Quite frankly, we don't know whether to thank Old Spice or be mad at them. Their latest viral ad campaign has triggered a lot of laughter, yet at the same time seriously staunched productivity levels at the office over the past two days. No, seriously. We stand in awe before what the company's PR team is currently pulling off.
It all started a couple of months ago when a TV advertisement starring former football player and very manly man Isaiah Mustafa went viral. The general over-the-top humor and weirdness of it garnered a lot of attention in many blogs, all around the World. Subsequently, Old Spice came out with a second and third ad featuring Mustafa, aka Old Spice man.
The humor of the ads derive from its crass exaggerations and overly stressed manliness of its protagonist (by being so exaggerated the clips skillfully circumnavigate the shallows of sexism). Yesterday, Old Spice decided to turn up the heat. A small team of PR superheroes were locked in a room with Mustafa and his by now iconic towel and started to churn out video response after video response to mentions of the campaign on Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube.
Most of them are absolutely hilarious, and they are directed at famous Internet personalities (or, as above to other companies like The HuffPo) as well as lesser-known individuals who happened to talk about the Old Spice man. For all the glorious details please read the article over at ReadWriteWeb. We give gigantic kudos for a very well-played online advertising campaign, leave you to Old Spice's Youtube channel and are off applying Old Spice products, enhancing our general manliness. Monocle smile!
The team is munching away on some classic Swiss children's ice-cream. Enjoy the summer while it lasts!
Today's the day! We wish South Africa and all participating nations a great start to a wonderfully exciting and peaceful Soccer World Cup. Below Amazee's Chief Vuvuzela and Wudu officer blowing the horn for Switzerland.
Our colleague Michael went to New York on holiday and all we got is this überamazee ton of white and orange M&Ms! Yeehah, cheers, mate! (It is actually a lot bigger than it looks in the picture!)
It was by far the most fascinating presentation I've seen at Berlin's re:publica today: Prof. Peter Kruse on the question why the Web is mostly being discussed in a heated manner.
Based on his crunching and mapping the team could divide the web's heavy users into two surprisingly homogenous groups, each showing an opposing set of values: 1) the digital residents who love the social web and know it's important and 2) the digital visitors who don't love the Social Web, but use it because they know it's important. Let me not waste your time - enjoy his (German) slides and presentation...
Seems that I missed one this morning: Solar Impulse took off for its first test flight in Payerne, Switzerland!! Congrats from the Amazee team.
Technologies converge, competitors pop up and vanish, technology is allowing or ever richer applications to be built and the demands for better UX are growing every day: Whereas business requirements might remain the same, product development has become an ongoing journey with an unknown destination.
"Agile development" has therefore become the mantra of our industry. At the heart of Agile is the acknowledgement of uncertainty, which requires that flexible development be favored over rigid commitments and strict processes.
Effective UI builds on this agile line. It provides a good high level view on the team agile methodology and can serve as a basic handbook to guide your team towards an engaging UX. In it's core it's mostly a self promotional marketing tool allowing the corresponding Design agency Effective UI to spread their brand; following their call I landed on effective UI's website - not really a usability front-runner. However, the journey is the reward - and that's what their book is all about. Worth a read - and the next book to be discussed at the UX Book Club Zurich.
Look at the new, slick Amazee sneakers which Gregory got! He ordered them a couple of weeks ago, they are customized shoes and they show his pledge to his platform quite well! What do you think, would you wear them if we mass-produced those kickers?
10 months ago I posted a short review of Casanova's book Exodus to the Virtual World. A week ago I came across another book that's centered on the question how multiplayer online games impact our real life: Total Engagement by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read. Whereas Casanova takes a broader view on the social impact of MMOs, Reeves and Read focus on the question how game mechanics can be implemented in our work places to foster human motivation and productivity. Don't expect a ready made implementation guide, but a good analytical framework on how your work could change.
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Latest comments
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Boris Baldinger@Daniel:
I am sorry but I never have used Statuses. I can confirm moist of your steps. But you don't need to clone your original view. You have to duplicate it. (I assume that your original view is not a page)
In my example above i have a View-Pane. And the autorefresh part is a page. So I had to built the whole view as a page again so i can give it a path.
I hope this was helpful. If not, please feel free to contact me via E-Mail or Skype.
Permalink22.05.2013 -
GurpreetWell I have a different issue. Basically I want to write a general standalone script that parses different SVG files and makes some changes(permanent ones). It has nothing to do with the web. How do I go about it??
Permalink22.05.2013 -
Carla
We are beginning to use Drupal as a platform for clients and this was a great article to come across to kick start my learning. I have my own check list of modules to include that were mostly covered in this article however, I now have some thoughts on what am I missing since there were several here that I did not previously consider. Thanks for the enriching and thought provoking info!
Permalink21.05.2013
Media usage in Switzerland
0Here's a fine short video about current media usage patterns in Switzerland. It is in German, but the gist is: It is the same as everywhere else. New (online Social) Media is on the rise, Switzerland is a Facebook nation: If all Swiss Facebook users would form a Canton (the Swiss administrative unit below the federal state), Facebook would be the biggest one. Also, in the middle of the movie you get a glimpse of this hilarious piece of Swiss Youtube classic (which you'll probably only understand if you know Swiss German. Anyway ...).
(Via Thom Nagy.)