mandydale

Miller High Life gets kudos for responding to the SuperBowl Sunday ad spectacle with this quickly turned-around video. Nice way to ride off the momentum of the SuperBowl. I’ll be curious to see if it takes off.

Of course I watch the Super Bowl (for the ads, right?). But another alternative is to check out the Puppy Bowl. Produced by Animal Planet, it is in the 4th year running, and it offers an adorable alternative to watching grown men in bad padded outfits.

You may not have heard the term “sweded” yet, but I’m betting that once Michel Gondry’s new film Be Kind Rewind premieres in late February, we’ll be hearing a lot more of the term.

Sweded is the term used by the characters in the film (played by Jack Black and Mos Def ) to define their “reenactments” of films. Their reenactments of classic films are incredibly lo-fi with shaky cameras and low production values. Almost like Cinéma-vérité, but with ironic and intentionally bad production. Already there are sweded videos popping up on YouTube, included sweded versions of Boogie Nights, Kill Bill, and Rambo. Many of these are because of a contest promotion related to the film, but I have a feeling that the concept of sweding just might take off.

A great example of how Gondry is not just a master of filmmaking, but also a master of seeding and viral marketing. Perhaps he can make sweded the woot of 2008.

Asterpix recently launched the ability to add tags and links on top of videos. Essentially, you can create your own hotspots.

Here you can see the hotspot in action with two surfers video below:

UPDATE: Apparently the embed was causing problems on some browser versions, so I have removed it. Check out the link here.

I can think of a few reasons why you might want to use hotspotting:

• Hotspots could be great for advertisers who want to provide more product info in an additional link
• Helps to highlight a particular scene or frame that you want to call out to other viewers
• I’m guessing you could even use these as tags to make searching within a video a lot easier

There doesn’t seem to be a ton of traction with this format yet (the most popular video only has 85K in views), but I would imagine that this type of functionality will be de rigeur for video sites in the future. This isn’t true “interactive” video, but it does add more depth to the current online video viewing experience.

I really like Hugh McLeod’s discussion of social markers and social objects on Gapingvoid. His definition of a social object is that it is the “node” that permits interaction between two people. A social marker is a type of social object that provides context of your position in a given social ecosystem.

For example, in NYC, a form of social marker is telling people what neighborhood you live in. If someone tells you that they live in Chelsea, and you do as well, then you have a shared context through that social marker. You may then proceed to discuss all the insider places to go in Chelsea (Grand Sichuan, Chelsea Markets, Cafe Grumpy, galleries, etc.). If someone tells you that they live in Williamsburg, and you live in Chelsea, you still have context through that social marker. It is an information point that *can* provide context for your interaction.

Hugh also has a calling card/biz card service where you can order blogcards and choose from a selection of his illustrations on one side of the card, and put your contact information on the other side. It is kinda funny that Hugh started out by drawing doodles on the back of business cards that were given to him, and now you can buy cards that have his illustrations and hand them out to others. Nice turn of events if you ask me!