FIFTY NINETY ONE

2010-10-13T17:57:00.000+08:00

Okay. I haven't been updating this site as much as I should but here's the latest masterpiece that I did at TBWA\ TEQUILA\ for Visa payWave.

Here's the URLs:
www.visapaywave.sg
www.visapaywave.hk
www.visapaywave.tw

More elements of the campaign will be posted up soon... hopefully if i'm not lazy.

2010-02-03T12:46:00.000+08:00

Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News

2010-02-03T11:19:00.000+08:00

Kim Jong Il Announces Plan To Bring Moon To North Korea

2010-02-02T21:17:00.002+08:00

Philips Carousel Cinema TVC

The 2 minute 19 second cinematic feature is filmed in one continuous tracking shot and shows a cops and robbers shootout sequence that includes clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass, bullet casings and money.

The advert required a crew of more than 100, a motion-controlled rig, three cranes and plenty of 3D trickery. Stuntmen and dancers with the ability to remain in awkward positions for long periods of time were used to help create the freeze-framed effect.

Here's the "Making" of TVC:

2010-02-02T19:06:00.001+08:00

Patrick Hughes
An artist that creates perspective art. Quite amazed that no advertising campaign has actually ripped this off yet or not at least that I know of.

Example of his artwork Paradoxymoron:

In case you did not manage to get it, take a look again. The artwork is perspective-based and seem to move depending on where you are viewing it from.

Video explaining his creative process:

2010-02-02T17:24:00.035+08:00

Lac Superieur Residence, Mont-Tremblant, Canada.
Exterior of Residence

Interior of the Residence

I really love how airy and bright the house looks with all the glass panels letting the light in. Having the interior covered mainly with wooden and concrete texture creates a startling contrast when blended with tones of white and black giving the place a simplistic yet ultra modern feel.

I'll probably need to sell my ass to own this but hopefully hardwork will payoff and I'll be able to get a property like this in a decade or so.

2010-02-01T20:26:00.001+08:00

In case anyone is wondering why I keep posting up old "stuffs", the reason is that I find it unmanageable to keep links on to a browser's bookmark. Furthermore with the various choices of browser (Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera etc) we have today, it's harder to keep track of "stuffs". I have tried using Delicious but honestly I do not like it. Thus I thought of having a blog to consolidate, sort, share the links I have.

At the same time, I'm also using the blog as a frankenstein to test out search engine optimization, and posting up my latest work.

So there you have it:
Blog + Bookmark + Portfolio + SEO Test Site

2010-02-01T20:01:00.003+08:00

The world's second largest aquarium at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

It's kinda relaxing watching it after a long day at work. Try watching it on full screen though. I doubt it will look as nice if you're just watching it as an embedded youtube video.

2010-02-01T18:22:00.000+08:00

The WaterBoard Interactive Installation

2010-02-01T15:32:00.001+08:00

Olympus: The Pen Story

Previously shared this commerical in office. This is a stop motion production done by DSG Dialog Solutions. With 60.000 pictures shot, 9.600 prints developed and over 1.800 pictures shot again without post production to create this ad, I would say some people have a lot of time on hands. Nice work though. =)

2010-01-31T16:11:00.001+08:00

This is a pretty hilarious Walmart commercial.

2010-01-31T13:43:00.001+08:00

IKEA - Facebook showroom

Viral Video Summary:
Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors created a Facebook profile for IKEA store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. The team then uploaded IKEA showroom images to the facebook photo album over a two week period. Facebook friends of Gustavsson could then win the object that they had tagged on the photo for free. The campaign took off like wildfire and I would say it's an ingenious way of really effective advertising.

Though not exactly the newest of viral but I'll just put this up for anyone who hasn't seen it.

2010-01-31T12:46:00.000+08:00

The Biography of Bill Gates

A very respected and influential icon to me.

2010-01-31T11:56:00.001+08:00

The Known Universe by American Museum of Natural History
It is amazing how insignificant mankind really is, isn't it?

2010-01-30T18:47:00.002+08:00

Here's some free Google search tools for those interested in SEO & SEM:

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools is the equivalent of a mechanic looking after you car daily but for websites of course. Identify broken links, malware and other issues and find out what search queries lead to your pages even with clickthrough statistics. It even checks your website speed and tells you why it’s too slow.

Google Analytics
In case you still don’t know GA you have probably slept for years. Some SEOs don’t use it due to paranoia of being controlled by Google though. You have to decide yourself what’s more important, a very useful analytics tools or the fact that Matt Cutts can look under your skirt.

Google Website Optimizer
With Google Website Optimizer you can test different versions of your pages. This way you can determine the best converting ones. It’s called A/B split testing or multivariate testing and is all the rage lately in SEO circles and beyond.

Google Zeitgeist
Google Zeitgeist is not a tool in the strictest sense but you can use it keyword research nonetheless. In fact it shows the most popular queries so it’s a good starting point in your SEO campaign. Take the Zeitgeist popular keywords and then test some keyphrases containing them with the other tools that will follow in this list. Also checkout the current Zeitgeist aka Hot Trends.

