Last Call is the first interactive horror movie which allows the audience to communicate with the on-screen victim and become responsible for the impending horror/happy ending on screen. To participate, audience members submit their mobile phone numbers when they buy a ticket. When a scene appears where the protagonist takes out their phone, the film’s controlling software contacts one of the audience to personally guide the victim to safety – should they choose. Every choice the viewer makes shapes the film’s fate, leading to a different film and outcome every time. While a film controlled by the audience blurs boundaries between game and film, surely it extinguishes the potential for horror by eliminating the fear of the hidden and the uncontrollable?

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Women will happily ask random women on the street where they got that lovely top from. This is seen as far too gay or awkward for the average bloke, so could Nerdboyfriend be the Sartorialist-style solution to where did you get your cardigan from, mate? A picture of an iconic male look is posted everyday on the site, which could range from Neil Young offering his take on the denim shirt over a polo neck look, to a pervy, mac-wearing Eric Idle. This is helpfully accompanied by real-life products you click through to buy to ‘get the look’.


Thanks to Paula Bjork and Matt Hardisty for this story.

NASA has released its first iPhone game in which you can drive a Lunar Electric Rover through space. Whilst steering your fictional vehicle over the sea of tranquility, you’ll be able to see images from proposed lunar outposts and learn more about what life on the moon might be like. NASA has obviously, been quite up to speed with new media, such as when @Astro_Mike tweeted from space. In a time where Americans are losing their enthusiasm for the space race, this was a very strategic move. However, with this new initiative, it was apparently simply a case of wanting to make “a cool game”, according to NASA’s Chris Giersch. The game is free and available through the iTunes store from Monday.


Thanks to Rob Hughes for this story. Don’t talk to Rob about feminism.


References:
Wired


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The BBC’s R&DTV is a pilot show built for the Internet era and designed to be shareable, remix-able and redistributed. The latest episode from the online video series features interviews with speakers at TEDx Manchester (a local version of the famous TED conferences). What’s really interesting is how the BBC is using the show itself as a platform to explore and experiment with different ways of creating and distributing content. It intends to demonstrate that you can create content inexpensively with an off the shelf kit, and by making it shareable and remixable, it encourages viewers to behave more like active participants – to edit, customise and improve upon the content. Each episode will be available in 3 formats: a brief 5-minute video, a deeper 30-minute video, and the Asset Bundle, containing all the footage that didn’t make the final edit.


Thanks to Gavin Cumine for this story.

US First Lady Michelle Obama is on the pages of Vogue covers and Carla Bruni Sarkozy’s outfits are talked about as if they are next year’s state budget. For those early adopters growing a bit tired of such pointlessness the Chechen minister of press and information is taking fashion and politics combo to a new level.


A few months Canadian former catwalk model Chrystal Callahan was hired to blog on Grozny Gossip and host Highlights of the Week with Chrystal Callahan on state-controlled television Grozny TV. Features on fashion, beauty and lighthearted topics in general are mixed with tributes to Chechnya’s president Kadyrov, infamous for controlling his war-torn country and subjects with murder and torture. Callahan, and her employers, state the purpose of the blog and 20-minute show to be a mirror of the beautiful side of Chechen everyday life avoiding the more obvious darker side of Chechen life.


This cocktail of fashion, propaganda and social media makes you wonder of you underestimated the importance and impact of fashion after all? Or maybe one-dimensional propaganda never went out of fashion? Lately fashion bloggers are said to be responsible of the democratization of the fashion industry, but that might just be old news. Maybe the early adopting fashion bloggers are going over to the other side…


For another take on fashion fundamentalism please watch this.


Thanks to Paula Bjork for this story.


References:
Radio Free Europe


Image Credit: ?

At the start of 2009 Guinness began development of RFID technology in association with ball manufacturers Gilbert and technological whiz kids at the Fraunhofer Institute in Nuremberg. The innovation saw an RFID chip placed in rugby balls and sensors situated around rugby pitches to monitor players and the ball itself, logging a number of statistics such as accuracy of passes and strength of tackles. A year later the innovation is coming to the fore in an interactive hub and TV spot entitled Area 22.


The spot shows a futuristic rugby training ground and ends with a link driving viewers to Area 22, a site with goodies that include an iPhone app that aggregates different rugby news feeds, a pub finder that uses Google maps and a rugby kicking game. A Facebook fan site for Irish Rugby supporters has the option to send gifts of team jerseys to friends, and has gathered 4,000 fans to date. All this, acts a prelude to the Rugby World Cup in 2011, when Guinness’ sponsorship and established brand association with Rugby will become more mainstream.


Thanks to Gavin Cumine for this story. Dead Or Alive’s hit track “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) was number 1 on the day he was born.


References:

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Whilst Shoreditch is better known for Hoxton Fins, emaciated male legs, and syphilis, it is fast developing as a digital hotspot. Matt Biddulph, former CTO of Dopplr, first nicknamed the area the “Silicon Roundabout” in 2008, referencing other tech businesses all within the close vicinity of Old Street Roundabout. The original list included 14 businesses from companies like our friends Poke, to Last.fm. But an investigation for this month’s issue of Wired UK, reveals a bigger picture with a profile of a further 70 tech firms all operating out of the area, which is helping to position London globally for tech innovation. Journalist Georgina Voss believes the growth of the hub is a result of, “the presence of tech and creative firms from the 80s; centrality; institutions like the BBC and the RCA; connections to San Francisco and Silicon Valley; and the dot-com boom and bust.” She also believes the East End community spirit is what makes this tech hub unique. “Unlike other tech hubs, there are no direct feeds into local universities – rather a culture of self-education and mutual support”.

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One of the many gadgets that stood out at last week’s CES global gadget showcase were ‘Siftables’, a series of digitally-enabled blocks that hold multiple uses within gaming, education and creativity. “They are sets of cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbour detection, graphical display, and wireless communication”, say Sifteo, the company behind the products. “Siftables act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them—piling, grouping, sorting—to interact with digital information and media”. Siftables are yet another demonstration of product designers and developers increasing ability to shift the digital world into the physical world.

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To promote their sci-fi re-working of Alice in Wonderland, the Syfy Channel (formerly the Sci-Fi Channel) and Fallon Minneapolis have created a gloriously intriguing campaign that urges people to ‘follow the white rabbit’ on and off line. In their version, Carroll’s fluffy white bunny is reinvented as a dark-suited assassin hired by the Queen of Hearts. The result is an always-on campaign with several touchpoints across the web, social media and out-of home. A Twitter stream led users to mischievous banner ads where visitors were surprised to see the White Rabbit bounding from the confines of his ad space across site content. The curious were then prompted to click and follow him to fake microsites, such as the Happy Hearts Casino and the Wonderland Tea Shop. By night, larger-than-life video projections of White Rabbits mysteriously appeared darting across buildings. The experience culminated with 50 members of White Rabbit Inc. complete with suits and big porcelain rabbit heads, hunting Alice and the Hatter across the New York City, handing out Alice playing cards asking, “Have you seen this pair?” The White Rabbits then marched onto Union Square where they performed a choreographed “step” dance routine. Such a campaign makes the TV show Alice unmissable (it attracted a record 2.5m viewers), as well as taking a great idea as far as possible.

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This is our favourite Christmas brand viral. It’s from a Dutch website who have written and produced a Christmas song for Apple called ‘Christmas in Cupertino’. The song pictures Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller “dancing round the Apple tree”. Weirder still, Steve Jobs’s liver transplant is also mentioned. And you can actually buy it on iTunes. All proceeds from the song go to de Dutch Liver Foundaction.

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