Optimist or pessimist?

Genius BeerFriender

Pure genius. Heineken has launched a really cool social campaign to promote their new “BeerTender” that lets you pour ice cold draft beer at home. The catch is, it’s Christmas, and it wouldn’t look all that great if you were to buy yourself a BeerTender right? Well, Heineken thought of that too, and created the BeerFriender app that connects you, with other people who are buying a BeerTender in time for Christmas.

When you buy a BeerTender, you’ll literally be buying it for someone else, who at the same time, will be buying you one too! It comes gift wrapped, complete with an authentic Christmas card to ensure it looks like a legitimate present from a friend at say, work! Very funny idea! What do you think?

Old Spice MANta Claus

Old Spice Is back with Manta Claus

Day 1 -- The Man Your Man Could Smell Like begins his quest to give a gift to every single person on Earth this holiday season, including an elegant pair of ladyshoes made out of necklaces to a close, personal friend.

Google Maps (6.0) now works indoors

Sure, just about every street in the world has been mapped now, but how about your local airport or IKEA store? Well, the latest version of Google Maps (6.0) now works indoors, in a whole bunch ofplaces across the US and Japan to start. But don’t worry that there isn’t many indoor maps just yet, just about anyone can submit a floor plan to help populate indoor maps around the world.

Thermal receipt printer

What I love about design is that it can push you towards new, innovative digital experiences, and then pull you right back into the physical world for something that you’d never really consider…
Say hello to “Little Printer” a new, tiny, cloud based physical printer that can sit in your office or bedside table to print out snippets of information on demand, almost like a mini newspaper!

Think of the “Little Printer” like a thermal receipt printer, only this one connects to an iPhone app where you can customise your feed and get news, puzzles and the latest updates from all your friends, printed out as a mini newspaper feed. You can get yours in 2012… Who’s in? I am!

Olla Condoms - Unexpected Babies

 This is a pretty interesting social play from Olla Condoms in Brazil, and while I probably wouldn’t recommend a campaign like it for any brand, I think the idea is kinda neat at the very core. Targeting young guys, Olla Condoms set about creating hundreds and hundreds of fake Facebook profiles, setup with the names of the targeted guys, with the addition of “Jr” and a baby photo… They then set about “friend requesting” those guys from the fake profiles, hoping to create some interesting reactions and raise awareness at the same time. Created by Age Isobar Sao Paulo. It’s a shame that the fake Facebook profiles didn’t take the story to the next level, I think a single, straight sell kinda missed the mark, but I’d love to hear your thoughts?

Mint parking tickets

Mint parking tickets 

Pull in to parking garage, grab ticket, stick ticket in mouth until parking spot located. Sound familiar?

Getting the taste of ink and paper out of your mouth can prove tricky, but Wrigley’s has found a way to avoid it all together. (Other than not sticking the germy paper in your mouth in the first place.) To promote its line of Extra Professional, the gum company added a layer of mint to parking tickets at a car park in Germany. The results? Minty fresh.

Google Street View stop motion animation

Google Street View stop motion animation short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins.

Story: A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

Music by the wonderfull Cinematic Orchestra (cinematicorchestra.com) and the track is Arrival of the Birds - please buy the fantastic album: itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-crimson-wing-mystery-flamingos/id297787201

All screen imagery was animated - there are no screen replacements.

Produced, animated, filmed, lit, edited & graded by Tom Jenkins (theoryfilms.co.uk /facebook.com/theoryfilms - !NEW MAKING OF PICS ON FB PAGE! / @thetheoryUK /twitter.com/#!/thetheoryUK).

Shot using Canon 5d MkII, Dragonframe Stop Motion software and customised slider.

Interactive Print Ad is - MURAT

This Interactive Print Ad is designed for a smartphone to be placed into the position of a hand, loading a rich mobile site that allows users to flick between various bracelets and rings positioned on the virtual hand.

From there, readers can find out more information about each piece and then locate their nearest store, complete with maps. Pretty cool. And great to see print innovation. 

Great interactive smiley

http://www.vernissage.tv | Fühlometer (Feel-o-meter) is an interactive art installation that shows the mood of a city by displaying it in the form of a monumental Smiley. The system allows to read emotions out of random people's faces. The faces are analyzed by sophisticated software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut). The obtained mood data are then stored on a server and processed by the smiley to visualize the emotions in real-time.
The system has been developed as joint project by the artists Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer.