Bookies, Unite

I refuse to join Myspace or Facebook. No real reason other than I just feel that endless connectivity isn't in keeping with my goal of living a simplified life. But, being the hypocrit that I am, I did join a similar service that I consider to be Myspace for books. Which I guess is like saying its being cool for nerds.

www.shelfari.com

If you love books, you'll like this community. You put your favorite books on your digital shelf so your friends and family can browse your favorite or current reads. Naturally, you can do the same with their bookshelves and you can search out others who have the same taste in books as you.

I just signed up and need to get my shelf in order, but if you like books, join the nerd revolutions and sign up for Shelfari with me.

Messin with Sasquatch

So, I decided I would look at those messin with Sasquatch commercials that Tim has been talking about. Not only are the commercials entertaining but the website itself is highly interactive. So I thought I would share with you the many features this site has....

First and foremost, you can watch the commercials. Moving on, there is a map in the corner that you can click on and you can "travel" to different parts of the woods when you mouse over certain things like a bag or clothing different things will happen, in some areas there is extra footage from the commercial you can watch, in others you can find out about the "person" the items belong to - A book will open up with pictures of the person with a quirky description of them. They portray the people in the commercials as actual people - now its hard to say whether they are actors or not but the website is developed in way to make you think these are real people just like you and me.

Once your done playing on the map you can move on to reading Sasquatches journal - which is odd to say the least. Next you can play some video games, there are 3 to choose from: you can swing a stick at objects being thrown at you by campers, you can throw squirrels at the campers or you can try not to wake Sasquatch while stealing back your Jacks Jerky. But the fun and excitement does not stop there!

If you go back to the map for a moment and pick a location to visit you'll notice that there are bags of beef jerky on the ground. If you click on one of those bags a new website opens, now from this site you can access the basic information you'd expect to find on a company's website. Who they are, what they do, the products, etc. Also on this website is information about contests you can enter - like throwing woodland creatures to win money or prizes. You can find out what flavor you are, or you can rock climb.

That's right, rock climb. There is a big rock climbing wall with a climber on it, you click on the climbers hand or foot and drag it to a new position, you have to move each hand and foot almost every time, you also need to move the body. Once you've dragged him into another position - its time to do it again. Of course if you don't have your climber positioned to "grab" the right holds he'll fall off the mountain and die, well maybe not die - but you get the point. The goal is to get to the top of Mt. Jack - now I don't know how tall this Mountain supposedly is, or if it even has a top who knows, it might be a ploy to keep people playing - forever trying to reach the top that does not exist. If there is a top than it is mighty high. And people have clearly tried to make it there. The top score is 339' 7".

Naturally, I attempted to climb Mt. Jack and the first couple of tries I fell to my demise after only going a few feet. I finally started to get the hang of it (15 minutes later) and I made it about 30 feet. I finally said to hell with it and decided I would tell all of you about it instead. But think about this for a minute - after 15 minutes of trying to climb the wall - I finally made it 30 feet during one of my attempts - it took several minutes to make that climb. What in the hell does the person with the top score do all day? Think about it, 339 feet? It must have taken hours - that or I'm just the worst fake rock climber in the world.

This interactive website sucks you in, you could spend hours rock climbing trying to make it to the top of Mt. Jack, if the top exists. Of course while your climbing you'll need to pick up the bags of beef jerky hanging on the wall to give you extra energy - so you are constantly reminded of Jacks Jerky. Oh, I forgot to mention that you can also submit your own "wild side" story - yet another added level of interactivity.

As far as campaign sites go I would say this has to be one of the best I have ever seen, maybe. The interactivity levels are amazing and the graphics are as well, but research has shown that interactivity on a website is only effective at increasing awareness, purchase likelihood and the like to a certain degree. A glass ceiling effect if you will. Something tells me that Jacks Jerky has exceeded the appropriate level of interactivity but perhaps for this campaign that's ok. Even if a person finds the site annoying and difficult to use they're probably still going to tell others about it, driving more traffic to the site, increasing overall awareness, etc. and because beef jerky is probably a point of purchase decision general awareness will likely suffice- it may not matter if the site is at the appropriate level of interactivity for ease of navigation and understanding. One thing that does confuse me is why there are so many separated sites, it seems like there are three homepages and they don't clearly link from one to another. I just don't see the point.

