I probably do not need to tell you just how popular Twitter is right now. Everyone from your next door neighbor to us here at WebHostingSearch have our very own Twitter account… You are probably also twittering everyday about things that you find funny or interesting. The boom of various social media apps, such as MySpace, FaceBook and now Twitter, has lead to many feeling anonymous, even though it should be the other way around. We are now more open for interaction than ever before but when it gets too crowded it is always more difficult getting noticed.
There are however people coming up with solutions to make a site pop out and this is what developer Kevin Sherman has done with Bubble Tweet. Twitter is as we all know text-based but with Bubble Tweet you will be able to add your own videos. The service is free and it is very easy to use. Every Bubble Tweet gets its own URL and a count is kept on how many people that are visiting each Bubble Tweet. So, if you want to step out of the anonymity and put a face to your Twitter account I can highly recommend you checking out this fun little tool.
Traditional marketing has become a thing of the past as it simply does not get noticed by the intended market. Many of the majors companies are now putting much of their effort on releasing so called viral videos. These videos do not have to be especially related with the company and their products. Their main purpose is to create a buzz among a community of people and there are quite a few videos that have managed in doing so. Being a sucker for top lists myself I had to create a list with, what I believe to be, the eleven best viral videos of all time.
11. Sheep creating beautiful art
One of the most recent examples of a great viral video comes from Samsung. Instead of showing their products, in this case LED TVs, the traditional way they decided to make some sheep do the work for them. The result is mind-blowing and I do not care whether it is true or fake. I simply get amazed each and every time I see this ingenious video and I am not the only one since it already has millions of views.
10. Hypnotizing bouncing balls
This commercial for Sony Bravia has to be accounted as one of the most successful viral videos of all time. Releasing thousands of bouncing balls down the streets of San Francisco might sound like a terrible idea but it proved to be exactly the opposite. It was almost difficult to understand whether it was a commercial or a music video for Jose Gonzales, who is singing, and the song Crosses. Never before has color been portrayed in a more beautiful way and the video takes full advantage of the oh so important combination – visual and audio.
9. The egg hatching man
This is perhaps not a viral video in its true sense but it still needs to be mentioned in this top list since it was a way of thinking viral. The Swedish clothing store Playground did not want to things the usual way so they decided to see if it was possible to hatch an egg with the help of one of their down jackets. The result was a small chicken and coverage in magazines and TV news all over Sweden. Commercial at its best!
8. Mac doing it the drunken way
Mac has always been cutting-edge when it comes to their design but with Ellen Feis they also managed to create an ad that blogs all over the world was buzzing about. No computers are shown in the ad – there is just Ellen Feis talking drunkenly about how a PC messed up her paper. Simple and sweet in its own way…
7. Wassup
The Budweiser ad “Wassup” has to be counted as one of the first examples of a successful “modern” viral video. Never before had a commercial caused such a stir as this did. There are no facts about how good their beer is – instead we see a couple of friends screaming Wassup!!! to each other. This is somewhat of a milestone among commercials.
6. A very big ad
The beer company Carlton Draught always likes to go over the top with their commercials and this one good example of that. The fact that it is so very strange makes it stand out and become perfect material for a viral video. I have never drunk the beer but still I can not get it out of my head – that must be accounted as a good viral video.
5. Macintosh 1984
The Budweiser ad is one of the great modern viral commercials but Apple’s Macintosh 1984 ad is one of the very first examples ever. It is a rather creepy commercial but nevertheless was it the most talked about ad at its time and it is still one those videos that people can not resist to mention when discussing viral videos.
4. The T-Mobile dance
The T-Mobile commercial is one of the most impressive and astonishing viral videos I have ever seen. For two and half minutes the Liverpool train station is turned into one of the biggest dance floors the world has ever seen. With over 11 million views on Youtube T-Mobile has to be more than pleased with the outcome of this video.
