating system we had. The best part is now you can see what is the top rated banners across the entire site.

We have also added the ratings to the archives so you can see what is rated what while browsing like here for example. Pretty sweet!

Hopefully this all works without a hitch. We felt that thumbs up and down was better than a 5 star rating system. Share your thoughts in the comments?

Here's a more top level breakdown from Js-Kit. It' would be good if this could be customised more but I guess you get what your given.

It's funny because it's true.

"My Wife would like one of those" hehe

Funnier than this previous AYDS example as no one has ever died of a Wonder Boner.

Video found on my new fav site YesButNoButYes add this to your Google reader now.

Here's another example Rimming Sugar haha I know what everyone is getting for xmas.