Interactive Youtube – Ben is clearly a better magician

It’s seems Youtube is taking the next step in video being more than ‘just watchable’. Videos are now supporting a new feature, ‘annotations’ which allow a publisher to add interactive commentary to their work, eg, little hotspots which can link to anything, “click here & goto our site”.

So far it just looks like little gray boxes that slightly get in the way of what you’re watching. But, I’m excited to see what people will start doing with it for fun, also to see if any other vendors will start mucking around with new interactions in their players maybe layered animations? But, to be honest, it’s something we’ve all seen before in the South West and Coull make their money out of it!

The success of the new player will be interesting, I wonder if it’s going to follow the same route as Interactive Story DVDs, anyone remember Final Destination 4? It didn’t really hit the papers with it’s “choose their fate” selectors and gory promises. But I suppose the Youtube audience is a lot younger and open to trying out new things so who knows, it could become a fun way for telling a story.

So here’s a few Viral Campaigns we’d like to run at Thought Den now…

• Anne Summers (not with the Wii this time)
• Lynx
• Dungeons and Dragons, “will you attack the beast (goto video 4) or will you use your sword of many omens (goto video 9)”
• Final Destination 5…

Become a 3GP avatar

Tech-crunch blogged about Beema, who’ve released a new platform (in beta) that allows users to generate 3D speaking avatars with only a phone call.

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fb1rRm4vTF8[/youtube]

You phone the number, register, pick an avatar then leave a message. That’s then converted into a 3GP with a lip synched avatar and sent in an SMS to your phone. You can pass the message around or text it onto your friend if you fancy scaring them a bit. Sounds like it could be fun or real good use for leaving ransom notes.

Leaky phones

Look, pictures of the new iPhone! Nuff’ said.