Week 5

I’ve been coasting across the net the past week. Doing homework here, research there, goofing off everywhere… and when I do that I love gaming. I’ve been hitting up a site for what feels like years now called addictinggames.com. It’s super fun flash games that take no time to learn and hours to master, great time waisters. I also tend to trail off to youtube, like most of us do, and view old and random videos to get a chuckle. Pretty much what I’m saying is that if there was no broadband there would be no internet like we know today.

Broadband offers a lot of features to the interent:
• Online Radio
• Movie and TV Streaming
• Instant Scores
• Flash Media
• Downloading
• Online Gaming
• Social/Gaming Networking
• Advertising/Promotional tool

Advertising has now found a new sea to wash.

Being the surfer that I am, I came across a interesting website. Wedigtv.com is the portal for old school game shows, the twist is that you are the contestant. The game show has pre-recorded videos of the host and guest audiences that interact to your decisions, so pick wisely. I played ‘blockbusters’ and ‘Deal or No Deal’, but it seemed to both be British or Australia shows.

Just like television there are commercial breaks. Once again what makes this different is that you interect with the commercial for McCain Fries, Airwick air fresheners and cold medicine.
The makers of this site is called ‘jdproject' and they see them selves as “world leaders in the manipulation, distribution and audit of internet based video advertising.” while also being awarded the 2008 International Emmy Award in recognition of their pioneering work within Internet based video.

Broadband has given Internet advertising pioneers the ability to make it not just the newest medium, but the most popular. While we keep evolving technology internet will be the path to knowledge. I mean I did learn how to tie my tie on youtube.

–RS

Week 4

This week I want to talk and discuss some brand Utilities. A perfect definition is that a brand connects with it’s consumers providing some kind of value, instead of the traditional few second of entertainment.

As a Mac user I have a few widgets, turns out some of them seemed to serve a purpose. I have a widget that I got off of The Weather Network website and use it for checking if it’s minus thirty five out still. I use this at work, school and home, perfect for a quick check before you step out with just a shirt on. ESPN tells me how much Ottawa Senator suck this year and my facebook widget informs me when someone has poked me. Wait, I was going somewhere with this that would make these things more useful. Okay, a company has invented a blended use of Google maps with Starbucks coffee, so now you can find all the Starkbucks around the world… this is not helping.

Well it seems there is a lot of useless tools out there we think we need to survive our daily lives. I find I have gotten so accustomed to these tools that I don’t even picture the ones I use to be a product. Google is one for example; searching, email, maps search, blog page, site measurement tools. I use Google’s tools on a daily basis and would never compare it to sneakers or food. It feels to me that there are little that we really need and a shit load of ones we don’t. I decided to find a few that are exactly that, pointless and useless and a couple that are fun as well.

What NOT To Do Widget
Here is a widget of some “what not to do” tips from some guy, who we all don’t know or really care about, who is basing these tips from his own life. Oh and you can also read them on his blog, why did he think anyone would use this as a reliable source of information?

Mobile Me
This clever new little toy from Apple is an online server account that talks to any device that you logged into. The idea is that if you took down a number on your phone or made a date change on your computer the two would communicate to each other and update automatically.

Super Bowl Ad Widget
Did you miss the ads during this years Super Bowl? Well then why not get Hulu’s Super Bowl Ads widget. That’s it, eat up more of your memory and processor.

Brand utility over all is an interesting new medium which can be very useful. There is a lot of daily tasks we humans could use help in, and so instead of spending all this time entertaining ourselves we should take the time and solves these problems. Now if you don’t mind I’m off to check my gmail and facebook for a while.

–RS

Week 3

Ok, so I didn’t enter in a second review last week as I said I would, but A) I’ve been a little busy and B) I have a life as well, so let’s put everything aside and get back to whats important here… Facebook.

Been thinking a lot about these blogs that I've been writing and the ones I've been looking at, mainly because I’ve started to get into small chats with people about blogs. It started amazing me that I was in this large network of people that in some way carries similarity about the most stupidest shit. Seriously, told a friend about an ad I saw on Youtube for some beer and all of a sudden he gets back to me with this '80's Choreographed Fight'. Now, honestly, what the hell? I laughed, but it had no relevance to what I was talking about at all, things have become too random and way to fast. It seems we are diving in for it without even thinking. Do we even know what we are doing?

In the beginning there was ICQ, forums and Hotmail. These were pretty much the biggest network tools to any teen, and people were scared. Using names like hotgirl69 and illseeyourmom@home.ca (old Rogers internet provider email) people made sure no stranger would know who you really are, we had a right to be considering the fear of viruses, hackers, and fat hairy men pretending to be chicks. Now here is my question, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!?!?!?! I used all sorts of profile sites, emails, IMs, and chat rooms and I NEVER put out my real name, call me scared and paranoid, but I’m still here and not have to worry about employers seeing me act like a retard.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that we all need to be careful when it comes to networking online. Information is being stored and it’s not by you and we’ve all seen The Terminator and know about Skynet. I feel much better.

