Great Recap of Andrea Phillips' SXSW Talk: Cautionary Tales in Transmedia Storytelling | Wired

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Read the full Michael Anderson recap on Wired.com, March 30, 2011

Excerpt:

"Rabbit Holes

Phillips touched briefly and humorously on the subject of rabbit holes and starting points. Many games begin with anonymous mailings to people who have posted their addresses in places like Unfiction, hoping to receive trailheads or swag. She pointed out that transmedia people are not the only people who like to send anonymous packages, punctuating this statement with a picture of Ted Kaczynski. She added that anonymity does not give people incentive to participate; in fact, it is easier to reach an audience and generate greater interest by being upfront about the origin of a campaign..."

Share Happy - Smile Activated Vending Machine wins Best Kiosk/Installation at SXSW - Love this

Description from the Wall's/Unilever site:

"Share Happy

First we helped Walls create their new global brand positioning: "Share Happy".

Then we needed to bring Share Happy to life in simple, fun way with ice cream at the heart.

We created a wide range of activation but the centrepiece is the world's first smile activated vending machine.

Simply smile at our vending machine and it gives you a free ice cream.

Share Happy!"

How Game Mechanics Will Solve Global Warming - Seth Priebatsch's Keynote Kicks Off #SXSW with a Game

The last 10 years have been called the era of Web 2.0, a term used to describe a new type of online experience, wherein a user could be both author and audience. That decade, said SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch today in his opening keynote at the SXSW conference, was the decade of social. 

That decade, however, has been won, said Priebatsch. Facebook has come away as the clear leader and now, a new decade is upon us - the decade of games. These are not children's games, however. These are games that could change the world.

read the full post on readwriteweb.com

This will be fun....'With Tilt-Shift And A News Feed, Instagram Is Ready To Rock SXSW'

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From TechCrunch:

"For all the talk of group messaging apps being the breakout hits at SXSW this year, most people are overlooking another genre: mobile photo-sharing apps. But that’s probably because a few of those apps already are pretty big hits. Take Instagram, for example. The app already has well over 2 million users, even though it’s not even six months old yet. For some context, when Foursquare successfully launched at SXSW two years ago, they left town with just 5,000 users.

But just because Instagram has had some early success, that doesn’t mean they don’t recognize the value of putting out a new app in time for SXSW. And this morning we get just that. And it’s brings two pretty significant upgrades.

The first big addition is a new camera feature called tilt-shift. If you’re a camera app fanatic, you’ll undoubtedly already know what this is. For everyone else, it’s a new effect that allows you to focus on a certain part of an image and blur the rest. “It’s one of the most popular filters people have used outside of Instagram,” co-founder Kevin Systrom says, noting that they decided to build their own from scratch...."

read the full post on TechCrunch