welikey

Just awesome

tinafrog01 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:37:00 +0000

Lego Matrix…

and side by side comparison to the film…

in honor of Black Friday

tinafrog01 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:36:50 +0000

Thanksgiving in my household growing up meant two things, lots of delicious food and shopping. My poor Dad suffered through the holiday season with our constant rounds of marathon shopping days. I’m missing out on all the “Black Friday” events.

Today, I was forward a link to Tobi Virtual Dressing Room – a really cool use of Augmented Reality technology – uses webcam and object recognition to merge a “physical real-world environment with virtual computer-generated imagery” (thanks wikipedia) to try clothes online before purchasing. It integrates with Facebook too just in case I can’t decide on what new dress to buy for New Years. I’m not sure I want every friend of mine commenting on my choices, so mission tonight is see if can share with only my sisters.

Tobi Virtual Dressing Room

Print out then hold up “marker” paper in front of you and your webcam.

Marker paper magically changes into a dress!

Resize and position item.

Rate clothes you “try on” by motioning your hand over the “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” icons.

Share photo on Facebook…

Not another Best Job in the World campaign, but plenty of “buzz”

bbbrandon — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:52:16 +0000

The Westword Weekly News in Denver, Colorado recently had an open job position for a Medical Pot Reviewer. Many claim that this was “The REAL Best Job in the World” (sorry Hamilton Island and Ben Southall). Regardless of your beliefs towards legalized marijuana, the speed and quality of job application responses are both amazing and hilarious. Especially considering this was never intended to be a campaign.

Marketing Lesson: The right incentive to the right target audience will always get a high response rate. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

Vodafone Symphonia

tinafrog01 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:15:23 +0000

A cute little video a Kiwi friend of mine sent to me today from Vodafone New Zealand.

I find the making of videos more interesting. And it occured to me that something like this could only happen in a small market like New Zealand where there isn’t much network traffic in the early hours of the day, compared to somewhere like China or the US. However, China does have this.

In honor of Halloween being around the corner

tinafrog01 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:51:02 +0000

The best apple geek costume…

How’s your Pictionary skills?

tinafrog01 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:59:00 +0000

“Lost in translation” fairly sums up my daily dealings with various work counterparts across the region. I’ve found the best way to converse with my colleagues is not over the phone, but over instant messenger – mainly because they don’t ignore me (or maybe they can’t refuse to answer because my question mark sparkles?). IM is a handy tool for instant communication, but also for instant universal translation of pretty much any concept. If I don’t understand some email from a colleague, I can IM him and he’ll respond to my question in a mixture of text and emoticons. My Korean counterparts are very good in communicating in Emoji (a Japanese term for picture icons or emoticons). At first it’s strange to read pictures and text, but it’s easy to grasp and these little emoticons have made my work life easier with fewer “Lost in Translation” moments.

On that point, here’s an interesting project – Fred Benenson wants to translate public domain novel Moby Dick into Emoji, and has set up a site asking for donations to fund this project. He plans to have each sentence translated three times by different Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, with a different set of workers then voting on which sentence is best. Those who pledge will either receive a PDF or hardcopy of the book, depending on how generous they are. Based on the provided samples, Emoji Dick will be a difficult read for most, except my Korean colleagues.

digital camera + build in projector =…

tinafrog01 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Shout out to Mike Fung for pointing this video out to me. Such a simple idea from Nikon camera in Japan.

Talks Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

tinafrog01 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:49:57 +0000

I really like his metaphors for the media landscape.

It’s finally here! xkcd: volume 0 is now available!

nekkidben — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:39:37 +0000

Possibly the greatest webcomic of all time (seriously), xkcd has provided countless hours of amusement over the years. Now, my favorite webcomic has put out a book, with a portion of the proceeds going to another favorite of mine, the school and library building charity Room to Read.

Folks, this is an all around great deal, easily ordered online here.

To give you an idea of the greatness, here are a few tidbits to get you started down the path of xkcd love:

China bans foreign investment in online games…

nekkidben — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:44:01 +0000

Now this is a bit of bad news for the online games industry in China. It seems there’s a bit of a dispute going on between two mainland government agencies, which has led to the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) forbidding any foreign investment in China’s online games companies.

Check out the full notice here if you can read Simplified Chinese. Not good news at all. We don’t likey.