When snack food brand SunChips decided to go solar to make its chips it seems that they thought “why not use solar energy for everything?” In a very creative out-of home-campaign, they created billboards that depend on the sun to form its content by casting shadows.

SunChips is a California company and this is definitely a California idea. I mean, although its immensly creative, the billboards don’t “work” at night and poorly, if at all, on cloudy or rainy days. Anway, the video below explains it all.

Here’s a promo video of the Acrossair augmented reality browser. Using the iPhone 3GS camera, GPS, compass and Google Maps, this browser gives the user a sort of info HUD of the shopping and entertainment availabilities around them. By clicking on a category such as “restaurants”, the user can actually turn and see what eateries are around them in the surrounding area. You can also lay the iPhone flat to get a Google Maps view that also maintains the correct orientation no matter where you turn. Just watch the video, it’ll make a lot more sense:

The guys at lapin-bleu.net made a sexy little program called the textorizer that generates an image made made up of text. By inputting a sample image and adjusting certain settings such as font and number of strokes, the application outputs a PNG and a SVG (vector) of a texture of text resembling the image. There’s even a textorizer group on Flickr.

Sadly, this photo is real, no Photoshop. It was taken by a trucker who makes deliveries of materials to the hardware and renovation store in the background. When he saw this car, he could not help but go buy a camera to take this picture.

We can clearly see that the engine is running by the exhaust coming out of the tail pipe.

The driver returned to the scene after the police were called. When the police saw the man who was leaning on his back, trying to cut the ropes that held it all together, fortunately for him, they stopped him from doing anything that would put him in peril.

The materials were purchased and loaded at a RONA in Terrebonne, Quebec where the manager had the client in question sign a memo or waiver of sorts saying the store was not responsible for what might happen.

You can clearly see the plywood and the 2X4’s but what you don’t see are the 10 bags of cement that are on the back seat, estimated at 80 lbs each. The total weight is estimated at approximately 3000 lbs. Both rear tires exploded, the wheels were twisted and finally the shock absorbers went through the floor of the car.

This incredibly stupid move was…get this…to save $50 on delivery fees. Yes, 50 bucks.

Nicely designed site, sexy bottles…wonder if the wine is any good?

If the LCBO workers don’t go on strike, does anyone want to bring me a bottle down from Ontario?

Although the promo sheet above states otherwise, this Amnesty International ad isn’t the “first poster that responds to people looking at it”–but that doesn’t really matter. This great interactive out-of-home ad in a Berlin, Germany, bus stop features the image of matrimonial bliss when you’re looking at it that morphs into domestic violence when you look away.

The Jung von Matt-created poster uses a camera and eye-tracking technology to change the image on the display. There’s a small delay between the change of image so that the viewer can understand the message.

So many novel technologies are being developed, like the facial recognition, multi-touch interaction and hand-held device interaction, that scream “use me to cut through the clutter”. You don’t blame advertisers and marketers from wanting to use them. Unfortunately, sometimes the integration of the technology overshadows the message or the goal, making the use gimmicky, but other times, the content prevails leading to some great ads like the Teehan+Lax Telus ad, this Marks & Spencer’s campaign on London Underground digital LCD screens, or the above-mentioned Amnesty International installation.

The sad part about this Anti-domestic violence ad is that it was created to win a Cannes Lion (Silver, outdoor category) and is only in one location that likely won’t be installed elsewhere, so the important message its trying to communicate won’t really be seen by anyone.

Via Copyranter.

Ah, the Post-it–how would we live without it? I’m pretty sure I’d do fine, but according to 3M’s site:

Post-it® Products have been making the art of communication easier and
a lot of fun for over 20 years and come in many colors, sizes, themes
and shapes.

Well, Bang-yao Liu was definitely able to make some art with them in the stop-motion video he made for his senior project at Savannah College of Art and Design called DEADLINE.

Seems like the video got a lot of exposure on Youtube (more than a million views) due to a push from a well-known Tweeter named Ashton Kutcher.

Here’s the video:

What do you get when you fuse the tastiness of Korean BBQ and the portability of tacos? Some LA entrepreneurs think its the answer to late night hunger and decided to call it Kogi.

While your first guess might be that it’s some quick-serve joint, what makes Kogi special is that its luxurious dining room is whatever curbside its mobile restaurant (no, nothing to do with cell phones) is parked at. Kogi’s big white vans hide a full kitchen within and ride around like an ice-cream truck, satisfying the hunger needs of night owls and party-goers.

Although the idea of Korean-Mexican fusion cuisine and a certain feeling of nostalgia of my all-too-brief trip to Seoul stir up the want to try one of their Kimchi Quesadillas, I mention Kogi for a totally different reason. Recently, Kogi received some press (CNN, Current TV) due to its use of Twitter as a marketing medium.

A few years ago, every business had to get a website (well maybe a little more than a few). Now, the big trend for businesses is to tweet. Finished are the days of full-blown blogging, micro-blogging through Twitter, is quick, concise and can reach your audience through multiple avenues. The problem is that, like blogging, many businesses start on these trends just because its the “thing to do”, but don’t ever develop a plan how to use them or, like in the case of Twitter, even understand what the medium is about.

The people behind Kogi, on the other hand, took a new medium and used it creatively. Kogi tweet the location of their taco trucks, an idea that sparked something of a little phenomenon where people, not familiar with the site, have joined Twitter through word-of-mouth to follow the mobile restaurateur.

While the hype and PR will inevitably die down and the Twitterers (Twitterees?) won’t be making a Kogi night an event, most will keep following because there’s nothing like a little alcohol to bring on the need for some late-night grilled meat and corn flour tortillas.

Also, check out Ben Hoffman’s comical report on the Asian taco peddlers from Current.

253 to be exact. Argentinian designer and blogger, Diego Mattei, is offering a free download pack of of generic products/items/surfaces on white background, blank billboards and vehicles as JPEG images for your designing pleasure.  So whether its to showcase a logo or to insert in a ad your designing, these will likely come in handy and save a few headaches.

You won’t be able to correct your Freudian slips anymore while chatting, Engadget reports from I/O that Google’s prepping a soon to be in the labs chat product called “Wave” that updates live as you type. The ever-so-familiar “Insert screen name here is typing…” will be a thing of the past…well, unless you click on the draft option that disables the live streaming.

It seems like their gearing this toward online collaboration rather than regular everyday chatting with its real-time translation, document sharing with on-the-fly editing and “track changes”-like playback mode that lets you view the chat evolution and document edits dynamically.

Other than your standard browser, Wave will be made available for the Android and iPhone platforms.

Expect some good mashups once its released because it will be an open protocol.  Get a preview or get alerted when its ready here.