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An interesting project that is soon coming out of Adobe Labs is Flash Catalyst. This will allow designers to bring their web designs directly from Photoshop or Illustrator and add in interactive elements, such as how forms should work, or scroll-bars operate. Often there is a gap in communication and understanding as the developer tries to interpret from a static design how things should work. An additional benefit to these tools is that the client can see immediately at design stage how things will work once live. This would be of most benefit on larger, more complex websites with a lot of functionality.

This is not the first tool to do this kind of thing however, and it is worth looking at other software out there, most notably Protoshare, and Axure, both of which have some good features.

On watching the Gadget Show (Ch5) last night I became quite interested in the idea of Augmented Reality. The idea being you can do some very clever image recognition techniques to bring the virtual world into the real world. Already this concept is very promising for the video games industry, but it has also been used successfully in other ways, including the new smart phone G1, powered by Google Android.

http://regionaltraffic.co.uk/

Regional Traffic is one of the better and more useful Google Maps API mashups I’ve seen. When(if) I get an iPhone, I could actually see myself using this. That’s an improvement from most ‘tools’ where you think ‘yeah, that’s nice, but I’ll never use it in real life’.  Kudos to the chaps behind the site!

Paramount pictures and MSN have debuted a new online ad format called ’sidekick’.

In the one-day homepage takeover for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa users can sample exclusive clips, games and competitions, all from within the confines of the advertising. After interacting with a normal banner ad the whole website slides to the left to reveal a large area that is effectively a microsite within the ad space.

The new format uses the Eyeblaster ad technology platform.

Source: net imperative

Can’t remember this being done before, but Sony have placed Digital movie posters (an animated poster) around the net for their new Terminator movie. Could be good way to spread the word on blogs etc.

This is great, a LIVE experiment by Heinz to see if a tomato plant that has encouraging messages from users will do better than a normal plant. Pop some headphone on and hear what people are saying to the little fella.

Fantastic interactive ’story’ by Samsung all done using YouTube. At the end of each video you get to choose what to do next.

Flash talking have made it possible to view Google maps within a flash banner allowing users to search for their nearest cinema for example. A fantastic innovation.

Lovely micro-site from Fosters that actually lets you control a little mini sub in a tank of water.

An amazing website that gathers the feelings of bloggers from around the world. The interface (using a technology called Processing) is outstanding, with lovely little effects of all the particles either sticking to or flying away from the mouse like a magnet.