This is something a little interesting for friday! The Us Now Documentary is Directed by Ivo Gormley, and explores how web2.0 is changing the ways we interact with the world and how the emerging power of mass collaboration will drive the future. A little techy, but interesting enough at first glance!! You can actually watch the whole film on YouTube right here. (via ViralBlog)

The Absolut has just launched an application for iPhone, called ”Drinkspiration”. The application has an interactive 3G technology with integrated GPS, Twitter and Facebook, guiding the user to make a custom drink and name it the way you want, with a recommendation based on real-time data and trends.

The technology with GPS and social networks can still find inspiration in fans of Absolut from other places in the world and may even share with other users. The purpose of this application is to be an extension of www.absolutdrinks.com where the experiment continues. You can download the application free here or check out the overview video.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky have just launched a very cool new site into beta for their agency. They are renowned for creating some of the worlds best advertising which has critics buzzing for good and for bad but those dynamics will be used in their new website to create streaming content!

CPB are integrating live twitter feeds, news articles and aggregating blogger’s posts into the new site, it’s a pretty gutsy move as these sorts of things can be influenced for the worse, but for a top agency like Crispin the good far out weighs any bad and simply just creates more buzz around being bold online!

I loved every minute of the new experience, when selecting their major clients it immediately streams the latest campaign videos, provides thumbnails to the latest work and even aggregates twitter, blogs and news information relating to that client which really opens you up on a social level to what people are saying about the work & the brand.

This has to be one of the best ways I’ve ever interacted with an agencies portfolio online. In-fact you don’t, it just plays it to you unless you want to take back control. Love it. So go check it out and test their new beta site! Via Daniel on Adverblog.

Penguin Books have launched a great new site that allows kids to play in an unlimited online space where they can create their own virtual stories, books and games for just $10. Once created they can send them to friends to watch, read or play and save them to their own virtual bookshelf.

They are jumping into the world of personalisation mixed with online entertainment for the younger generations which is one of the largest growth markets world wide. Personalised online experiences will increasingly be a growing trend over the next few years with traditional brands leveraging their offline credibility to drive online dollars. Check out the website here!

This was an interesting winner at Cannes 2009 in the Cyber Lions. A banner so simple that you can’t help but to continually interact with it’s cheeky lines of text. How many times did you click? This banner would have got the brand engagement tick many times over, even if it wasn’t exactly exciting. Check out the banner here. It was created by Bridge Worldwide.

Techcrunch posted a quirky little article on how a lot of the people there actually really like Bing, how its results are often actually better than Google’s, but that doesn’t mean it will just catch on with the general public and start a search revolution over night… And it’s simple really! The word “search” is now practically owned by Google, in that the most common term thrown around is “Google It” or “Googling” as opposed to “search for it” and for Bing to take that away from Google would need some seriously bad publicity for Google and ever more amazing search features on Bing.

So how does a new startup like Bing start to take on the monopoly in Google?

It’s great to see brands doing something a little different with their online stores and the new Lands End online store is more of an experience than website which is great. In a beautifully art directed “island” setting you can browse through the range of swimwear amongst some stunning visuals and very intuitive navigational features for browsing the products. Check out the site here.

This is an interesting campaign for a new game called “Prototype” that utlilises Facebook as the key platform to promote the game globally. Login though facebook connect & answer a range of questions to move forward in the competition to become part of the games new exclusive trailer.

If you make it through, you’ll have to then start infecting your friends to increase you chance of winning one of the Xbox/Game packs on offer. Check out the campaign site here and connect!

Volkswagen know how to promote a car don’t they?! With the launch of the New Golf GTI there has been a tonne of great creative and this new online experience microsite, based on the crazy sport known as “Gymkhana” (similar to the DC Shoes campaign vrial video I posted a week ago).

You are treated to a full video site that lets you interact with the driver and other various views and features of the car as it completes a crazy warehouse style rally course complete with slow-motion shots and close encounters with obstacles. Check out the site here. It was created by Tribal DDB Hamburg. (via The FWA)

It’s that time of year in Australia, where the biggest retailers in the country goto war for a few weeks with their huge “Toy Sale” events containing amazing deals across thousands of toys, no deposit layby (they even store it till Christmas for you) and as BIG W does, provide the guaranteed lowest price on any toy!

