AdVerve Episode 56: Get Whirled with Joe Sabia

Pi-tastic Joe.

Play the show now.

Joe Sabia of SF-based Whirled (@getwhirled), of Rockmelt demo vid, zombie speeding and Mad Men cigarette fame, joins us for some good clean all-natural fun. What's the difference between Vimeo and YouTube? Why plug a manifesto? What makes Tumblr so awesome?

We get to the heart of what makes something catch an audience's eye, why mediocrity might not be so bad ... and why the internet may be the best thing that ever happened to really boring people.

Also, Joe busts out the Morse Code chops. It's a riot in dots and dashes.

Humor me ››

LEGO. AR. OASIS. Dragons!

O'er at Intel Labs, Seattle, LEGO got together with OASIS to see how the play experience could be augmented with (ta-da!) augmented reality.

While it isn't clear how likely it is that we'll all have AR tables installed at home in the near future, I like the idea that environment can be used to respond to play in a way that fuels the imagination. Sure, the mind can make a house burst into flames all on its own. But it's so much funner to be able to see it.

Freelancers

Me: "Where did you put the drill? I want to put those new hooks in."

Him: "It's too late now for the drill. You'll wake the neighbours."

Me. "It's 5 PM on a Friday. Who am I going to wake?"

Him: "Can't you see I'm working?! YOU CAN'T HAVE THE DRILL."

Google Search Stories, Gone French. (And an Astronaut Segue.)

It's poetic that Google's Search Stories campaign, which swept us off our feet with "Parisian Love" during this year's Super Bowl, now has a true French variant.



The Une Histoire campaign is outfitted with its own Search Stories, written in French but armed with more universal triggers: hopes, dreams, trajectories that start small but blossom into dramatic life changes. You know the plot well. My favourite is "Rêve d'Enfant" ("Childhood dream," above).

I totally wanted to be an astronaut, but not for any noble purpose. It was mostly to have a reason to go to space camp. And while we're off-topic, check out these "holiday snapshots" by astronaut Soichi (@astro_soichi). They're magic!

Back on-topic. Une Histoire was produced in partnership with France-based ETO. As with the English campaign, you have the option of creating your own search story, which media pub Influencia actually went and took the time to do:

UPDATE: "Une Histoire" debuted as a broadcast campaign on French network TF1 on November 28 for a reported 300,000 euros. In maintaining a bit of the Super Bowl spirit it rode for its US debut, the ad appeared just before the screening of Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis, a film that scored record box office returns in France.

Google Germany's 3D Streetview Stop Motion

Google Germany punts its Streetview feature with this adorable video that weds 3D to stop-motion. It brings to mind how Streetview succeeds in knitting photographs together, often providing full 360° views of a given area.



The effort is framed as though it's taking place in an old-school traveling scrapbook - the kind you fill up for road trips. A nice nod back to tactile memorabilia.

Work by agency Kolle Rebbe, with production by Sehsucht Berlin.

Props to Fubiz for the vid.

Tim Burton's Cadavre Exquis

Alongside the Toronto International Film Festival, Tim Burton's inviting users to play a game of Tweet-based Cadavre Exquis. As Len Kendall (photo credit) says here, "it's dark and stylish" - typical of Burton's work. (Consider the Willy Wonka remake with that slightly traumatising, but decidedly Dahlish, dentist dad interlude.)



Cadavre Exquis, French for "Exquisite Cadaver," is a parlor game where a person starts a story and others continue the thread until it arrives at a conclusion. You may remember that Rhea Scott did something similar with filmmakers in '08 to promote her production firm, Little Minx.

Burton's story revolves around Stainboy and his investigation of a mysterious and slightly animorphic goo. If you're clever and slightly insane (our favourite kind), make like the director and dig into the deep, unexpected places where tales twist perversely. One such mind is plenty, but paired with the contributions of a few thousand...? We can't wait to see what gets dug out.

Help spin the yarn at BurtonStory.com. Note that Tweets must contain the hashtag #burtonstory.

The effort is a promotion for the Tim Burton exhibition which originally appeared in New York's MoMA. It'll be opening at the Toronto International Film Festival building, downtown in the aforementioned city, this Friday. Don't miss it! No guarantee that your 140 characters of fame are going to be incorporated in a Stainboy movie, though.