3. The german coast guard
Germans are not the easiest people to joke about but Berlitz managed to come up with a seriously funny commercial known as the “German Coast Guard”. The mispronunciation, and interpretation, of “sinking” and “thinking” is hilarious and got millions of people searching and talking about this video making it as viral as it possibly can be.
2. Touch of gold
Over 50 million views globally make this one of the greatest viral videos ever made. Soccer star extraordinaire Ronaldinho gets a pair of Golden Legend Nike shoes and hits the crossbar four times, without the ball ever touching the ground. This is impressive in so many ways that I do not know where to begin – both his performance and the number of views make me go, huh?! How is this possible?!
1. Dove evolution
This commercial has already become an instant classic. In only 1:14 you will get to see how easy it is to fix up and do a complete makeover. The girl in this commercial goes from a pretty girl to being photoshopped into looking like a supermodel with the text “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted” showing up. Publicity stunt or not – it proved to be the right way to go since millions of people have seen the ad on Youtube. There have also been parodies made which must be the ultimate proof of it being a successful viral video.
Sometimes you just need some inspiration to move forward. One of the things that inspire me is artists – may it be a musical artist or a painter. However, I recently stumbled upon this great artist that creates portraits of fallen stars out of recycled cassettes tape. If you like this one, please make sure to check out “Ghost in the Machine” on Flickr.
The trial is over and the world is now awaiting the judgement. The outcome will not only have impact on the legislation in Sweden. No, this is a global issue and it will pretty much set the tone for file-sharing all over the world. It has been quite the battlefield in the court room and being the good Samaritan that I am I will clarify the arguments of both parties.
The Prosecutor & Plaintiff
It’s not the technique that is the issue; it is the fact that there are Torrent files available on The Pirate Bay. Consequently, the site is guilty of distributing copyright protected material. Also sites linking to illegal material can be found guilty in the Supreme Court.
The accused have knowledge that copyright protected material is distributed through their site and they have done nothing to prevent it. The accused can be sentenced even if their site is a form of search engine. This according to previous sentences.
An agreement among the accused to form the company Random Media shows that all four should be held responsible. Three of the four have signed a contract and the fourth is mentioned in it – all according to the prosecutor.
The Accused
The Pirate Bay is nothing but a search engine. It is not possible to convict the supplier of the infrastructure for what the users are doing.
The prosecutor has not been able to show where and when the violation was committed, hence they can’t be convicted for being accomplices. It is not even clear that the violation was committed on The Pirate Bay.
Three of the accused maintain that they can’t be held personally responsible for the site. Only one of the four accused admits that he is operating the site, also adding that the purpose never has been to spread any copyright protected material. Nowhere on the site are visitors encouraged to file-share copyrighted works.
Ohhhh!!! The shenanigans are over in what could be an epic trial of the year, of the century, of the internet age.
Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.
Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:
“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF
“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)
“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI
“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party
“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor
If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.
Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.
Have you ever wanted to change to homepage to Google.com? And you just didn’t know how? Well the folks who created Firebug must be the smartest people around. Sammy decided it was time to revamp the google page. We rather like it now; the guys especially love the Hooters addition.
Google Chrome has been available for people using Windows a couple of months now and it seems as if all Mac users soon can take advantage of it as well. Ok, I don’t know if all these Mac lovers, including me, want to use Google Chrome as the standard web browser since Google has a tendency of acting and appearing as “big brother”. But that put aside it at least seems as if they have begun to see the end of this, apparently, very complicated process. Now, my question to you is (which means that I probably haven’t put the issue aside ): What do you think about Google Chrome in general and if you are working on a Mac – will you use it when launched?
Want to market yourself as a competent web designer? Spread the word that you are open for business?
Then I recommend designing a free unique and stylish Wordpress theme. Not only is this a perfect opportunity to show off your web design skills, design the theme mind-blowing enough and you’ll have a great number of webmasters using it in no time.
