Sideshow

My FoxSearchlight

FoxSearchlight came to us to create a social network for all their movie buffs, that would allow them setup their own blog within the My FoxSearchlight community.

A new feature we've just added, allows users to apply movie themes to their blog. The first theme to be available is for the recently released movie, Juno. Once a user's blog has been junofied, the user can then take advantage of the invitation system that allows users to invite friends to My.FoxSearchlight, as well as earn points by doing a number of community building / buzz building tasks.

Recruiting Web/Interaction Designers

Sideshow Europe is seeking talented web/interaction designers to create outstanding work for its international clients. Eligible candidates would need to be living in Cyprus or be willing to relocate to the island of Cyprus.

Consumers Communications Bill Of Rights

A recent article in Crain's NY (Free reg. required) highlighted the new hiring spree going on at many of New York's advertising agencies. The difference, according to the article, is that they are not "martini-drinkers who fling airplanes around while dreaming up sexy TV commercials. Most of the new hires are people like Tina Miletich, the first managing director of interactive advertising at Wunderman N.Y."

Ms. Miletich develops marketing systems that analyze and react to a whole host of marketing data and, therefore, requires her to manage teams of technical "geeks" and database masters.

What really caught my eye was the image associated with the article. It lists Wunderman's top five "Communication bill of rights for consumers." A nice foundation for every mass marketer to consider:

1. Tell me clearly who you are, and why you are contacting me.
2. Tell me clearly what you are, or are not, going to do with the information I give you.
3. Don't pretend that you know me personally. You don't know me; you know some things about me.
4. Don't assume that we have a relationship.
5. Don't assume that I want to have a relationship with you.

Is it fun being you?

Whether you like the ABC Television show "Boston Legal" or not it has some superb writing that often makes you think and laugh at the same time. Each episode closes with senior partner Denny Crane (played by William Shatner) closing out his day with fellow lawyer and friend Alan Shore (played by James Spader) sitting together out on their office terrace sharing a drink and a cigar.

Last night, their closing exchange was....

Denny Crane: It's fun being me, is it fun being you?

Alan Shore: Most of the time...yes it is.

Denny Crane: What else is there?

Great line. Great question.

Update: John O'Leary left these excellent thoughts in the comments:
Of course this leads into the larger question (which is probably why you liked the comment to begin with): Is it fun being you AS AN ORGANIZATION? I still can't get over why people run businesses that aren't fun/interesting/exciting places to work, producing products or services that aren't cool and innovative and don't make a difference.
If-as seems to be the case with most business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs—a majority of our waking hours are spent on work-related activities, how can we justify spending most of our lives doing something that doesn't matter?

A keynote - The death of blogs for business

Good morning everyone and thank you for coming today. Today is a big day in the evolution of blogs as a communication tool for every business in the world. Ironically, today I am here to announce the death of Blogs. (pause for audience gasp) It's the word "Blog" that has become the problem. It has got to go. Basically, as a word, well... it sucks. (Pause for short gasp.) It has caused CEO's and business owners to avoid embracing the medium by a clear majority. Too early in the life of the word "Blog" it became synonymous with people writing about the consistency of their morning oatmeal.

Later, big media pushed it into the news as a place where people voice their political rants. What's worse, "I have a blog, do you blog?" has become the conversational equivalent of "I went to Harvard, where did you go?" If we want all businesses to truly embrace the power of this important evolution of marketing and market interaction, we need to give it a name that allows businesses to easily embrace it.

From here forward, blogs will now be called (dramatic pause, scan the audience with your eyes to pull their attention in.) living websites.

Now, I'll bet you are thinking "I didn't know my web site was dead"... Well, it is. I am sorry. Take a day, mourn, and then you must move on. Your web site would want this for you. It didn't really promote your purpose, it didn't let people in on your passion, it didn't make them want to come back and see what else your company had to say and it didn't allow you to continually tell the ever changing story that is your business. Now, that sounds dead to me. Dead doesn't sell well. If your business is alive then why would your web site not be the same? The question every business owner, entrepreneur, CEO, etc... has to ask themselves is now a simple one. Do I want a web site that is alive or one that is dead? That is much easier to answer. Now the conversation is simple. &quotMy web site is alie, is yours?" their answer.. "Hmmm, I am not sure. But alive sounds much better to me than dead. How do I make my web site alive?" Much better and far more exciting.

So, in summation, I say to all of you (pound podium for emphasis) go back to your place of business with a new mission... Let your website live.

Thank you.

Cameroid hearts Flickr

One of our favourite snappers has set up a Cameroid Flickr group. You can use the brilliant Snipshot plug-in (available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox) to quickly add your hosted Cameroid Snaps to your Flickr account. If you're not a Flickr user yet, you're missing out.

Using Cameroid on a Mac

In most instances Cameroid should pick your webcam automatically after you've approved the request to access it. In some cases, most notably Macs with built in iSight cameras, the wrong device will be picked and you will not see the webcam feed. Thankfully, you can resolve the issue in a couple of easy steps. The process below was tested on an iMac but should work on most systems having issues.

First, right click (or Mac-key click) anywhere on the Cameroid interface and then select "settings". Then, a small settings window will pop up. Choose the webcam icon and then in the drop down menu in that section select your webcam, in this case "USB Video Class Video" which, surprisingly, is the name for iSight camera.

That's it. You should now see yourself in the Cameroid window. Happy snapping.

Night Cap Challenge

Levaquin is an antibiotic drug developed by healthcare company Ortho McNeil, Inc.

The Goal:

As part of Ortho McNeil's medical education initiative, the Falk Group was commissioned to develop a nation-wide contest that would be used to help educate hospital staff on the benefits and applications of Levaquin in the ER. The Falk Group asked us to build an online game where the doctors would sign up as teams for the “Night Cap Challenge” and then go online to answer 5 questions in 5 different categories. At the end of each game there would be a bonus question where the player can wager all or some of their points on the final question.

The Result:

To make it fun and engaging we decided to create the game in the style of a TV game show. Built in Flash the game has an animated host "Eddie" who presents the questions and reacts verbally when you get questions right, wrong. Eddie also provides commentary between rounds and when starting the game. Each team's score is recorded at the end of the round and posted to the score board.

Frogged by Jumptags

We all love some good swag. To celebrate the launch of their "shortcuts to anything" web 2.0 application Jumptags our good friends at NetQuest have sent us a box full of stress-ball/frog hybrids. They're all over the place now.

We developed the brand and main UI elements which were then expertly integrated into the ColdFusion-powered website by the Jumptags team. In a nutshell, Jumptags are bookmarks on steroids -- you can store anything from websites and RSS feeds to Skype contacts and then access them in mere seconds with custom keywords. Best way to experience it is to, well, experience it so get a free account today.

Cameroid is go for launch!

We've just soft-launched our latest diversion, Cameroid. While it would definitely be better to try it out for yourself, in a nutshell it's a quick way for people to take snapshots online with their webcam. While many webcams and even computers come with bundled webcam software we found that most were pretty cumbersome. Mostly, people had a hard time storing their photos properly which made sharing and using them a pain. Since Flash 9 allowed us to do some nifty stuff with webcams, bitmaps and the likes we thought we'd build something that could "allow anyone with a webcam to take and store a snapshot in seconds". And, lo and behold, here it is.

But that's not all. While we where getting people in front of their webcams we thought it would be cool to let the have a bit of fun. The effects, filters and scenes tabs lets anyone colour, distort and super-impose their mugs in various hilariously embarrassing ways. These have been rigorously field-tested as you can see here and here. Hard work, let me tell you. Hard work.