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The new Publicis & Hal Riney site is beautiful, innovative and simple in its language and design. The menu is hidden in an awesome graphic of a plume of red dye that floats in the center of the browser, video is used throughout the site and the copy is kept to a minimum. All good ingredients for a great site, but it still lacks the most important ingredient of all: functionality.

True, the option of webcam navigation is a nice touch. It says a lot about the company—they’re not your typical agency and they have the tools to implement cutting edge functionality. Unfortunately, to get what you really want from the site, you’re going to have to dig pretty deep. The awkward in-and-out transitions of the “liquid” menu is often confusing and abrupt. In the mouse-controlled mode, the menu items themselves are hidden until you hover over them. Each page takes more than a few seconds to load, which doesn’t necessarily cater to our impatient society. In short, extensive amount of time HR & P spends branding themselves on their site takes away from their foundation—the great work that they do. This should be their focus. After all, this is what prospective clients will judge them on.

Always choose function over form.

Sure, it’s great to have a beautiful site, but beauty comes in all forms (I love her for her personality!). Seriously though. Look at craigslist.org. Horrible, ugly, basic html that is oh-so-functional and oh-so-easy to use. Beautiful. On the agency side of things, a great example of choosing function over form is Modernista!’s redesign of their site. Well, that’s if you can even call it a redesign. Check it out. Open another window and type www.modernista.com in the address bar. You’ll arrive at their “homepage,” which, as you can see, is actually just their wikipedia page with a hovering “Modernista!” logo, menubar and message to the viewer reading “Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web. The menu on the left is our homepage. Everything behind it is beyond our control.”

They use existing Web 2.0 social networks to share their company info and share their work. Click on “work” and you’ll find that all their print pieces are on a flickr page and all of their broadcast is on YouTube. Click “news” and you’re brought to “Google News” with search term “Modernista!” already entered in the search field. Click on “contact” and you have the choice of speaking with them via Skype or AIM, or you can click their address to bring to up a Google map pinpointing the agency.

What’s so great and beautiful about this? Modernista! is approaching their market instead of the other way around. They’re engaging rather than interrupting. The site employs technology that people already know how to use, which says a lot as far as the agency’s ability to evolve with the market goes. Most importantly, you get very easily get the information you came to get when you visit their site.

A friend recently showed me a local site called “Urban Edibles” that bills itself as “a community database of wild food sources in Portland, OR.” It’s a fantastic combination of ideology and technical functionality where you can easily find free fruit, vegetables, herbs, berries and so on. The site is equally geared towards people looking for food and those posting sources of edibles, making it easy to submit and search, either by category or location. The authors have taken care not to encourage people to abuse the information and you will find warning notes all over the site like “The status of this source is unknown. Ask before you pick!”

Currently the database is not extensive, it is in the process of being built, but it is clearly a fun project for those involved. Urban Edibles employs a variety of technologies including a very active wiki with recipes, resources and information on identifying plants, and discovering what is in season. Perhaps most impressive is the “Browse by Category” section which uses some nice Ajax and javascript animation effects (using the Prototype Library), and then ties into a link to Google Maps.

This is not the sort of website that will see huge traffic but will likely see some repeat visitors who completely fall in love with it. Sites like this make me glad to be a Web developer in Portland, Oregon. There are great ideas everywhere with folks willing to make them real.

KGW ran a story on Urban Edibles as well:

A friend of mine gave me a small package wrapped in newspaper the other day, my Christmas present about a month late. I didn’t care because I wasn’t expecting anything, and was super-excited to unwrap two 16-oz. cans of Brawndo, “The Thirst Mutilator.”

If you know anything about Mike Judge’s film “Idiocracy” you can appreciate how amazing it is that this product exists in real life. One of the ongoing jokes in the movie is about a product called Brawndo, an electrolyte-laden energy drink that flows out of drinking fountains and has completely replaced water, even for watering plants. To quote the movie and the back of the can, “Brawndo’s got what plants crave! Brawndo’s got electrolytes. And that’s what plants crave. They crave elecrolytes. And that’s why plants crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.”

“Idiocracy” itself is somewhat of an underdog movie (having been snubbed by 20th Century Fox, the studio that created it) but it has since seen some success on DVD, at least in the circles I run in. The film follows a time-traveling Luke Wilson 500 years into the future, where humanity has devolved to a point that Wilson is the smartest man alive. Television shows have names like “Ow, my balls!”, courtrooms are basically run like episodes of Jerry Springer and corporations like Carl’s Jr.’s have slogans like “F*** you! I’m eating!” It is likely that the heavy parody of corporate culture is responsible for 20th Century Fox pulling all advertisements, movie trailers and press kits from the film and releasing it in only 125 theaters instead of the typical 2500-3000.

