Weekly Highlights

Sorry about the silence. But here they are again - the Weekly Highlights.

Create Flash Without Knowing Any..
Jumpeye Components helps the non-designer create sleek flash transitions and use flash components at a very reasonable price (considering the cost of hiring a designer to do it for you). If you ever need to build something flash-y yourself.. this is a great solution.

Great Promotional Site
It takes a little while until you get what it's all about - but when you do, it's an entertaining and well executed promotional site for a major brand. It's nice to see clients go beyond the straight launch sitelets once in a while.

Spock Yourself
Are you on Spock.com? It's the new people search engine and is getting hit hard after its launch - 300 to 400 page hits are an unexpected, but very positive result for them. Spock picks up random data about you from social networks, Web sites and other sources and consolidates it all into search results.

HBO Voyeur
It's been all over the Web and it's somewhere between cool and disturbing. Do you like to watch? HBO Voyeur.

Virgin America
Very cool blogpost over at boing boing on the launch of the new Virgin America fleet. Makes you wanna fly..

Weekly Highlights

Here's the weekly dump:

Microsoft Surface
Check out PC 2.0 - Microsoft's surface, an intuitive touch-screen system.

Widget Box
Widgets are the latest and greatest. Clients request them, user love them.. if they're useful. Add them to your personalized google home page or your blog.. whatever the heart desires - Widgetbox has it.

Leo and Lisa
An impressive, recent theatre play with Kevin Spacey that examines the story around... Leo and Lisa. Truly a gem.

Encyclopedia of Life
“When completed, http://www.eol.org will serve as a global biodiversity tool, providing scientists, policymakers, students, and citizens information they need to discover and protect the planet and encourage learning and conservation.”


20 Great Nike Commercials
Check out the Nike campaigns... found at Parlayer.

Kylie is back - HM Loves Kylie
The new HM campaign, HM loves Kylie, featuring Kylie Minogue. Nice execution, great pictures.

A Word on Navigation

Site navigation is one of the core parts of every website. Sufficient time should be spent determining what's appropriate for the audience you're trying to reach. Some of the most important questions to ask, answer and then consider during the inital phase of the site design are:
- Is the site B2B or B2C?
- How many products or services are offered?
- Is it an e-commerce site?
- If the site is not for e-commerce, what's its goal?
- How does a user reach the site's goal? (Example: Learn-Buy-Checkout)
- How can Search Engine Optimization be ensured?

Once these questions are answered, potential type(s) of navigation and the ideal combination of them should be reviewed. Here are some examples of good solid executions (looking mainly at: labeling, ease-of-use and clarity)

Primary navigation:
Volkswagen
Rolex

Primary navigation and sub nav:
Acura
Mini USA
Amazon
Whirlpool

Left/Assisted/Faceted navigation:
Dell
Home Depot
eBay

Innovative navigation:
Usage-based: Navigate your way and organize the site navigation in a way that helps you find what you're looking for - an approach more companies should explore: Virgin

Purely innovative, great concept and visuals, but not that easy to navigate (BUT neat background music): Metropolis.

Intuitive, alphabet-based flash navigation on this Mercedes UK micro site.

Great integration of products into navigation on the Wrangler Europe site.

A helpful penguin in the bottom right helps users through the initial steps in the Red Universe, while more conventional navigation is also featured on this site.

For further reading and thinking, have a look at 'Where Am I?' on A List Apart.

Weekly Highlights

Here we go...

Each Nation Has Its Favortie Web 2.0 Tool
Adweek ran an interesting article - according to them, different nations prefer different Web 2.0 tools. The Germans love Second Life, the Japanese are all about Twitter, North America obviously lives and breathes Facebook.. have a read on Adweek.

Good, Nerdy Stuff at AdAge
AdAge has published the Digital Fact Pact. Dive in - you'll learn a bunch.

Heineken
Heineken is running a cross-media UEFA Cup-specific campaign - check out the TV spots on the campaign website and see how the world enjoys Heineken while watching soccer.. sweet spots - even if you're not into soccer.

Boo.com
A pre-dot-com-boom site (which crashed when things went sour in '99) tries a comeback. Check out the history and have a look at the new site. Success? We will see..

Jaiku
Meet Jaiku, Twitter's older brother. It's basically Twitter functionality with syncronized feeds and icons added to it. You're either Twitter, or you're Jaiku - it doesn't really matter as long as you have a way to tell the world what you're up to every second of every day. It's a way to make every second of your life meaningful and find an audience for it. Pretty strange. Pretty sad. The good thing? Most jaiku-ers update their feed with their real-life activities...

Beautifully Flawed

'Doll Face', an animation by Andrew Huang, is the portrait of many things - the influence of television on society, the need to be 'like her', immitation instead of innovation, the consequences of living a lie... an amazing piece of art.

Digg's Digital Boston Tea Party

Interesting story on Forbes about Digg's attempt to stop users from posting cracked HD-DVD encryption keys - I doubt anyone foresaw this user reaction..

Weekly Highlights

Sorry about the missed week - things were a little hectic. Here they are for last week and this week:

Audi TT
Very well executed flash micro site for the 2008 Audi TT - of note are the navigation that remind me of wireframe flows and the 'Build Your Own' section with an intuitive selection.

Rolex
Rolex created a new collection of watches and launched them on their site just in time for Baselworld. Beautiful watches, amazing video footage, worth dreaming about..

Volkswagen
VW launched a new site for North America, pushing the Jetta, Beetle and Rabbit looks, leasing deals, and interesting 'Compare-o-tron'-comparisons to competitor cars like the Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. Also of note - the navigation that reminds me of the cassette radio in my first Golf 3...

This American Life
I've heard comments from 'interesting' and 'hilarious' to 'surprising' and 'scary'... personally, I find This American Life to be an interesting look into the US society, offering unique stories of mostly unknown, everyday people. Worth a look or listen.

HP
An interesting approach - HP partners with Vera Wang for 'Work in Style', a campaign that pushes an HP notebook. This is one of the very few approaches that focuses on attracting female computer buyers. On this section of the HP site, Vera Wang, her work and fashion itself take center stage, while the HP notebook is supporting this look into Vera Wang's work. This is a smart and fairly new move for any of the computer giants to partner with a great name to reach female customers (as opposed to men, hipsters, gamers, or families).