Anyways, I'm done ranting about this site, it has already sucked away too many minutes of my life. Here are the links if you'd like to play games with Sasquatch or climb Mt. Jack.....

http://www.messinwithsasquatch.com/

http://www.jacklinks.com/home/products.aspx

good search

searching the web with good intentions! you can choose your cause, a local non-profit, a national charity or your alma matar, good search is a search engine using yahoo that donates 50-percent of its revenue to the charities and schools designated by its users.

goodsearch.com

Interesting Website

I came across this website when I was reading an article on creativity-online.com. The colorful squares caught my attention so I thought I'd check it out. Its an unusual but neat website, its the epitome of interactive. Not only are you interacting with the site, but others are interacting with it at the same time and you can see what they are doing to the site.

The actual company itself, Uniqlo, is a clothing boutique that originated in Japan, but this part of the site has nothing to do with clothing. It is an interactive collaborative website. Users can alter the arrangement and size of the squares simultaneously. When you click on the join now option you just give yourself a random nickname and are assigned a color, you can then split your colored squares, draw new ones, move them around etc., all the while other people in other parts of the world are doing the same thing. There is a scroll at the top of the screen that tracks the changes in real time, i.e. who is doing what to their squares and the country they live in. The images are constantly moving and changing and at times it can be a bit hard on the eyes but you should check it out.

I guess I should probably mention that the site was designed for Uniqlo by Yugo Nakamura, a Japanese designer.

http://www.uniqlo.com/grid/

Emotional websites

Foxtel–an Australian subscription television provider–has a challenging tagline to translate online, "see something feel something". How much do you feel from a website?

feelsomething.com.au shows nine different people (or a group of people) watching TV. Eventually, the camera zooms into the viewers eye and you see foxtel program he/she was watching.

This totally worked on me for two reasons, watching somebody feel, and relating to that person by seeing what made that person feel.

Interactivity – Characteristic of the medium or user?

Interactivity as characteristic of the medium versus the user is something that has been of increasing debate among researchers. Different mediums offer different interactive capabilities. What factors influence interactivity? When we talk with a person face to face or on the phone the interaction is taking place in real-time, but when we use email there is no limit on the time it may take a person to respond, resulting in a slower feedback loop. How does that affect interactivity?

In many cases interactivity is discussed relative to the internet. We use email to communicate with other people; we send an email to provide another person with information which they can then choose to respond to. But if they do not respond is this still considered interactive communication? If there is no reply than only a one-way exchange has taken place. Perhaps it’s the ability to respond that makes it interactive? But if it’s the ability to respond, then the user has control and it is their choice to engage in the interaction, so does this control make interactivity a user characteristic?

When you engage in communication via the telephone a two-way exchange is taking place, so is interactivity a characteristic of the phone? What happens when you answer your phone and there is a recorded message on the other end, would this still be considered an interactive medium? Perhaps if the message offers you the choice to press 1 to receive more information or press 0 to speak with a real person, you then have the choice to engage in some form of interaction or to hang up. So does this choice make interactivity a user characteristic?

In marketing and advertising interactive is typically means web related. But is this limiting our thoughts about what interactivity is. Consider marketing that takes place in the form of contests? At a festival booth for company x you can spin a wheel and win a prize, a two-way exchange of communication can take place between the person running the booth and the person spinning the wheel. Would this be considered a form of interactive marketing? Dose the spinning wheel make this an interactive situation or the ability to communicate face2face?

When thinking about interactivity we need to consider direction (one-way vs. two-way), response time, user control and perceived goals. At best it seems as though interactivity is a combination of user characteristics and medium characteristics.

Rethinking Interactivity

"Interactive" is a term commonly used in advertising to describe online communication. But doesn't this limit the full capacity and power of all things interactive?

By definition, interactive is a two-way system of communication. This is what makes the Internet incredible. It allows the user to respond to the messages on the screen, and vice versa.

But there are other communications systems that provide two-way messaging, such as telephone, text messaging, face-to-face, etc.

Does an online focus limit creativity when thinking about interactive communication, or is the power of the Internet worthy of all interactive attention?