It was a movie that Internet nerds had been following and it just dropped off, eventually showing up on DVD about a year later. It is by no means a great movie, it’s awesomeness is also off-set by some heavy handed-narrative and weak acting. Nonetheless, it is a feel-good movie, full of small moments and details that will only continue to grow it’s cult status.

So how did this fictional product from a failed movie become a real product? Redux Beverages, the California beverage maker behind the scandalously named “Cocaine” energy drink that local newscasters were scaring grandmothers with when it was released, saw an opportunity to cash in on the cult following of the movie. In a press release for Brawndo, Redux explains the precedent set by Mike Judge’s earlier film “Office Space,” whereby Milton’s fixation on a red Swingline Stapler created such a demand for the product that Swingline actually started producing them.

Time magazine ran an article about the red stapler in August 2003: “Once the film was released, buyers began asking for the red stapler. But Swingline didn’t make it. ‘We concluded we really needed to put a red stapler on the market,’ says Bruce Neapole, Swingline’s president. He says Swingline continues to sell thousands each month of what it calls the Rio Red Stapler.”

In the same way that Swingline created a viable product with the red stapler, Redux has released Brawndo, hoping that it will appeal to fanatical consumers. It’s a weird case of reverse product placement where the products don’t exist at the time they become characters in a movie. This doesn’t happen very often and is a hard thing to predict, but it may be a trend to keep an eye on. It is especially impressive that Mike Judge has accomplished this twice in his last two films.

After Brawndo became a reality, viral marketing was the natural next step. Having recruited the voice of Mark Little, a writer for the Canadian sketch comedy group Picnicface, Brawndo’s advertisements essentially mimic the same style of Picnicface’s commercial for a fictional energy drink called Powerthirst.

The advertisement captures the ridiculousness of Judge’s future world, and quite frankly wins at being successful on the Internet, racking up about 300,000 YouTube views so far. Having downed a can of Brawndo in the course of writing this blog entry (see image above), I have to say it is an above-average tasting energy drink, though that isn’t saying much because most energy drinks are disgusting. At this point the appeal of Brawndo is mostly to people who have seen the film, and it’s unlikely that you’ll see a can unless you know someone who’s ordered it online. Redux is seeking distributors, however, so if you own a business do everyone a favor and order a couple of cases.

I’m usually dumbfounded when it comes time to find a website deemed as cool or innovative. Why? Because it is estimated that there are 15 - 30 billion pages on the Web. That puts me in a pickle, how can one person with two eyes and 10 fingers possibly find the coolest ‘best of?’ So this week I decided to blog about the best future—here’s a video of Blaise Aquera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs at TED2007.

When we find ourselves completely in awe of the newest Web trends (like Flickr and Youtube), think back to this video and imagine the possibilities. If there were a way to implement this cross-syncing technology for information data mining into one conclusive article of relevance when doing research—instead of having to sift for hours through Google pages—how great would that be? This thought may sound ridiculous, but with the ability to visually search photos and congregate them into a large photo, text/information congregation shouldn’t be a problem. And that’s just a thought I had while writing this, the rest is only a matter of time, thought and sweat.

For anyone who doesn’t know what TED is, it’s a conference/community for forward-thinking and exploration. Their topics typically stray into technology, entertainment and design—though with a slogan of “Ideas worth spreading,” I’m certain they’ll listen to anything.A few blog postings ago I gave kudos to Philips for their ShaveEverywhere.com campaign. Well, seems like the folks over at TED already unearthed this hysterical site months ago. Their aim is a little higher, aiming not at humor but at the health of bloggers everywhere. This is a danger to us all, so please take a few moments and be enlightened.

The past couple of years have seen boundless development in the world of user interactivity. The Nintendo Wii and Apple’s iPhone are two wonderful examples of user interfaces that, while not unprecedented, surprised a lot of people with their elegance and near-perfect execution. With an increasing faith in the fact that such magical things can happen, there seems to be a growing community of creatives who are using devices enabled with motion and touch sensitivity (as well as other physical inputs like light and sound) toward unexpected ends. Many of these projects are purely for experimentation and entertainment, but they are without a doubt pushing the next generation of interface designers to create new applications in everyday life. Applications like MAX/MSP and the Open Source application Processing are a key intermediary between real-world, physical inputs and actions either on-screen or in some other real-world output. Here are three exciting projects in that vein; stimulating and unpolished.

The mad scientists at Grafitti Research Lab Vienna use a projector, lasers, Processing and a Processing plug-in called “laser marker” (which is free on the GRLV website) to create gigantic, impermanent graffiti. GRLV was recently featured in a Make Magazine Blog entry.

