Picture this- your mood

Seen this over the weekend even though I've been on Getty images for years but what I love about this particular tool is how it can refine my search depending what mood I'm looking for, it can even build a mood board that showcases the feel I'm after, great functionality and very instinctive, so you're not 'wadding' through thousands of pictures or videos, Flickr something you could maybe follow? well done Getty.

http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/usa/?isource=usa_lid_img_moodstream

Online Treasure Hunt

I had a really interesting chat with a mate of mine who doesn't even work in the digital business he was raving about 'geacache' I had a rough idea what he meant but he demonstrated how it worked as he had just downloaded the app on his blackberry or as I like to call them 'crackberry' but with his excitement in between big gulps of his cafe au lait he went on to explain how it worked and how the previous Saturday spent the afternoon with his kids on a treasure hunt, yes, yes we've seen them all before, a bit like Easter egg hunts isn't it? well no not really, this is something much more than just wandering around the back garden looking for a couple of Cadbury's cream eggs.

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. This is big, currently there are 679,530 active geocaches around the world.
Enter your postal code or address and click "go" to explore the geocaches near you so the site says, I got my mate Des to enter our postcode to where we were and hey presto there was two in our area.

He said that the kid's loved it and when they found their 'treasure' the previous week they shrieked with delight some coins, hearts, and beads with a message from the last visitor, all harmless fun and my kids have already started to dress up and started to look very much like Captain Jack Sparrow.
http://www.geocaching.com

Post modern art

We may be living in the era of the email, but one young illustrator has proved that the art of correspondence is far from dead. While working for her degree at Glasgow School of Art Harriet Russell decided to find out exactly what lengths the men and women of the Royal Mail were willing to go to to ensure the safe delivery of her missives.

To put them to the test she concealed the addresses of 130 letters to herself in a series of increasingly complex puzzles and ciphers. Among the disguises she employed were dot-to-dot drawings, anagrams and cartoons. The answer, it seems, was very far indeed. Amazingly, only 10 failed to complete their journey back to her.

What a cracker of an idea, who would have thought old Royal Snail Mail could be such an addictive and fun way to commuicate, much better than going through endless emails, who said; 'the art of conversation is dead' was talking rubbish.

An idea in which with the digital threat Royal Mail or the Australia Post could adopt, this could get people to start sending mail again, they then could 'post' the best on a mircosite gallary wall.

Encourage art students, kids to get scamping ideas.

Runners come together

It's amazing the web, yes I know we can talk about all fancy websites, cool interfaces, slick animation, but for me nothing beats when real people from real communities come together and contribute to the web, that's what happened last week for one of our clients, Blackmores who are one of the major sponsors for the Sydney Running Festival, over 31,000 people came together and ran at the festival, and it really has that festival feel, from old to young no matter how fit you are it's about your best or as Blackmores like to put it: 'B your Best' .

People shared their experience by tagging their pictures with BSRF08 which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore's site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/
over 7,000 'Challenges' were taken over the 8 week training program: http://beyourbest.blackmores.com.au/ that was tailored to your level of fitness, with training tips and recommended runs, you could even go round the course with our webcam that was condensed into a 5 minute time line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I

Runners also who participated in the Sydney Running Festival were able to see
themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward on their 'moment of glory' to their families and friends, a real Web 2.0 experience:
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/

Ideas Ideas Ideas

One thing as a creative person you can never do is switch off when it comes to thinking of ideas, inspiration can come from anywhere, I always carry my camera and at least 4 pens,(just in case I run out of battery juice from the camera or one of the pens decides to run dry). I drive Paula my wife mad with the bits of paper with scribbles and notes to myself that she finds in my pockets, that's the joy of using a digital camera just shoot and squirt, upload onto your Flickr account and you have a reference that you can turn to when you need inspiration for that next campaign, I also like to call it 'mulling' my account manager likes to refer to it as; 'he's in la la land again' but that's what we do, we look at different ways that will capture people's attention, take these pictures I saw when I was wandering around in Melbourne, eye catching and could one day come in useful for an idea.