Chompers - An Alexa podcast to brush your teeth to

Chompers is one of the best things I've yet heard of the the Amazon Echo.  It's a daily (ish) podcast that lasts less than 5 minutes, and is designed to encourage 3-7 year olds to brush their teeth for 3 minutes or so.

It's perfect for the Alexa because kids or adults just need to say "Alexa - start Chompers" for it to start; no one wants to be touching buttons or their phone screen when they're about to brush their teeth.

More here, inc some episodes to listen to.

NSDU's 'Human Test' on Amazon Echo on Google Home

Love this -  Series 3 of 'Humans' is starting soon on Channel 4, and they've produced this 'Human Test', from the NSDU - National Synth Detection Unit - to see if you are a human or a 'synth'.

#WeArePeople has teamed up with the National Synth Detection Unit. In the fight to protect our species from the threat of Synthetics, we need to prove we are #Humans. Have you taken the test? https://t.co/LSKfQ1wjbb #GoogleHome #Alexa pic.twitter.com/I8twYpBsxp

— We Are People (@WeArePeopleUK) April 27, 2018

Just say 'Start Human Test' to your Echo, or 'Talk to Human Test' on the Google Home.

Very well done!

See the site here

& see an example of someone taking the test here

Crisis's Snow Day

Great timing from Crisis UK - this was tweeted just a few minutes after snow started landing in London (& colleagues started getting excited).

Snow: good for sledging, not for sleeping. Reserve a place for a homeless person at #CrisisXmas and bring someone in from the cold this Christmas: https://t.co/PHdZGQrCAj #snowday #SnowWatch #Snow pic.twitter.com/VH7i2Kkqp0

— Crisis (@crisis_uk) November 30, 2017

Fanta: The 13th Floor

A fun 3 minute 360° film for Halloween.  Fanta is, of course, the colour of Halloween...



Best seen on mobile with a headset.

Tilly's Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt

Each new technology seems to throw up its own version of the scavenger hunt - people did it with Foursquare, with Snapchat filters, and now US retailer Tilly's is doing one with YouTuber Shonduras - find the different bits of AR around its stores, and win a discount code:



You can see some of the players here

More info here

Subverting Instagram

Pétanque

A photo posted by Louise Delage (@louise.delage) on Sep 21, 2016 at 3:34pm PDT

A great campaign for the French addiction concern charity Addict Aide, subverting the conventions of Instagram to reach an audience and make them think.



See the account here

More here

Twitter and Sports Rights

This Twitter Moment from yesterday gives an example of what Twitter is turning into, with their recent sports rights deals - a video platform that is the place to go to catch up (legally) with the latest action.

14 goals you might have missed over the weekend

I'm sure as a twitter poster 99% of my tweets will still be text, links, and pics, but as a twitter user, I'll be watching more and more videos.

Amazon x New Yorker

I love this idea:  Amazon is turning stories from the New Yorker magazine into short documentaries for its Prime TV.

The executive producer is award winning documentary maker Alex Gibney - his Wikileaks documentary is excellent - and this is a potentially great collaboration.

Lots of films (Argo, Pushing Tin, Top Gun) were inspired by magazine articles, and if the tone is right some of these stories could make great shorts.

Now all I need is a Prime subscription...

Oreo #Wonderfilled

Very entertaining videos

Wonder if we have an Oreo to the big bad wolf, how would the story go? #Wonderfilled https://t.co/RLhc2z8NDB

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) November 3, 2015

...

Wonder if I gave an OREO to a vampire, would he become #Wonderfilled? pic.twitter.com/Prn7V49R2P

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) August 30, 2015

...

Oreo #Wonderfilled Aladdin - my fav https://t.co/oKDk6w9O8v

— Haifa Farhan.A (@HaifaAlshammry) October 24, 2015

...

أعجبني فيديو @YouTube على https://t.co/rqrIWFAOZX Oreo #Wonderfilled: Replay - اوريو #كلها_عجايب:

— Abdu8llah_Eid (@Abdu8llah_Eid) October 26, 2015

...

In praise of cheap content

Apropos of my post last week about the genius of BuzzFeed's cheap videos - Americans Watch Geordie Shore For The First Time and more - and how they wouldn't have been a great deal better if a lot of money were spent on them, comes this animated gif.

His reaction when he finally breaks the glass is brilliant... pic.twitter.com/FT0pfHiJLM

— LOL_Express (@LOL_Express) August 16, 2015

Yes, there's a place for expensive ads like the one John Lewis just produced, but there's always going to be a place for things like this too.

Simple Infographics

A nice simple infographic used by Sky Sports in a promoted tweet

5 days. 150 hours of LIVE sport! Here's what you've got to look forward to... http://t.co/5m7267ebln pic.twitter.com/AEwnpdIhOR

— Sky Sports (@SkySports) May 21, 2015

Snapchat's Discover

Yesterday Snapchat launched their new 'Discover' feature - daily stories from a collection of media partners, including Yahoo News, Mail Online, Cosmopolitan, Vice, MTV, Comedy Central, CNN and more.

When you open the tab and tap on an icon, you get about 5 stories - swipe down to get more of the story, from right to left to get a new story, and up to close.

Stories can include video or text.  The Yahoo News feed, of example has Katie Couric presenting news stories.  Items are quite 'tabloid' - the Mail has stories about The Kardashians, and also US-focussed - the New York blizzard for example.

The providers vary by country.  In the video above it shows that US has ESPN and Comedy Central, which we don't get in the UK (rights reasons, presumably), but sport is covered here by Bleacher Report.

It seems to work seamlessly, and I'm sure will get lots of traction.  You can also see brand feeds integrated - maybe Coca Cola for The Olympics next year, for example.  I'm not sure what the deal is with the channels - who pays who? - but I'm sure this will become clearer.

Update - the channels can sell ads, and share revenue with Snapchat, according to AdWeek:
"Snapchat has been working on Discover for months with major media companies to plan their channels, and there will be advertising on them, according to sources. The media companies will be able to sell ads and share revenue with Snapchat, sources said.
"They're going to have publishers posting daily content to micro-sections of Snapchat that can be monetized," said a top digital ad executive with clients who have been pitched on buying ads in Discover. "[If] Maybelline wants to advertise on the Cosmo section, they negotiate with Cosmo."

It completely changes the Snapchat experience for me - few of my friends use Snapchat - and will probably greatly add to the experience for regular users.

It also puts Snapchat up against Facebook and Twitter more than ever before - it's now a place to go on your phone to find out about what's happening in the world, and not just for messaging.

(It also shows how seriously Snapchat is being taken for Mail Online to be a partner, because it's only a year since they were much more negative about Snapchat)

Read all about it here