Visitors by the thousands will flood your online portfolio in search for a hi-quality free Wordpress theme or freebie as it is also referred to. In fact, free hi-quality Wordpress themes are so hard to come by nowadays, it’s like gasoline in Mad Max, so don’t be surprised if Smashing Magazine themselves make space for your theme. This popular online web design magazine is devoted in bringing Wordpress freebies to their readers. If you theme is hot enough, they’ll surely pick it up.
Your site will also get better ranking in search engines thanks to the link you’ve included in the theme footer leading back to you the creator. More potential customers will find you site and contact info hopefully leading to more work for you.
In any case, making a Wordpress Theme of great quality and top notch web design will at least prepare you for future web design projects. Already a market has expanded around the Wordpress CMS with more and more websites using it, thus increasing the demand on unique and differentiating themes. Becoming a Wordpress Theme devoteé is entirely realistic as there are whole agencies doing it already.
Here are 2 examples of freelancing web designers who have gotten great recognition thanks to their impressive designs of free Wordpress themes:
Andrew Lindstrom, WELLMEDICATED – created free theme ZinePress that got picked up by Smashing Magazine and embraced by the Wordpress web design community.
Paul Bennett – creating the Viewport theme this web designer not only broke new web design territory with an innovative theme design, but used the good name of Wordpress to prove his skills and potential.
I recently read an article in the USA Today which said that about one in four American adults don’t use the Internet and that many of these don’t have any desire to go online either. Close to one third of these adults apparently don’t have any plans to use the Internet – ever.
These figures must come as a slap in the face for Mr. Obama and his colleagues as they’ve just set aside a couple of billions for broadband expansion. I’m obviously all for this expansion as I like every improvement of the web. The reason for this alienation of a huge part of the population apparently has to do with costs for switching from dial-up to broadband and the fact that these adults don’t know how to use the Internet.
Ok, I can go along with the fact that people aged 80+ (of course there’s exceptions) might not be a good target group for the web. But what about the rest? Perhaps it’s just me but I would feel handicapped if I wouldn’t have access to the Internet each and every day. And I really mean EACH and every day. I can’t even resist going online when I’m on vacation. You know, just to check my email or browse the web for something totally useless. Anyways… I just think it’s funny how America, the great superpower, is slacking behind on the usage of the Internet. I’m sorry, but sometimes I keep thinking about the good old states as hillbilly-nation (hence the picture)…
I recently read an article about how the Internet has made millions of MP3’s available for us with a click of a button and that it at the same time, paradoxically, also has made it harder to discover new music. Being the music enthusiast that I am I felt as if I had to write a little something on this issue. Yes, it’s true that the Internet has made millions of songs available for us but I don’t agree that it at the same time has made it more difficult to discover new music. I am stumbling upon new artists/groups that I like as good as every single day. The article mentions four different approaches to finding new music: Pandora, Mufin, Lala and eMusic. All of these seem to have some kind of technical mumbo-jumbo techniques of analyzing music and your taste in music.
The Hype Machine
How about The Hype Machine? I use it every day and it’s more of a “human” way of getting your hands on great music. Simply type in an artist or a song that you like and you’ll get a list of all the music blogs that have written a post about it. Most of these blogs will also provide an MP3 with whatever is was that you were searching for. A blog posting something about a song/artist that you like will probably also have other posts about something that you’ve never heard before and still could like. Just take a quick look at the blog and you’ll notice quite quickly if they have a similar taste in music as you. Music blogs tend to be quite “niched” so if you visit a blog operating in your favorite genre from time to time you’ll for sure discover something new. I mean – it doesn’t have to be all that difficult…
A list of blogs that’s posting MP3’s
When searching for a song or artist (in this case Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen) you’ll get a list of all the blogs writing about it. Click “Read Full Post” and you’ll be redirected to the blog. You can also listen to the music directly from The Hype Machine.
Want to market yourself as a competent web designer? Spread the word that you are open for business?
