Wow. Indeed. 'Stunning iTunes Visualizer, Powered By Bold Experiment In UI Design' | Co.Design

Planetary, a free iPad app from the data-artists at Bloom, is jaw-droppingly, eye-poppingly gorgeous. It analyzes your iTunes music library and visualizes it as a 3D galaxy, where artists become stars that form constellations, albums are planets orbiting those stars, and individual tracks are moons that spin around the planets. It's "music of the spheres" made stunningly literal. But according to Bloom, it's so much more than that.

read the full post on fastcodesign.com

Great Deets!: See Three Great Social Media Campaigns From Brazil, China and Hungary | Original Post on AdAge

Considering that billions of people around the world who use social networks speak a language other than English, it's no surprise that social-media marketing successes aren't limited to the United States. This week in San Francisco, the Bees Awards http://www.beesawards.com/ recognized some of the most innovative international players from 33 countries. Ad Age picked three social media campaigns that demonstrate unusual and successful means brands used to get recognition and customers.

T-Mobile and Facebook

T-Mobile and Facebook

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What is it? The Chinese Forest Gump: Canon's 2010 Beijing International Marathon Campaign. Winner of Best Use of Micro-Blogging category.

Who created it? Weber Shandwick China

Why it worked: To promote Canon's fourth year of sponsoring the 30th Beijing International Marathon, the agency came up with the concept of a real-life version of Forrest Gump who invites people on the street to take a run with him. The Chinese runner -- who ran non-stop during the day -- used Weibo http://weibo.com/, a Chinese Twitter-style platform, to post his location and other updates. His messages became so popular that Canon created an official account to handle the overflow and communicate with people who replied to his posts and asked questions. He was invited to run in the marathon, creating more buzz and ending up as a big story in traditional media outlets as well as online and on Weibo.

The campaign was designed to embody Canon China's slogan -- which translates to "Delighting You Always." By joining technology to real-life events, the campaign used social media in a relevant way that was clearly successful -- all over Beijing's streets.

What is it? T-Mobile: Taking Facebook to the Streets, a finalist in the Best Use of Alternative tools category.

Who created it? Saatchi & Saatchi (Hungary) http://www.saatchi.hu/

Why it worked: Saatchi used Facebook and 800 magic markers to promote T-Mobile in Budapest. An entire T-Mobile Facebook page was brought to the streets in the form of a 13-foot tall billboard -- but it was no typical LCD display. Instead, artists created analog versions of users' Facebook status updates by hand on the paper billboard, including replicas of their profile pictures, with the 800 markers. The billboard's location in a busy Budapest square created huge buzz, enticing passersby to access Facebook on their cell phones, post to the project's Facebook page, and watch their status being re-created right in front of them. The ads that normally appear on the right-hand side of a Facebook page described T-Mobile products.

The campaign combined the technology inherent in social networking with IRL ("in real life") experiences. It employs some of the best traits of social media, like the invite to consumers to participate, to help them get to know the brand and have fun. The mix of digital and analog kept users interested and wanting more. The magic marker action was amplified and scaled through the web, with a live-stream of the event posted on the Facebook page, alongside T-Mobile messaging. And the throw-back magic markers add an interesting statement on modern times, harking back to the days we wrote everything with pen and paper.

What is it? Fiat Mio: Brazil Crowdsourced Car. Winner of Best Use of Social Media category.

Who created it? AgênciaClick Isobar (Brazil)

Why it worked? Fiat combined social media and reality in an unprecedented way to launch the first-ever crowdsourced car. In this campaign, Fiat built a forum at http://www.fiatmio.cc -- its own social network, so to speak -- and created a space for dialog between the designers of the car and Fiat drivers. The members of the community were invested in the final results of the campaign -- a real live car called the Fiat Mio. Consumers answered questions about gadget integration, what kind of driving the Mio should be planned for, as well as the ultimate crowdsourced car question -- should it be connected to the social web?

The car was launched to great fanfare at the 26th Annual Automobile Show in Sao Paulo. By telling Fiat exactly what they wanted in a car and using social media to do it, consumers believed they were helping to shape the future of the industry. A brand message gains effectiveness when customers are engaged -- and this is the ultimate engagement, giving the consumer a hand in creating the product.

an original post from adage

Latest | Fathom Data Viz Captures Stats of the Union on Health of the Nation - Brilliant

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From the site:

"Stats of the Union is powered by the Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) report from 2009, which consists of data from federal agencies including the Census Bureau, Department of Health & Human Services, Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency.

With all this data you can look at population, risk factors and indicators of health. Zoom in to get the specific data for a county. Zoom out and compare your county to an overview for each state or for the whole country."

Super cool @CampfireNYC campaign: Game of Thrones Asks Fans to Play Mouth-Watering Metagame | Magazine 

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Excerpt from Michael Anderson's article on wired.com:

"...The Scents of Westeros

Campfire’s fan engagement marketing campaign launched on February 25th with the mailing of carefully crafted scent boxes containing fifteen different scents mailed to a number of bloggers. Inside each box, recipients found a map of Westeros, six vials of wax-stoppered scents, and illuminated scrolls describing the contents. Fan communities and websites were contacted and provided additional scent boxes to give away to their readers.

