Global pulse

Twitter recently published two incredible data visualization videos showing the links between outgoing and incoming tweets from Japan following the March 11 earthquake. It’s a great example of how digital tools enable us all to communicate world wide.

From twitter’s blog:
“On Twitter, we saw a 500 percent increase in Tweets from Japan as people reached out to friends, family and loved ones in the moments after the earthquake. The video below shows the volume of @replies traveling into and out of Japan in a one-hour period just before and then after the earthquake. Replies directed to users in Japan are shown in pink; messages directed at others from Japan are shown in yellow.”

Check it out here

Toronto Tourism Cheating Wall

Toronto Tourism has created a “cheating wall” where visitors can see via video screens into Montreal, and vice versa.

Equipped with video and audio, it’s a live portal enabling people to even chat with their counterparts in the other city.

http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/marketer-news/torontomontreal-go-to-the-wall-in-new-tourism-campaign-28905

Angry Birds LIVE

It may not be the most innovative idea ever, but this live version of Angry Birds was probably really fun to produce. Plus it’s always interesting to see the translation of an online experience into the physical world — it definitely started a party in Barcelona!

Contributed by Collin Whitehead

Social Deals Go Instant and Location-Based

Living Social is on the verge of launching Living Social Instant.  Business owners can set up deals on the fly and offer them to people nearby that moment.

http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-oshaughnessy-livingsocial-instant-2011-5

McDonald’s Pong

Pick n’ Play is an interactive OOH game that allows users to play Pong against each other on a digital billboard from their mobile devices. It’s a web-based not application so it doesn’t require a download – hooray for cross platform! It also geo-validates you, providing “winners” with a McDonald’s coupon to redeem.

Contributed by Jeremy Adirim

The Museum of Me

Everyone likes to look at pictures of themselves, right?

The Museum of Me for Intel is a great example of facebook integration that creates a personalized virtual museum exhibit out of our lives as we construct them in social media. http://www.intel.com/museumofme/

Contributed by James Craig

Google’s +1 Button

Google’s finally done it and taken the +1 sharing button public.

The official word: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-button-for-websites-recommend-content.html

More info: http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/Final_Advertiser_Plus_1_One_Sheeter.pdf

Technical info about +1 Button Implementation:  Here and Here

What does this mean for GSP and why might it be useful?… Consider this as an additional sharing button along with FB & Twitter.

It’s still in the experimental stage when displaying in Google results, but there is a good chance that it could take off in the future and that websites could have some level of evaluation for improved rankings based on how many +1′s they receive.

Contributed by Nicholas Volkart

The Next Pandora?

Hype Machine released an iPhone app that turns music blogs into radio stations.

http://hypem.com/#!/iphone

Play Russian Roulette with Your Virtual Social Life

A Miami ad school concept campaign lets you play Russian roulette with your Facebook account.

Sort of a reverse Whopper Sacrifice for higher stakes.  Interesting strategy capitalizing on the growing importance of one’s virtual life.

You have to wonder though, if this was a real concept how would it be spread if it keeps zapping people’s profiles, the very place where their friends would learn about it?  :)

http://mashable.com/2011/05/11/facebook-russian-roulette/

Virtual Makeup

Lancome Facebook app lets you realistically try out their new color palettes on your profile pics.

Pretty good execution, but a little hard to use.  The Facebook integration is great.

http://mashable.com/2011/05/17/lancome-house-of-color/