Google Trends
Google Trends lets you compare traffic for popular search terms and websites. This way you can determine whether a topic is rising in popularity or not. Works gret combined with Google Zeitgeist and Google Insight for Search

Google Insights for Search
Insights for Search is like Google Trends on steroids. You can look up most keywords here, even those that aren’t popular at all. Compare up to five keywords and their ensuing traffic.

Google Traffic Estimator
This is a classic tool. It says “Adwords” but you can use it to find out the estimated number of visitors a keyword can bring to your site.

Google Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool is like the Traffic Estimator but from a differnet angle. Some people prefer this others prefer that. You’ll want to check both to make sure you’re on the right track with your keywords.

Google Search Based Keyword Tool
This very neat tool allowas you to find out related keywords to a site or existing keyword or rather both. It’s connected to Google Insights for Search is a very useful way.

Google Ad Planner
Google Ad Planner is like Alexa and SpyFu in one. Use it to screen popular sites or your competitors for keyword intelligence or both.

2010-01-30T12:47:00.004+08:00

BBC - The Secret Life of Chaos

Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.

It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?

In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?

It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.

And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.

2010-01-30T12:24:00.002+08:00

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes in California Causing Major Slut Spill

2010-01-30T09:19:00.002+08:00

Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success

Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

2010-01-29T15:43:00.000+08:00

Here's some images of the Ultimate Start Up Space

If you have an idea submit before the competition ends on 12th February.

2010-01-29T15:05:00.003+08:00

Ultimate Start-Up Space Microsite Summary and Development Process
For those interested in my development process feel free to continue reading. Those that are not can probably stop here, don't really want to bore anyone with the process of my development.

To start off, I got the initial brief for the microsite in early November. It was a pretty rush project since it had to be launched in early December which means around 3 weeks of development time after factoring in time needed for debugging, changes and client's approval. Getting a microsite out in 3 weeks isn't exactly the hardest thing to do, it's the elements of what needs to be implented that frightened me.

Here are some elements I implemented into the site:
- Dynamic resizing of the site based on the browser's screen size
- Legal age restriction upon typing the ultimatestartupspace.com.sg and it's subdomain
- Preloading and rendering of videos and images at run-time
- Dynamic URL implementation ( SEO ) of the entire site and individual public submission
- Simulated 3D rendering of panels in gallery that builds based on the number of entries within the database

There are quite a number of elements that was integrated within the site that is of great difficulty. I'm going to specifically mention about the gallery section as it was quite a breakthrough for me. You'll probably need to refer to the site here while reading to get a clearer picture.

This was the initial problems I faced:
- How do I create a dynamic 3D panel gallery that populates accordingly based on the number of entries that I have in the database?
- How will I load the images and videos into the 3D gallery smoothly?
- How can I achieve the kind of user experience that you would get when you see video on youtube?
- How should I program it such that each user submission would get it's own URL and by typing in the URL they would be linked directly to that particular entry on the site. Which could then enables user to share the entry on facebook.

I began by fragmenting the various problems into even smaller portions.

I first started to build the 3D simulation of the gallery. After experimenting with Papervision 3D and Flash's internal 3D engine, I decided to use mathematics to create the 3D effect as that would be the only way to create the intended seamless effect. Here are the following steps that I took:

Creation of Gallery Positioning and Animation:
When the conclusion was made to use mathematical calculations to do up the gallery, I came up a concept of enabling 13 fixed panels to display the gallery. Upon entering the gallery panel section, only 7 panels are seen. However in the background, 6 panels ( 3 on each side ) act as backup to load the content of the subsequent submissions. And by indicating a defined position of x, y and z ( done through scaling ) the positioning and animating of the gallery was done.

Implanting Content on to Panels:
The next tricky thing was to implant the content on to the panel. How am I going to load panels dynamically based on the number of submission and not cause a lag? I can't possibly load 100 submissions at the background ( if let's say there's a 100 entries at a particular stage ). Thus I started playing with the notion that individual content for the panel would be loaded on the two ends of the hidden gallery panels. I then formulated a mathematical solution to solve the dynamic loading issue, however it's going to be too complicated to explain so I shall skip it.

I spent quite some time experimenting the possibilities of various options before I managed to pinpoint the exact mechanics. See example below.

Example:
8-9-10-11-12-13-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Remember there are 13 panels regardless of how many entries there are. Panel 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12 & 13 are the visible at the point where users enter the gallery.

8-9-10-11-12-13-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Panels 5 & 10 would need to already have content loaded depending on the direction where the user click to navigate through the gallery.

8-9-10-11-12-13-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Thus we would have to do our loading and unloading of the content at panels 6 & 9.