Aside from all of this a friend passed over an interesting blog site which I am not really gonna talk about, but instead just gonna let you enjoy these ones. Not really sure what Spy Film is all about, but it’s very interesting. There is a Blog and a Home Site check em’ out. Here are some interesting ones to get you started (Alive in Joburg) (Snickers Tag) (Terminus) that last one is pretty weird.

Ok that is it for this week. I’ll see you all in the next.

–RS

Week 2

Hello all. to be honest I would be surprised if any of you stayed around this long after my first post. Come on guys, as blog readers I would suspect that you were also bloggers so you would understand the first timer curse. Anyways, for all you who have come back thank you and I will not disappoint.

This week we'll focus on the site http://www.illegaladvertising.com. This is getting closer to my main goal of finding the most crazy and underground ad blog site man has made. The overal layout is eye catching to those who crave violence and anarchy and with a URL like Illegal Advertising.com what else would you expect? Rough, angry, raw, rugged, rough, rrrrrraaawwr, basic instinct like. I think I have found my first blog home. In the about page (link at bottom of page) it says that this site is an independent blog that is here to bring us the best in underground online advertising dealing with illegal, banned and rejected commercials as well as spoofs, very virals, director cuts, underground campaigns and exclusive previews. Now I knew this was home and the right path to follow.

This site was easy to navigate through, categories of videos are posted on the left hand nav bar, the center main display has the newest post, and more when you scroll down. Everything is posted by date, which makes remembering easy when trying to show your friends the most fucked up ad you found days or weeks ago. On the top navigation bar is your main pages; archive, submit, search. In the ‘archive’ page you can go through illegal advertising dating all the way back to Jan 2009, where I found one of the worst ads I have seen in a while. Apperantly they got banned because they shrunk the actors in it. Lol here is the link: http://www.illegaladvertising.com/index.php?vermouth=viewvideoarch&id=1013
In the submit page you get the obvious… a submit form and a upload button. No surprise right? But the layout of the form is pretty cool; sticking to the rawr style.
The search button is just a drop down menu, which is convenient and not in the way, that you just write in a ‘searchterm’ for your video.

On the lower right handed side of the page you will always find a friends menu. These link to other video blogging sites which we will talk about later this week, but if you can’t wait then please go ahead and get ahead of the class.

The site is pretty amazing, being still amateur in blogging this was a good start and very fun to look at. My personal favorite videos that I watch here was a ad for a MTV called Fur TV, and the other was for durex condoms that showed balloon animals made form durex condoms having sex in different positions. http://www.illegaladvertising.com/index.php?vermouth=categories&id=6. Check it out, waist some time, learn what not to do but do it anyways, and have some fun.

–RS

Week 1

Blogs, to some it is a portal to information and communication. Blogs can be fun, interesting, informative, and weird. But still to this day most still either don't have a blog or just have no fucking clue as to what a blog is and where you can buy one. I am right in between those two categories. So I have decided that I will start reviewing advertising and branding blogs, since my main interests are in those two categories.

I decided to have a journey for the next 7 blogging and reviewing blogs that deal with advertising and branding. Setting up an account was easy enough already having a gmail account, so I now was ready to blog. I had some help from a source of some great places to start in checking out adverting and branding blog sites, some of the main stream stuff. So before I dove into the deeper underground blogs I figured I would start with something easier for my first time. I decided to go to http://www.adverblog.com/ . Off the bat colours and all kinds of shit jumped out at me. Please excuse my language, but that’s my “what is a blog” side getting uncomfortable. There is a lot that seems to go on, words and boxes in all directions and sizes, pictures, videos, ads, little buttons that have plus signs… I didn’t know where to go from here, so I just watched the screen for a bit. I finally focused on the top post on the site and realized I was reading a short paragraph about a Nike viral video, what were the odds, there was also a video of the spot. I now seemed to have read my first blog, feeling good, and was ready to continue my journey.

I now found myself being a pro and navigating, downward, on the site. A post from Toyota IQ caught my eye talking about a video game that let you test drive there new car. http://www.toyota-europe.com/cars/new_cars/iq/minisite/index.aspx. The game was pretty cool and got me involed while also telling me feaures and benefits of the new car. I went into deeper detail and tried to find the site, but it seems it not being sold yet in north amaerica so I got the Ireland site for the English readers. http://www.toyota.ie/. If you click on the video on the main display they got a video for the game. I was zooming around all over the net and was feeling the rush now of this blogging rave, I was ready for my next step… commenting.

Commenting was hard to get to, it appears on this site there is a small menu bar under all the posts and where it says to comment there is a number and you click on that, you then just scroll down and you fill out your info. I was nice.

This week was a lot, but even though first steps take long they end up making you run. So next week I will focus on navigation and commenting, also working out links on my posts and better layout. I also plan to delve into some underground bogs to see whats hip and cool before it becomes big.

Cheers.
RS