This fellow uses a Wii-mote as a MIDI controller in Ableton Live.

This demo uses the free application WMIDI which allows you to use a Wacom Tablet as a MIDI controller.

In the spirit of open source technology, Jona Bechtolt, aka YACHT, an electronic musician here in Portland has decided to give away instrumental versions of his music for free. This is his explanation:

“I download music. I download a lot of music. I don’t purchase music often, so I completely and totally understand when kids come up to me at shows and look me straight in the eye and tell me they’re not going to buy my record tonight because they’ve already, or are going to go home and, download it. There just isn’t any reason to show animosity towards this new-ish way of communicating; to me, this feels like a natural way of weeding out assholes and the people that aren’t smart enough to make interesting work.I want to give back. Here are three ZIP files of instrumentals. Download them, use them for karaoke, perform as YACHT or The Blow, chop them up and make your own remixes, make your own new songs.”

It’s a cool idea that I imagine will lead to some free publicity, and most likely some new collaborations. It reminds me of a Mirah album that came out last year called “Joyride: Remixes” where a bunch of different artists remixed versions of Mirah songs for a 2-CD set. YACHT was one of the collaborators, coincidentally. That CD wasn’t free, and I could imagine this YACHT venture turning into some sort of similar compilation, a physical CD for example, potentially for some profit.

This gets back to my previous claim about this being an open source style of behavior. A common misconception is that because open source technology is free, there is no money to be made in it. To the contrary, think of all of the designers, developers and system admins who have jobs because of their intellectual investment in technologies like Apache, Linux, PHP, Subversion MySQL, Wordpress, Drupal and on and on and on. While a certain aspect of all open source technology is free, what is not is the time and skill needed to implement it, the people that ARE smart enough to make interesting work.

As a Web developer himself, I imagine Jona is aware of these similarities. I’m excited to see what comes of his decision to release his music in this fashion. Hopefully “Freedom Music: Remixes” is on the way.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was completely disheartened by programming with Javascript. My comfort level was limited basically to opening windows, creating rollovers and slideshows and other common tasks. But as any respectable web developer these days will tell you, a solid handle on manipulating Javascript is key to creating visual effects, usability features and user interface elements.

Like many, my relationship with the language changed drastically upon experimenting with some of the magnificent free Javascript libraries out there. Probably the three most popular libraries are jQuery (my current favorite), Mootools and Prototype (as well as the Prototype effects library Scriptaculous). These libraries simplify the use of Javascript by creating common, reusable features which are collectively written and shared in an Open Source fashion.

It’s understandable that Javascript is such a pain to learn. For those used to seeing a cause and effect relationship between what they program and see on screen, Javascript does complicate things slightly. While the language is completely logical, the Document Object Model is not the most glamorous or obvious thing in the world. What these Javascript libraries do fantastically well is hide a certain level of complexity from the programmer. While this may seem like a loss of control, you can still get in there and rewrite the Javascript library to your liking, for good or ill. Regardless, the whole situation is a very good thing.

Like many aspects of technology and design, this perceived loss of control can be a bit troubling. If you don’t write all of your code aren’t you just a second-rate hack? While that may in fact be the case, at some point you have to make peace with the existential pitfalls of working with Open Source technology, or any technology for that matter. There are numerous benefits of NOT writing new Javascript for every project, the biggest one is that it’s a big use of time. Aside from that, Javascript libraries provide a reliable set of well-documented tools that are cross-browser tested and demonstrate how to write good code, a valuable learning lesson rolled into the super-useful fun.

The fascinating thing about all of this is that Javascript really hasn’t changed a whole lot in the last 10 years. Sure, modern browsers are a lot more consistent in their interpretations of the language, but the real change is in the evolution of thinking. No longer is Javascript programming a secret art but rather a sophisticated community effort.

I have a sense that you are excited about this, so go forth and read your first tutorial. If that’s too heavy, go play with this instead.

Before the computer was a household item, the great debate between Mac and PC (Windows) was started. I personally use a PC for financial reasons at home, and a Mac at work. What does that say about me? Probably that I’d be happier with a Linux box. But that debate is for a different day and subject completely. I’m not here to fight the merits of one over the other, because I’d rather talk about the evolution of Mac’s advertising.

Before Apple went on their latest PC-bashing tear they were near obsolete. PC dominated the world without hesitation, capturing every household in their wake. So, where did this leave Mac? With an identity crisis, needing a niche and a way to stay a float. But how much has their advertising changed? Not much. Want proof?