Enabling video to the Panel:
Okay. So now we have the dynamic content ( image & copy ) and the panels moving. Unlike the dynamic content I could not attach a video to each individual panel as that would cause the site to overload ( 9 x 3mb video = 27mb to load ). Thus each video is attached individually when the play button is clicked and preloaded on the fly. However that is not the end of the story. With only one loader to load when user transits from one video to the next, there is not enough time for the loader to unload the old and load a new video again. Thus I created two loader to interswap the loading and unloading of videos so that it would load correctly and smoothly.

I believed there should be a better way to do this though. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this.

Dynamic URL for the Gallery Section:
Now that everything is in working order, I'm just left with the dynamic URL integration and linking of the gallery overview and panel mode. With the variables that I had done up previously, it's just a matter of putting the right keys into the correct locks. Hard for me to really explain in detail here but it was pretty interesting since I use SWFaddress instead of query string to get the dynamic URL with the legal age restriction page.

I'm pretty much done with my explanation on my development process. The entire process was not as smooth as I had inscribed. There was in fact damn a lot of hiccups during development. Hope it's informative for anyone that's interested. =D

2010-01-29T12:13:00.005+08:00

Some ( of my preferred ) useful code libraries for flash developers:

- Papervision3D ( 3D Engine )
- PaperWorld 3D ( 3D Game Engine )
- FLARToolkit ( Augmented Reality )
- TweenMax ( Tweening Engine )
- APE ( 2D Physics Engine )
- BulkLoader ( Loading Kit )

- AS3crypto* ( Security )
* Haven't got to try this yet but it sounds interesting

Credits for this goes to Adrian Parr. Click here to view the full post on his site.

2010-01-29T09:42:00.001+08:00

Why would you want to play basketball anymore when you can SLAMBALL!!!

Okay... I'm just being random.

2010-01-28T19:09:00.001+08:00

Michael Sandel: What's the right thing to do?

Summary:
Imagine you're in a trolley car and you are imminently going to hit five workers working on the track. However there's a side lane with only one worker working on the track? Would you under conscious action switch lanes and kill the one worker or would you stay on path and kill the five workers? What would you have done? Would your action constitutes to murder?

An interesting talk from Harvard Law by Michael Sandel. I know it's a rather lengthy video but it's good. Much much better that my summary. Trust me.

2010-01-28T10:36:00.003+08:00

Finally an Apple product that I would really consider getting this time round. What really attracts me is their e-reader cum web browser cum organizer functions. Not that much of a gamer now so no games for me. I believed most people have seen this already but here it is anyway.

I believe ipad would be pretty bad news for Amazon and Barnes & Noble's e-reader. But anyway I'll wait for some reviews before committing to getting this new tech toy.

2010-01-27T17:36:00.008+08:00

Here's something I'm proud of. Check out the website here.

The Ultimate Start-Up Space Submission Video

The Ultimate Start-Up Space Light Projection at Clarke Quay

The Ultimate Start-Up Space Microsite
Credits:
Project
The Ultimate Start-Up Space
Client
Pernod Ricard Singapore
Creative agency
TBWA Singapore
Creative team
Simon Chew, Justine Lee, Jae Soh, Gary Steele, Hagan De Villiers, Danny Teo,Guo Dong Ni, Aggie Jin, Tony Chew, Kestrel Lee, Rupert Hancock, Allen Pattiselanno, Ben Williams
Account servicing
Jaclyn Lee, Christine Chionh, Bibiana Lee, Melanie Keppler
Planner
Fredrik Sarnblad
Producers
Joanny Wong, Joanna Lim
Lighting & effects
Expo AV-Insync Pte Ltd
Shop fitting
MacroVic Enterprise Pte Ltd
Media agency
OMD
Media planner
Irene Lam
Public relation agency
MS&L Worldwide

I have updated the details of the microsite in a newer post.

2010-01-27T13:02:00.011+08:00

I so frikin' want to go to the South by Southwest Conferences and Festivals. Anyone willing to sponsor my trip?

Some tech talks that i find interesting:
- Universities in the "Free" Era
- Journalism Next: Thriving in the Digital Age
- Selling Your Milk When the Cow is Free
- Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?
- Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom

These are just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of smart and respectable individuals in the tech business will be heading there this coming march. Click here for more details. Do let me know if anyone is heading there.

2010-01-27T00:13:00.011+08:00

Google Search Fail

Funny talk show insight about google search. Another little something I sent out previous within the office.

2010-01-26T21:34:00.008+08:00

Luis Von Ahn and reCAPTCHA
An interesting video that I send out not too long ago in office. 12 minutes of brilliant and entertaining talk that is definitely worth watching.

2010-01-26T20:50:00.002+08:00

Wassup,

Haven't been blogging for at least half a year now, I guess it about time to start again. First of all, I want to explain the title of my blog in case anyone ask about it.

Here it is:
2601 (26th January) - 2010 = 591

The day and month the blog first started translated into numbers subtracted by the year is 591. Hence I came up with the title "Fifty Ninety One".

I'll keep the first post short and sweet so that's it for now. Bye.