This year for BIG W we created a funky little Toy Finder application where kids and parents alike can find their favourite toys on sale, create the ultimate wishlist and then print or share it with friends and family so there are no excuses at Christmas this year, plus they can get opinions by posting to facebook or twitter and while they are there, go in to draw to win a trip to Disneyland. Check out the Toy Sale and Toy Finder app here!

Philips have just launched a very cool new social media campaign on Twitter (@Philips_vs) called Philips Vs Anything. It’s a competition where anyone on twitter can submit crazy new product testing ideas to Philips, with the best ones to be created by their Agency, Tribal DDB, and everyone going in the draw to win one of Philips now famous 21:9 Cinema Screens. Check out the campaign website here. Or follow them on twitter here.

This is a great way to harvest the viral power of twitter with out looking commercial. Interact with the community and ignite them with something exciting and enticing and your campaign will grow wings! Wings… Maybe that’s my challenge. @Philips_vs Redbull. (via Adverblog)

This is one of my favorites, the ”Best Job In The World” campaign case study, it picked up the top awards at Cannes Lions and became the first ever campaign to win 3 Grand Prixs (Cyber, PR and Direct). You can check out the full entry here.

This is The Dark Knight Viral “Why So Serious?” Case Study. The “Why So Serious?” campaign won the Cannes 2009 Cyber Grand Prix in the viral category. It was a huge global success, with over 10 million unique players participating! It was created by 42 Entertainment.

Ok, so I want to give you a little background on this one, so make sure you read this before you play the video! In 2008 EA Games launched the cult game; Tiger Woods 08 and late that year a YouTuber named “Levinator25″ posted this video claiming to have found a “glitch” in the game.

It goes viral with about 1million views on YouTube and creating some serious conversation on forums about the various glitches in Tiger Woods 08. So EA Games responded with an absolute classic, creating a video response directly to “Levinator25″ on YouTube…
Click here to watch the EA Games Response Viral Video

I’m thinking Augmented Reality is about to get it’s own section on Digital Buzz! It’s the latest crazy trend and for once, we might have actually found a productive use for it, with a few retailers and developers starting to create virtual stopping and styling type applications…

Meet Zugara’s new online shopping app which couples the functionality of Augmented Reality and Motion Capture together into a utility that allows you to “virtually” shop online and seamlessly connect with facebook to post photos of you wearing the latest dress or shirt and get your friends to comment live before you buy!

It’s just been released in Alpha stage (thats before beta!) so it’s pretty raw and needs a whole lot of polish before it goes to market, but the potential is there! Combine the controls and item management system with the Augmented Reality motion capture quality of the previous transformers example and it will be in a pretty cool place!

I’m pretty sure it must be a proven fact that underwear & lingerie must be the easiest things to make virals for. Great looking women with nothing much on instantly gets traffic (even if its not targeted!). But this is a pretty good attempt by Ultimo in the UK with this little viral video of their underwear models doing some field testing for support performance on roller coaster G-forces!! the viral has been online for about one week and has clocked up over 300,000 views on YouTube alone!

Dunkin Donuts won’t die wondering how the web can help increase their business, they are in the
top 40 twitter brands with some great tweeting, syncing offline & online campaigns in their latest facebook campaign and have now just launched “Dunkin Run” which is a new quick order website & iPhone app combination.

Dunkin’ Run is a mobile/online ordering system mixed with with a social group ordering function that allows your friends to be sent an automated email where they select & place their orders into your Dunkin’ Order before you litterally run down the road to grab them.

Some of the app features include the ability to keep track of past orders, store favorite menu items, receive run reminders, cancellation notices, sync with Facebook to display your run status (that feature seems like it will get you in trouble!).

What I really love, is that the iPhone app has the exact same functionality as the website, something that rarely gets developed into mobile platforms. Check out the website here.

