The Isle of Tune is the brian child of Jim Hall, an Interactive Art Director based in London.  The site lets you create your own music by mapping out roads, then placing road side objects which trigger sounds as cars drive by.

In the age of DJ Hero, it is good to see something that allows people to create rather than imitate.  Nice job Jim.

Check it out for yourself at http://isleoftune.com/ or follow them in the twittersphere - @isleoftune

 

Nice little plugin for Google Chrome.  Mind you, the promo video music sounds like the backing track from a porno.

Social Media Revolution videos

A wee while ago I banged on about my British Gas online experience.  Well, here are a few more bits of goodness that have made me stop and think while on my journey through the interwebs. Home Office This is a nice little gem.  Not often you get asked to enter a date in DD-MMM-YYYY format - in a text field even. MM would have surely sufficed, and been one less character to enter.   Bureaucracy in all its glory. National Express This is up there as  one of the most useless error message ever. Trying to book a bus to Glastonbury.  I got this message a few times as I was selecting the times I wanted.  Would have been nice to indicate whether it was the outbound bus, returning bus, or both that was full at the times I requested.  Ended up calling as it was quicker than working out all the possible outbound / return combinations. Fogbugz Quite like how Fogbugz displays the set-up process as 'your end' and 'our end'.

Only minor beef is that 'email address confirmed' is red, to me, indicative of an error, even though the messaging and big tick say that all is good.

Ego surfing, or Googling yourself, is the act of entering your name into the mighty Google-ma-tron and seeing what, if anything, comes back.  The more results, the bigger your ego growths. Well an enterprising chap by the name of Alec Brownstein wanted to pursue a career with Y&R New York.  His plan.  Play to the egos of Gerry Graf, David Droga, Tony Granger, Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone - top Creative Directors.  How?  Watch the following. I love this idea because it's simple, innovative and has proven very effective.  He has since won two pencils and a Clio for his idea.

Almost a year on from the original video, Socialnomics author, Erik Qualman (@equalman), has released 'Social Media Revolution 2'. The new video is a refresh, with new and updated social media & mobile stats. Still think social media is a fad?

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="333" caption="Pick your own path"] [/caption] Remember those adventure books you used to read when you where a kid? You know, the ones that let you control your destiny. Do you climb the tower to save the Princess, or stand your ground and fight the dragon? Well Jonah Peretti (@peretti) has taken this paradigm to Twitter. The only question is.  Will you take the adventure?

Gotta pay those bills. No one likes paying them, some try to avoid them, but at the end of the day paying your bills is one of those 'responsible grown-up things' that your mum always talked about. Fine. The electric bill arrived. At least it's an online statement - a tree was saved. While environmentalists celebrated, I quietly wept at what was owed. Damn you cold winters! At least British Gas provide an online payment service, so I have been speared the pain, and more tears, of calling them. Now, I'm a big believer of business that have embraced the web, especially those that at the end of the day make it easier for me to fulfil my obligations. So I rocked along to the British Gas site, logged on in, selected 'make a payment'. All was going well. I'll be in and out in no time, safe in the knowledge the PS3 will be powered for another month. However, this is where I started to notice a few scratch marks, on an otherwise polished payment service. Firstly, I could only pay one account at a time. WTF? I owed both gas and electricity. I received the bill for both at the same time. Why can I pay for both at the same time? Sure I think that the fact you can pay online is great, but not to the point where I want to have to go through the process twice. What about time saving? [caption id="attachment_222" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Radio select - but I wanted to pay for both in one transaction"] [/caption] Perhaps the help question, aptly entitled 'Can I make more than one payment?' will be of assistance. Nope. [caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Let's check out the help"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_214" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Help says no"] [/caption] Fine, so I selected the account to pay. Roll on step two. What's this? [caption id="attachment_215" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Don't make me think please"] [/caption] It may seem like a small thing, but the fact I needed to stop and think about matching the numeric date on my card to the corresponding month in the drop down, is a rookie mistake. Matching systems with the real world is super important, especially when people are entering personal information. This issue could be simply resolved by adding (XX) in front of the month, where XX is the month number, so January would be displayed (01) January in the list. Right, step two rant over. Time to review my details then pay the man. But wait a minute. What's this? [caption id="attachment_217" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Come on. At least be consistent"] [/caption] The date is now numeric! Consistency please BG. Gripes aside, there are some good things about this process. For a start, the process is short. You also know where you are at each step, and help is provided along with the option to go back and correct any information. Finally, and most importantly, it works. Now where did I put that controller?