Today I flew through a digitally enhanced simulation of an ear canal, looked at 3D manipulations of static 2D images, and watched a seamless video projected simultaneously on four surrounding walls. The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) is based in North Carolina and oddly enough it was my first visit to this extremely innovative and eye-opening interactive institute. Not only did it get me excited about information visualization, it gave me tons of inspiration for the future of immersive and interactive multimedia.
Drop everything and go play Trivial Pursuit. No, not the old board game that is probably collecting dust in your game closet. I’m talking about the new “Trivial Pursuit experiment- Who’s smarter than who?,” where men and women compete against each other in this interactive feature. Currently, the women are just narrowly winning, so join in and get some Flash inspiration while playing this fun game!
2009 brought countless inspirational Web sites, touching stories, and innovative ideas. Here is my “Top 50″ list of favorite multimedia sites from this year. Thanks for all of the inspiration and keep it up for 2010!
While the movie industry may go a little overboard in their use of Flash for their promotional Web sites, the end products are still extremely innovative. Included here are six movie sites we recently came across and subsequently spent over an hour immersing ourselves in their engaging sites. Enjoy!
Less than a year after Toyota wowed the interactive community with their “Why Not? Innovation Experience” site, they have launched “Beyond Cars,” a user-submitted interactive portal allowing their audience to discuss a “better tomorrow.” Their site provides a truly engaging experience as users move around a visually stimulating interface to read, watch, and view other people’s thoughts about our future.
Last week, I came across two eerily similar multimedia packages about the new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. The New York Times chose a video format, allowing the user to sit back and watch the 3D animation and listen to the reporter’s synced voice-over track. On the other hand, USA Today built an interactive graphic, allowing the user to move the animation with a scrubber bar. This is a great opportunity to analyze the two and think about how the medium selected impacts the user experience.
I came across an extremely inspirational site today that I knew would create a stir amongst the II community. Take five minutes to experience this innovative interface, Waterlife, and appreciate the possibilities with Flash. For a documentary about the water resource of the Great Lakes, I can’t imagine how much of their budget was spent on the Web site. Regardless, it helped get my creative juices flowing!
Two French multimedia companies, Honkytonk and 31Septembre, recently developed “Journey to the end of Coal,” an interactive Web documentary set in China. I absolutely love the innovation of this piece, and how they utilized the choose-your-own-adventure interactivity to customize each user’s experience. This interaction is truly the difference between a TV and web documentary, and it is definitely worth your time to get some inspiration from this innovative presentation.
In this week’s edition of II’s summer guest blogger series Matt Ford, multimedia producer at AP, discusses the future of interactive videos, both on the Web and on your television.
In this week’s edition of II’s summer guest blogger series Brian Vernellis, former sports producer at The Times in Shreveport, La., discusses the importance of integrating multimedia elements into traditional sports coverage, and highlights specific examples of successful sports packages.