From the guys who created ElfYourself (JibJab) comes this classic new viral video called He’s Barack Obama. It’s a cool clip, but the interesting thing about this viral, is that it’s been launched on and is completely integrated with facebook connect, which means that all comments on the video are synced with profiles & in turn makes it much simpler for the video to spread on Facebook.

This is an interesting video (from 22squared) on why brands need to start engaging in social media conversations. Everyone knows they need as many Brand Advocates as possible, but as always, most brands rarely take any additional action to help create more of them. Things like time, budgets and skill sets always get in the way. But more so now than ever, brands need to make the time to harvest online conversations because increased sales are waiting…

Creating brand advocates can be easier than you think and with social media, that influence is powered 10x, 20x 100x 5000x depending on the size of the advocates network. So just imagine what customers would think when you tweet your frustration about your new mobile phone and then the company, say Vodafone, starts tweeting back with live help… You only have to tweet back once for your entire network to know Vodafone just saved the day for you!

Or, like Hoodie Remix did for me in sending me a Hoodie after reading an article I posted on their new website. So If you’ve been looking for an easy way to demonstrate to your clients why their brand needs to be engaging in social conversations across a multitude of social media, then this is the video for you!

Adobe Air apps are becoming increasingly popular for use on desktops across PC & MAC with the range of apps getting better and better as companies like Mini, AOL, eBay, NY Times, Twitter, Google .etc are all starting to produce Adobe Air Apps from fun and funky to business and productivity.

So here is Ecobot, possibly the first intelligent Adobe Air App that automatically tracks your carbon footprint across things like fuel, energy and paper consumption straight from your laptop. It gives you an indication of how green you actually and are suggests ways to reduce your foot print or how to buy carbon credits or offset yourself. It’s in Beta, but check out the Ecobot App here.

I featured the video the other day, but being in full support mode I thought I’d better call out Australia’s World Cup Bid Website and beg everyone to join the bid to help gather the numbers to show FIFA Australia would be the best host of the world cup in 2018!

But it’s also got some pretty cool features in that everyone who joins, is given incentives to gain points by playing games, telling friends, adding content, photos .etc they call it “taking action” and there are literally hundreds of crazy things you can do to show support from uploading a photo to dying your hair green and gold! And with the more points you earn, the higher you climb the supporters leader board. Check out the site here and join the bid!

DC Shoes has a unique perspective on viral. Founder Ken Block is not just a shoe guy, he is also a professional rally driver. So to promote his own brand, the sport he loves and ofcourse his sponsor, he created a different kind of viral campaign that has 3million views on YouTube in just 2 weeks!

Different because the video tells you up front its basically an ad for DC Shoes. But viral because it goes back to the pure elements of what makes great viral… It’s a video you’ll want to show your friends and probably even tell the guy sitting next to you to check it out! Everyone loves to watch eye candy and this video has plenty of that. It might be 7 minutes long, but I bet you watched the whole thing? Read the whole article on Viral Blog here…

Thoughts on this video? Perhaps viral campaigns don’t always have to be funny?

Red Bull do top shelf Guerrilla Marketing, and the Red Bull Racing Team have just pulled off a very cool guerrilla campaign in Times Square where they literally pit stop the racing car with the full crew team in-front of the packed streets surrounding Times Square! The video is racing up the viral charts with over 130,000 views on YouTube in the first few days alone! And that’s how you pull off a successful Guerrilla campaign. (via ViralBlog)

Transformers have just launced a new Augmented Reality site called “We Are Autobots” using what I believe is the very first combination of Augmented Reality & Face Tracking Technology to let fans picture themselves with the head of Optimus Prime. This really takes augmented reality projects to a new level that will help open the creativity we seen in the future. Check out the experience here. What I really love is the quality of the facial tracking, you can get some serious movement with perfect performance!

Lenovo have just launched a viral campaign based around their seemingly famous “Kill Switch” feature where you can SMS a number and have your stolen or misplaced laptop disabled or in this case “blown up” to ensure your data stays protected. I’m generally pretty fair on campaigns as they are always limited to the clients three B’s (budget, brief and brand) but this, I don’t think will be making the top viral video charts! But maybe I’m wrong?!