Václav Krejcí, an Art Director at Prague Bistro hit upon something big when he saw an uncanny resemblance between clip art in Microsoft Word and the newly updated iOS 7. His video showing off his editing skills at break-neck speed has gotten 2.7 million hits so far and it’s easy to see why:
Beginning today, Android users will receive an invite to join Google’s Niantic Labs game, Ingress. The game is a spy-warfare augmented reality game that makes use of virtual overlays. Players are referred to as “Agents” and defend and overtake portals by collaborating with other players in teams. The game strives to be playable on mobile and wearable devices with desktops being used as data centers of sorts for players to communicate location information to others on the playing field.
“It’s almost like an e-sport gamer event, where people strongly identify with their teams. After that part is over, it becomes very social at the live events,” said John Hanke, vice president of Niantic Labs in an interview with GamesBeat. “We see ourselves as a platform company. The idea behind Ingress is to understand the space of mobile social-location games and what it means for the future of Android, Google Glass, and game developers.”
Niantic Labs was initially started with individuals who worked on Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View. They have spent the past year smoothing out the game’s technical infrastructure to handle a large volume of players without a hitch.
Currently, Ingress is being played in a 39 city global event called Operation #13MAGNUS. Players who join today will have an opportunity to receive a Founder Medal if they reach Level 5 by December 14, when the game formally launches.
Ingress has already inspired two e-books and a comic series. Hanke has discussed the wide appeal of the game due to its augmented reality nature and as a good way to make friends.
“Gaming and real-life meetups are really coming together. I can’t say we predicted how popular the live meetups would be. We didn’t anticipate the degree to which people would go to live events to meet people they didn’t already know. The game is a social icebreaker.”
Source: VentureBeat
Many countries have a mandatory section on job applications where the applicant indicates whether they’ve had any criminal convictions. U.K. non-profit Business in the Community wants employers to “Ban the Box” as many employers simply skip over a resume where it is checked, and they illustrate this brilliantly using the ‘Skip Ad’ button.
Try the interactive video yourself at BitC.org.uk/banthebox.
Source: AdWeek.com
Failed experiments with interactive films back in the 80’s isn’t stopping Land Rover from trying out the practice for an ad campaign.
Land Rover has invited various customers to check out the 2014 Range Rover Sport in a new digital campaign called “Race the Sun.” In it, users will be able to take part in a fast race across various landscapes, controlling the action with their smartphone devices.
It interacts like a second-screen experience, letting viewers control on-screen action through their decisions and alter what happens next, either by tilting, swiping or tapping on their touch-screen.
{video link marked as “private”}
Developed by Y&R NYC and Wunderman NY, and directed by Dante Ariola, the project is just one part of Land Rover’s bigger “Driven To Another Level” campaign.Source: PSFK
Ubisoft may not be ready to show us all of Watch Dogs until November – but in order to hold us over, the game company is letting fans get a taste of some Watch Dogs-style hacking.
The French game publisher and developer has recently released an encryption app called H_ide as part of the promotion for the game promised to be chock full of stealthy hacking and information warfare. The free app, which is available for iOS and Android, lets users send anonymous voice messages, encrypt text messages and pictures, share encrypted information via social networks and use voice modulator filters. Only other app users can decode the encrypted messages. Basically it makes it just a little more difficult to chat with your friends, and just a little bit easier for you to be incognito and slightly creepy. Fun.
The app comes after a similar interactive platform back in July when Ubisoft launched “We Are Data,” a website that drew from public data in London, Paris and Berlin that let you explore a veritable gold mine of information via a Jason Bourne-esqu, futuristic, pseudo-official looking website.
All in all, the campaign is an interesting move considering recent revelations about the NSA and the internet-popular topic, PRISM. Although we’d be foolish to think a simple encryption offered by a gaming company could conceivably protect us from that. Fun thought though.
Check out the promo video for an idea of how H_ide works below.
Source: Creativity Online
Mentos and Bartle Bogle Hegarty London are capitalizing on the self-love that fuels social media by creating personalized news bits that make users’ Facebook activity look appetizing enough for broadcast television.
As part of the minty candy’s “Stay Fresh” campaign, BBH London has launched a worldwide digital platform that creates individual video reports using an app, on Facebook or standalone, called “Fresh News.”
“Mentos’ core audience are heavy Facebook users, and they are part of a generation that are very interested in using social media to project their sense of self,” explained creative director at BBH London Pablo Marques. “So Facebook is at the center of our strategies when it comes to digital.”
The video bulletins make up a 24-hour news channel that serve up a constant stream of humorous news reports making fun of the new wave of media consumption. The app pulls in material from users’ updates on Facebook as well as other connected social media accounts, including geolocation app Foursquare.
“For that we’ve crossed Foursquare check-ins, Spotify playlists and other APIs that enabled us to really try to be pinpoint sharp on our assumptions about people — it was a fun little exercise in artificial intelligence,” said Marques. “Once that list was ready it was only a matter of writing funny ways to deliver those insights.”
Three news anchors present a satirical show highlighting a user’s recent social escapades, and emphasizing how “fresh” the subject may or may not be, depending on what he or she has been posting lately. And even though the scenes are pre-filmed segments, Marques claims that they filmed enough footage so that “millions of different combinations” are possible.
“The real struggle was to make sure we had a balance of content, content that was focused enough so that it would feel very personal and magical (if your mum posted on your wall and you didn’t reply) but would only be applied to small number of people, and stuff that was generic enough so that even the people without a lot of Facebook activity would still get a full length video made about them,” said Marques.
So here’s your chance people of the interwebs, it’s time to become internet famous.
Source: DigidayÂ
Â
