Beat the Tweet, a Twitter advertorial game

When you’re a die-hard IT professional and also into cloud computing, you now can play Beat the Tweet – Twetris. Online buzz and conversations about #cloudcomputing are combined real-time into an unique and challenging gameplay combination of Tetris with Twitter. The game is completely made in JQuery by Microsoft (No Flash or Silverlight used!). Although I got some questions right myself; it’s a pretty tough tech-game experience and I noticed my cloud computing vocabulary isn’t top-notch yet. :) Kudos for the overall concept: users who tweet about the subject #cloudcomputing – at the same time – help grow the game content and can be become part of the game too. If you like to challenge some abracadabra expert terminology yourself, Beat the Tweet can be found at: http://tweakers.net/advertorials/beatthetweet

Remarkable Twitter stunt, free airplane tickets for popular users

As part of an effort to boost visibility for an expansion of its flight schedule, Virgin gives out free round-trip airfares with inflight Wifi between Toronto, Los Angeles and San Francisco to influential Twitter users. Virgin calls them ‘influencers’. The remarkable thing is, that besides a quick registration at Klout’s special boarding section, Twitter users don’t have to do anything to enjoy Virgin’s free services. If a Twitter user gets a high enough Klout score, they automatically receive an invitation to enjoy Virgin’s services for free. And first of all, there’s no catch. Not even the obligation to tweet about it. Virgin hopes to get a lot of attention by this campaign. (There’s already been a lot of writing and exposure in the US press here, here, here, here, here and here. Secondly, Virgin hopes that people who get free tickets will tweet about it anyway. :)

I really like this great social campaign idea! Too bad i’m not in the USA myself. Do you know any other great Twitter campaigns like this one? Feel free to comment below.

YouTube’s new online video editor

YouTube has launched a new -very easy to use- online video editor to help its users ‘optimize’ their online videos. It’s not only going to save YouTube loads of server space, but also greatly enhances the overall user-experience. Visitors don’t have to watch long, boring (instruction)video’s anymore. At the moment it only has some basic features, as you can see in this hilarious demonstration below. However, future development should soon bring loads of other new features as they are already widely discussed/requested in YouTube’s user forum.

I’ve also posted a feature request myself to include new ‘social video features’ in the upcoming release(s). In today’s software development scene, It’s still unknown territory to invite friends/colleagues to sneak peak videos together. It would be great to live chat about audio/video proposals, place individual or group comment markers or share other user suggestions in YouTube’s video editor. In the end, the ‘video-owner’ can evaluate all comments/votes and just press an ‘accept’ button to have all the user suggestions composed into a new final YouTube movie.

I’m very curious about what’s included in a next editor update. Do you also have feedback or ideas for YouTube? Let them know. Meanwhile, sneak peak all other YouTube developments, right here.

Dutch Interactive Awards 2010, Heineken.nl best brand site

[ Dutch version, English version below ]

De vernieuwe Heineken.nl website heeft bij de Dutch Interactive Awards 2010 de prijs van beste Brand Site gewonnen! Qi Ideas ontwikkelde deze website samen met technologie partner Virtual Affairs. De Award staat voor het beste Nederlandse interactieve internetproject van het afgelopen jaar met aandacht voor strategie, design en bouw. Met deze Awards willen Emerce en PIBN het beste werk van Nederlandse interactieve bureaus in de schijnwerpers zetten. 

Interactief consumentenplatform voor het Nederlandse uitgaanspubliek Heineken.nl is het online touch point van Heineken. De website is geheel vernieuwd en aangevuld met het nieuwe loyaliteitsprogramma van Heineken. Dit programma is erop gericht om de relatie en interactie tussen Heineken en haar consumenten te verdiepen. In het loyaliteitsprogramma staat uitgaan centraal. Heineken biedt via de website voordeel, voorrang en voorrecht op het gebied van uitgaan, sport en muziek. Volgens het juryrapport:

“Bevat de site een aantal voor Heineken nieuwe aspecten, zoals loyaliteit (red. toevoeging; webshop en uitgaansagenda) en direct marketing. Bovendien is er een nieuw businessmodel aan gekoppeld, waar veel samenwerkingen bij komen kijken en daarmee is een risico genomen. Dat maakt het immers zeer complex. Of de strategie ook op de langere termijn succesvol is, is nog niet in te schatten, maar de brand scores zijn overtuigend te noemen. Het design is bovendien goed. Het is gelukt om de kernwaarden van het merk tot leven te brengen, en dat alles op één domein.”

In opdracht van Qi Ideas (mijn werkgever) ontwikkelde ik diverse site onderdelen waaronder: promotionele activatiebanners, landingspagina’s, loyalty e-mailings, interface icons en functionele interactie/interface onderdelen. Ter ondersteuning van de online merkstrategie en om de visuele consistentie van Heineken.nl te bewaken, heb ik een heldere ‘schrijfwijzer’ en een overzichtelijk ‘webrichtlijnen’ document opgesteld. Nu kunnen ook (freelance) copywriters, designers en technisch ontwikkelaars er goed mee verder ontwikkelen. :) Meer over dit project weten?

[ English version ]

The new Heineken.nl website has won the ‘Best Brand Site’ award at the Dutch Interactive Awards 2010! Qi Ideas developed this website together with technology partner Virtual Affairs. According to the jury rapport:

“To Heineken, this website contains lots of new ingredients like loyalty, direct marketing, etc. In addition, a new business model was used, which needs a lot of collaborations with 3rd parties. That involved a high risk and makes it all very complex. If this new strategy will be succesful in the long term, is hard to say right now. But the brand scores are convincing. Besides, the design is good and we’ve managed to spark the brandvalues within the online domain.”

Commissioned by Qi Ideas (my employer), I designed various promotional advertising banners, campaign landingpages, loyalty e-mailings, interface icons and supporting functional/interaction design elements for this Heineken.nl brand experience platform. To further support the online brand strategy and guard the visual consistency of Heineken.nl, I also created easy to use copywriting guidelines and basic webdevelopment guidelines for (freelance) copywriters, designers and technical developers. More information about this project?

Broken Fingaz, superb stop motion graffiti

Last night, Vimeo treated me with an awesome blend of 2d-3d graffiti stop motion.
Great concept and very nicely executed with surprising transitions.

More crazy inspirational art projects from these Israelian guys can be seen at: brokenfingaz.com

Nationale Thuiswinkelawards 2010, winners announced.

Last night – during the Nationale Thuiswinkelawards 2010 – the best 29 Dutch e-commerce websites were chosen. The complete list of this year’s winners can be viewed here. Next to the 15 main winners (turn-around of 1 million or more) 14 smaller websites received a people’s favorite award. The baby & children’s clothing webstore Happybee.nl (for which I realized the interaction consultancy & visual interface design in cooperation with ConnectingMedia) won a people’s favorite award in the category small, baby & children’s fashion. Between January and March, consumers were invited to judge all participating webstores based on overall quality and vote for their personal favorite.