Euro RSCG 4D Digital

Lovely little graphical representation of how many Xs happen a second. How many deaths from smoking, how many stars born, how many mobile phones sold. You could imagine something like this making a big impact if used correctly in advertising. How about how many trees cut down a second for an environmental campaign? Or how many cans of Coke Zero drunk for a new Coke campaign?

Check it out here.

Burger King saw a huge lift in sales last year on the back of giving away 3 free Xbox games with their kiddie meals. Now it's Toyota's turn. Their new Yaris game for Xbox 360 has you careering down what seems to be a giant half pipe collecting tokens of some sort and shooting enemies out of the skies. The game may be on brand (Yaris is seemingly the adventurous, fun supermini) but looks truly dire. As one blogger put it though "I'd totally play it if the advergame's gratis. That, and if doesn't suck." Ah wait, that last sentiment could be a problem.

Enter two competing terms, hit submit, answer 5 other quandaries and get your result. Ok so it might not be useful for hardcore market research but for those times when you just can't decide between boxers or Y-fronts in the morning it's perfect. An iPhone application would be a big hit too, wethinks.

Check it out.

Yammer. It's a lot like Twitter, but for companies. So think of it as your own private Twitter network that only people with a pre-approved email address can view. Apparently it's all the rage over in the States, with a large number of major corporations already using it to waste time improve productivity levels. Besides the closed nature, one of the other distinguishing features is that you can tag your updates to indicate work on a particular project. So let's say I was working on a new project for one of our existing clients, Peugeot. Any update I made regarding the project I would tag 'Peugeot'. Assuming all colleagues working on the project did the same, we could all subscribe to the Peugeot feed by clicking the tag then clicking on the 'follow' button. That way, we can keep updates on our project separate from the general office banter.

As well as through the normal website, you can update your feed via an iPhone, Blackberry or desktop app or using IM, SMS or email.

Wario's new Wii game centres around shaking your Wii controller. A lot. So much so in fact that he seems to be having a strange effect on YouTube. We've seen similar ideas before but none as relevant to the product as this and certainly not on such a high profile site as YouTube.

Check it out here.

Well it took them long enough but Microsoft has finally responded to the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads. And actually, they're pretty good. See how many celebs you can spot in the mix.

3M are widely regarded as one of the most innovative companies in the world thanks to Scotch Tape, Post-It notes and more. Sadly this ethos doesn't seem to have been carried over to their marketing as part of a new viral campaign housed on YouTube 'borrows' an idea that's been floating around the interwebs for some time. In December 2006, employees of an American company decided to cover a co-worker's Jaguar in Post-It notes as a prank, photograph it and upload the evidence onto the net. Cue much buzz from social media sites such as Digg and even a spot on ABC news. Fast-forward to spring this year and 3M decides they want to use the image as part of their new '1,000,000 uses' campaign. They contact the original photographer and ask for his permission. He responds with a quote for the use to which he receives a reply explaining that they'd rather not pay. He lowers his price. No response. Jump to now and the image above and to the left appears in POS displays across the states. And now the story is all over the blogosphere and back on Digg. Tsk Tsk.

Read the full story here.

According to his creator Will Wright, you will be able to control a whole universe as if you were controlling
a microscope and a telescope. This game is expected to change our conception of some gaming aspect as
you will have to control a civilization from the beginning to the end. Many website have been created in order
to support the game like sporepedia or youspore.

Nokia has today announced plans to launch it's 'Comes With Music' service in time for Xmas in the UK. It goes like this: you buy a prepay Nokia phone and get immediate access to Nokia's 2.1m tracks strong music store for 12 months. So you can download as many songs as you'd like for no extra charge. There are currently no network tie-ins so you can just swap in your old sim. Nokia thinks it will be this Xmas' biggest seller. We think they might be onto something here.

Read more here.

Today, McFly announced they're 'doing a Radiohead' and giving away their latest album for free. Heck, it even has 'Radio' in the title. In far more interesting music news though, while browsing Lil' Wayne's MySpace page (you know how we do), we came across the widget above. It lets the user stream all the songs from the album and purchase direct from the widget. It can also be embedded onto your own profile page or blog. What we're really digging though is the fact that if you have it embedded, you earn money for each sale. A great strategy to spread the word and shift music among fans. Peace.

Branded iPhone apps are already on the loose! Carling makes great use of the tilt technology in the iPhones with their iPint, check it out here.

Some cool new functionality has been quietly added to YouTube videos: annotations. Ok we realise that doesn't sound particularly awe-inspiring but what if I could you they can be used to link to other YouTube videos, therefore creating semi-interactive journeys through the site? Yeah, now that is more interesting. See a demo here:

How long before the first major brands start using this for ads we wonder?

No strangers to using facebook to its full potential, O2 are once again pushing the boundaries. This banner ad was spotted on the Daily Mail's newly revamped site. What caught our interest was the little 'post to facebook' call to action at the bottom.

The banner itself is a very simple game that requires you to move the mouse in a whipping motion - nothing special there. But posting it to facebook is a fantastic way for O2 to increase exposure to this message.

Once it's appeared on your news feed, friends clicking through will reach the site below where they can take a crack (pun intended) at the game too. If the game itself was even remotely captivating this would be a five star effort from O2.

Isn't technological progress wonderful?

We liked the sentiment of this banner for Simple shoes. Especially as it's located on one of the most influential and pretentious music websites out there.