A veritable smorgasbord of digital delights

There aren’t many people around today, but I thought it would be fitting to end the year with a Friday Mail: it’s a collection of sites and activities that cover topics that have been discussed and reviewed over the year; a veritable smorgasbord of digital delights.

Have a great evening tonight and a Happy New Year!

A move towards Genomic Advertising?
I talked earlier in the year about the prospective rise of genomic advertising, where the DNA of living organisms are altered or adopted for the purposes of advertising. Well,  I spotted an interim step towards this – using glow in the dark bacteria for campaign purposes. I’m not sure whether I should be impressed at the inventiveness of the company that came up with the idea or terrified at the direction we are taking. Anyway, decide for yourself.

Christmas Tweets
It would be remiss of me not to cover Twitter, so I’ve come across quite a nice site that uses Twitter in a very inventive way. The site allows a user to discover what Christmas means to people this year, by using an unique visualiser. It’s a nice idea, well executed and I’m heartily glad to see that Christmas Spirit is currently out-tweeting Commercialism by 268,213 tweets to 145, 457. I’m sure that the Catholic and CoE will be a tad concerned to see that Religion is only covered by 57,964 tweets…

The Pepsi Challenge: phase 2
In an attempt to leverage the current trend for involving people in decision making process, Pepsi has created the Pepsi Refresh Project, reportedly setting aside USD $20 million to fund a variety of community projects across America. Rather than simply donating to existing charities, however, it will be inviting consumers to suggest and vote on the projects it funds. Pepsi will hold contests every month for 10 months beginning in January, with grants split into four categories (<$5K, <$25K, < $50K and <$250K). The first contest will begin Jan. 13, when consumers will have 10 days to submit ideas “that make us think, inspire us and ignite participation”. It’s a nice CSR initiative which uses social media in a positive way and should gain a lot of traction. The only issue is that I prefer Coke…

Decode at the V&A
The V&A Museum is currently running an exhibition called Decode which showcases the “latest developments in digital an interactive design”. The exhibition explores three themes:

• Code presents pieces that use computer code to create new works and looks at how code can be programmed to create constantly fluid and ever-changing works.
• Interactivity looks at works that are directly influenced by the viewer. Visitors will be invited to interact with and contribute to the development of the exhibits.
• Network focuses on works that comment on and utilise the digital traces left behind by everyday communications and looks at how advanced technologies and the internet have enabled new types of social interaction and mediums of self-expression.

Anyway, the V&A commissioned Karsten Schmidt to design a digital identity for the Decode exhibition using open source code (his blog is quite an interesting read, too), and is giving anyone the opportunity to recode Karsten’s work and create their own original artwork. Many of the efforts are displayed here and you can also see them on the Underground.