Here’s an ad from Apple created in the 1984.

And here’s one from 2006.
The message is exactly the same; PC is boring and creates lemming-like behavior, while Mac is fun, hip and cool. Mac positioned themselves as a lifestyle product as opposed to a productivity tool. Your Mac says something about you that your PC never could. The beauty of the new Apple campaign is that it has “legs,” meaning that it transcends the current ad, and can be reused in different media and space. How so? Here’s the new delivery based on the release of Windows Vista.
And in it’s full beauty, an online ad as it would have been viewed from CNet.com. This ad comes days after the latest study on Vista users downgrading back to Windows XP. The turnaround was quick, and the advertising placement and adaptation for the Web is brilliant.
In all reality, which one you use will be based on preference and budget. What does your machine say about you?

If you don’t know about Digg.com, you surely don’t spend enough time on the Internet. While I say that as if it’s a bad thing, I guess that’s really just more of a reason to read this blog. That said, by definition (per Wikipedia) Digg is a community-based popularity website combining social bookmarking, blogging and syndication in a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. Sounds boring, right? Actually, quite the contrary, as Digg is probably the best thing to happen to the Internet since Al Gore and Google. That might be a bit of an overstatement, as YouTube, pop-up ads and e-mail marketing communications from Nigeria are revolutionary achievements in their own rights. Nevertheless, Digg is extremely insightful and can do wonders for marketers and ad folks alike.

All moderately funny jokes aside, Digg is something everyone in the digital world needs to know about. There are a number of community-based popularity websites on the Internet, but Digg is unarguably the most popular. Why? Probably because Digg did it right from the beginning by enabling its users to pick what makes it on Digg’s front page. Sure, not everything on the front page of Digg is newsworthy, but you better believe that whatever article, picture or video makes it on the front page is going to be seen by tens of thousands of people. Take for example Apple’s iPhone-if the cell phone’s announcement wasn’t the second-highest “Dugg” item this year, would it have been such a big hit? I venture to say yes; nonetheless, with nearly 25,000 Diggs under its belt, I’m sure there was some impact.

So, I guess the question you need to ask yourself is -”how do I (you) get on the front page of Digg?” To tell you the truth, there isn’t a straight answer to that question, or fa magical ormula to get on Digg’s front page, but it can be done, either purposefully or by accident. For something to be truly Digg-worthy, it needs to be at least one of the following:

1. Shocking - Which entails being funny, disgusting or just plain wrong; either way it needs to be something the reader feels like he/she needs to tell their friends, and possibly the world, about.
2. Important - The definition of what is important is up for debate, but in order for someone to Digg your piece, it must be truly newsworthy. Beware, “Net Surfers” are savvy and if you try to trick them you might still make the front page of Digg, but in the inverse of what you were trying to do.
3. Insightful - The item at large has to encompass applicable information, something new to the reader and be easy and fast to implement.

In the end, breaking into the Digg culture isn’t easy, but with some amount of effort, strategic thinking and a bit of luck, it can be done and the results can prove to be invaluable.

If you were born sometime between today and the early 1900s, chances are you’ve heard of BMW. Love them, loathe them or simply try to tolerate the ego behind the wheel, you know the car and brand. So, why do they need online brand awareness—was “The Italian Job” not enough?

Yes, it was, and it skyrocketed them into mainstream pop culture, and made a stance that BMW was staying on top—but their privately-owned driving club wasn’t. Faced with relative obscurity on the Web, BMW’s Performance Center needed a way to reach out to its enthusiasts to sign up for a class. Their approach was simple; use viral unbranded video to draw the visitor in, then pump them up with an adrenaline rush of “Cannonball Run” fever with branded professional driving videos.

RelearnToDrive’s home page has a Brady Bunch-esque showcase of the nine most typical driving instructors giving their tips and tricks to the automotive commute. Hover over their picture and you get a humorous repeatable one-liner, and then click on the photo to watch their lesson.

Traveling deeper into the site brings you into an awe-inspiring video game-esque flash page. The layout is simple; create a flash track with hot spots showcasing various features of the driving school. Only the driving done here isn’t for your Sunday beach cruise, unless you like to attack “water walls” and slaloms. The branded videos invoke the 18-year-old in all of us, and an urge to get out on the road and challenge every Honda this side of the Mississippi.

I’m always a stickler for the effectiveness of a site over the look. So, how did the site fair? Well, in the first couple of weeks the site had over 55,000 visits, various blog and enthusiast site features and a whopping 100 percent increase in class sign-ups. And thanks to the site you should always remember this: being the only 11-year-old on the block that can’t get mean and drive aggressively is for losers. GO PANTHERS!