'Interactive' Archives

Hulu: Mainstream Media Gets Social

Hulu Saturday Night Live

30 Rock, The Simpsons, SNL, The Office,
The Big Lebowski and more—free.
Pass it on at Hulu.com

Watch your favorite TV shows and movies.
Anytime. Anywhere. Free.

Save the TiVo

After five months of Beta testing, today NBC Universal and Fox launched Hulu.com, mainstream media’s online answer to socially networked video sites like YouTube. Unlike YouTube, Hulu offers viewers online-anytime premium, recognized content with full production values that can be viewed full screen.

Feature Rich; Feature Friendly

Amid an understated interface and tastefully-sized and unobtrusively placed ads, a simple slider bar allows you to select snippets of any Hulu streamed media and clip it—to the second. You can preview the video clip, email it to friends, copy its embed code for blog insertion, or share it on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Windows Live, or Google bookmarks.

Hulu slider bar

It’s not exactly Consumer Generated Media (CGM), but it is a great first step toward engaging a post-conventional television audience anew.

Did We Mention Content?

The site offers free streaming video, ad-supported shows and feature films from NBC, Fox, E! Entertainment, the SciFi Network, USA Networks, Sony Pictures, MGM and others. Even the NBA, NHL and the NCAA are signing on. So far, CBS and Disney’s ABC are taking a wait and see approach before joining in.

A Step in the Right Conversation

Whether sites like Hulu can deliver mainstream media outlets from the bonds of one-way communication remains to be seen. But we Beta tested Hulu and think there’s a lot to like.

Snip a clip and send it to a friend on Hulu.

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A Healthy, International Shine

W3 Silver Award

Community Health Network wins an International Academy of Visual Arts (IAVA) silver award for a grand opening website promoting their new North campus facilities.

Congratulations

Brainstorm doesn’t usually enter design competitions, but sometimes our customers do. Congratulations to Community Health Network for their 2007 Silver W³ Award from the International Academy of Visual Arts (IAVA) for the Community North Grand Opening website, designed and produced by Brainstorm.

Community Health Network joined CNN Money, Abercrombie and Fitch, Big Spaceship, Communication Arts, Discovery.com, Disney, and NASA, among others, in the winner’s circle this year.

About the W³ Awards

The W³ Awards honor outstanding creative sites, advertising, and video developed for the web.

The W³ is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts. Sponsors and partners include The Creative Group, the world’s leading creative professional staffing company, and ADWEEK Magazine.

About The International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA)

The IAVA is an invitation-only body of top-tier professionals from acclaimed media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms such as Alloy, Brandweek, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, Fry Hammond Barr, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, and Yahoo!.

For more information, and a full member roster, visit www.iavisarts.org.

See the award-winning Community North site. As hospital’s go, it’s a winner.

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LatestTHOUGHTS

Brainstorm Featured

in Step Inside Design’s recently released, 2008 Best of Web Annual for the design and development of Lumina Foundation for Education’s Camino a la Universidad site.

.THINK now listed on Alltop.com

under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.

RapidoStart (Mac)

Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.

PimpMyNews

If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]

The iPlanet

NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”

Twitter Unseat Email?

Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]

Track the Hive’s Buzz

Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.

Fountain

Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]

Design by Metaphor

A word from A List Apart about design based on simile.

Master’s Color Palettes

Looking for a digital color scheme that will last the ages? Colour Lovers explores masters inspired color schemes.

Visualizing Volumes

Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.

Steve Jobs Unveils the Apple iRack

Regardless of your geopolitical views you’ll likely appreciate the satirical humor of this product parody sketch run amok.

Qbesq

Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.

Those Funny Googlers

Here’s Google’s take on the phrase, “Across the pond.” Visit Google Maps, enter New York to London in the search field, scroll to step #24.

Tip: Reducing Firefox Memory Usage

How to reduce Firefox from a memory hog to a piglet. Caught this Firefox usage tip over on Ade Olonoh’s blog (see comments).

CSS Developments

If you’re a developer or just interested in CSS, check out this article entitled, #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet,” over on the PIE site.

The History of Branding

An iconic-rich, one-click site on how hundreds of the planet’s most noteworthy brands came to be. Updated daily.

The Hexafluoride Float

From the Bonn Physikshow—A lesson on YouTube regarding the denser than air properties of hexafluoride (likely sulphur hexafluoride) gas.

Worst Website Design, Ever?

Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”

50 Essential Bookmarks

Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2006, here’s their list of 50 essential bookmarks. Conspicuously missing, sites such as Delicious, Technorati and Lifehacker.

Greetings Earthling

Sure to appeal to the megalomaniacal extraterrestrial in all of us. World, meet geoGreetings. When you care enough to send a satellite image.

A Modern Medium

An interactive glimpse into the the random and spontaneous feedback Jackson Pollock once realized in his medium—sans the clean up.

Impressive Product

Pressed toast with panache. From the, “Table Manners Collection,” Delfts Toast Pan by Minale Maeda. As seen on “ohmygooshness.”

.think Flickr

Objects of interest, engaging designs, diagrams, downloadable visuals and any other imagery we felt worth sharing.