In addition to the sensory experience itself, each week featured a different puzzle housed at TheMaestersPath.com. Completing each puzzle would unlock a clip from the series, add a link to your maester’s chain, and provide a GetGlue badge. The sensory puzzle required players to locate the symbols associated with each of the fifteen different scents before aligning a wheel to indicate their origins...."

Fascinating: Here's Spotify's Master Plan: Tackle iTunes Head-On - Excerpt from BusinessWeek

A couple of weeks ago Spotify, the European music streaming startup, came in for sharp criticism when it made the decision to place tight limits on the music you could listen to for free. It made financial sense, but left us wondering where its strategy was going.

On May 4 it revealed the next piece in the puzzle, and it's a bold move: a new version that makes it—for music, at least—a direct competitor to Apple's (AAPL) iTunes.

What do you get from the new, improved app?

Management and synchronization: Until now, Spotify users (like me) conducted their desktop listening through the app, but still had to juggle the music on their iPods through iTunes. No more. The new client allows you to manage music on an iPod. The system also works for Android.

Download service: Spotify has offered you the chance to purchase tracks for quite a while, but it was a piecemeal, white-label service where users could only buy a single track at a time. Now there's a more straightforward shopping system, which allows people to purchase entire playlists of MP3s with a single click—and sync them directly to their music player. The basic prices seem to be a little higher than in iTunes, but the more tracks you buy the cheaper it gets: In the U.K., for example, a bundle of 10 tracks will cost £7.99 ($13.16) but 100 tracks will cost £50 ($82.38).

Read the full post on businessweek.com

Gorgeous. Makes Me Happy: Dominic Boudreault's Timelapse - The City Limits

Dominic Boudreault created this gorgeous montage video of 5 cities:

"I shot this timelapse montage from late 2010 through early 2011.
One year in the making.

My goal was to show the duality between city and nature.

Locations include :

- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Quebec city, Quebec, Canada
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Manhattan, New York, USA
- Chicago, Illinois, USA"

You can visit his website at dominicboudreault.com

Fascinating: MyndPlay - Mind controlled video & movie platform actively seeking content

What is MyndPlay?

Click here to see MyndPlay Introduction Video on YouTube.

Achieve Peak Performance Brain Training through Entertainment...

MyndPlay is the world's first mind controlled media player and platform which connects with EEG BCI technology to allow viewers an engaging, innovative new level of interactivity with live motion. MyndPlay gives the user the ability to interact with and change the direction and outcome of a video or movie using only their minds.

This new media platform will revolutionize interactive film, mental sports training  and video content by truly immersing the viewer into the plot, storyline and the characters by allowing them to direct or influence the outcome just by relaxing and focusing, they choose who lives and dies, whether the bad guy or the good guy wins, or whether or not the golfer makes that all important putt.

MyndPlay puts the viewer in control...Click here to read more

From the site:

"Create and sell content online to almost 1 million headset users

MyndPlay was conceived as an idea to provide brain training through entertainment, that is why with MyndPlay the viewer does not only have control over the content, but also develops control over their own emotions which transfer into everyday life, this allows MyndPlay to work with not just movies, but applications ranging from peak performance in sports through mental training, to controlling your nerves on a date, MyndPlay has been designed to be as flexible as possible allowing the greatest amount of content to be produced both professionally and by enthusiasts.

MyndPlay offers companies and organizations an opportunity to be at the forefront of cutting edge technologies and the latest immersive media solutions. This new innovative entertainment platform allows the viewer to be part of an experience above and beyond the standard video format as they connect with the content in an emotional and engaging way. Companies will be able to connect with global markets as the format is launched internationally. At the same time, PR potential is huge, as this platform has never been experienced before. Myndplay is the future of interactive video technology. MyndPlay also has the facility to create viewer feedback logs offering producers and film makers biofeedback data from every viewing allowing them to get scientific feedback on the affects of their visual content.

Myndplay applications will provide the viewer with instant gratification as they interact with live video and in turn become emotionally involved and attached to the brand or character. Myndplay movies provide replay value as the viewer can watch the clip over and over again trying to change the outcome of the movie. Never before have viewers had such a good reason to revisit a movie or video a second and third, maybe fourth time.

MyndPlay welcomes all levels of content partners to create and sell content online through the MyndPlay app store, as the market grows so does demand, production companies, brands, video training companies and film makers can use the system to generate a new source of revenue through online sales.

Content Ideas:

•Video Apps – 1-5 minute interactive live action games and entertainment
•Interactive Advertising
•Short Films
•Feature Length Movies – New and re-edited
•Corporate Videos – i.e. Presenting, Public speaking
•Sports Training Videos – i.e. Mastering Golf
•Well being and personal health videos
•Socially aware content, youth and children
•Interactive Trailers"