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February 21st, 2011
by T2 + Back Alley Team
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Experience Design in an Angry Birds Cake

Angry Birds

Great experience design served up in an Angry Birds Cake? Oh yes – and we’re just jealous we didn’t think of it first. A techie dad in the UK has provided not only an example of great experience design, but whetted our collective appetites for all things Angry Birds.

Perhaps the greatest time suck on the planet, Rovio’s Angry Birds app is a huge success. Now, with a working cake in the mix, we’re going to go ahead and call it a piece of experience design.

Electricpig’s Mike Cooper is responsible for the amazing cake, concocted for his 6 year old son’s birthday. Cooper has a rep for crafting imaginative birthday cakes, and it’s easy to see why. Not only do we get to see how the cake is constructed, the look on the little boy’s face as he realizes what it is, is pretty incredible.

With more than 12 million sold, most coming from iPhones and iPads (at .99 each, nice) and more than 30 million downloads of the free Android version, mostly on Google’s mobile OS, that’s a whole lot of popular.

Rovio’s whopping success with this app, generating over a million dollars a day via the ad-supported Angry Birds on Android, probably means a whole lot more Angry Birds in our futures. In fact, the Birds are coming to Sony’s Play Station and Play Station 3, the Windows Phone 7, Wii and even a 3d version of the game is expected later this year.

And Mike Cooper? Well, he can not only bake up a pretty stellar cake experience, he’s managed to throw some viral video in the mix as well. Well done, sir.

December 31st, 2010
by T2 + Back Alley Team
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360 Panoramic – Apps We Love

360 Panoramic App

Reading a blog post on Mashable about innovative ways for realtors to broaden their customer bases and integrate social media more effectively into their business prospecting efforts lead us to Occipital’s iPhone app, 360 Panoramic.

The images you can get using 360 Panoramic are stitched together in real time without any effort from you (bonus!) and can be a quick and easy way to add dimension to a website, landing page or some other customer experience that you want to make more impactful and interactive. This app doesn’t replace the need for web video, but definitely has a wide range of applications. And the DIY factor is huge.

Here’s a video showing how it works:

Now, go experiment. And if you do, let us know how you like it!

December 9th, 2010
by T2 + Back Alley Team
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iPad Sales Predicted to Double

iPad - Tablets, the websites of the future

eMarketer reported today that iPad sales are expected to more than double in the coming year. With some 8.5 million of the devices sold in the U.S. in 2010, that gives Apple a sweet 88% of total U.S. tablet sales. And, while the devices are big in the U.S., total global sales of all tablets are reported by Gartner at 19.5 million for the year — and that’s not shabby either. No wonder other brands are scurrying to develop their own tablets and trying to swipe some market share from Apple. eMarketer predicts iPad sales to be in the neighborhood of 20 million for 2011 and reaching 30 million by 2012. Those are some massively impressive numbers.

eMarketer Stats - iPad Growth & Predictions

At T2 + Back Alley, we’re finding more uses for the iPad on a daily basis, both internally and as solutions and innovative marketing tools for our clients. Apps are touted as the websites of the future and our creative team is digging app design, creating other mobile marketing solutions and doing tons of experience design.

Our favorite use of the iPad this past year might have been the way the fashion industry embraced new media and started creating content for use on tablets and other mediums. This moved designers into the realm of not only designing and creating beautiful clothing, but designing and creating content to showcase the fruits of their labor as well. We predict there will be more and more unique and innovative ways that brands use tablets like the iPad and that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. And with Wired reporting that Apple’s version 2.0 of the iPad is rumored to be delivered in April 2011 (along with some intel about some spiffy new cases that are in the works), we’d recommend postponing a holiday purchase and waiting for the new, improved model.

What about you — any innovative uses of the iPad that have been your particular favorites?

October 4th, 2010
by T2 + Back Alley Team
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Droplr: Sharing Made Easy

Droplr: Drag, Drop, Share

We’re always on the lookout for things that make life easier. And when it comes to file and image sharing, we’re especially interested.

Culturezoo’s amazing Droplr Desktop is beyond simple when it comes to photo and text sharing and, as a bonus, is now available in an iPhone app (not free, but an affordable $3.99). With Droplr, you can drag and drop anything you want to share online with a short URL. One of the newly added options to Droplr that we think is especially cool is the ability to share your stuff with a custom, or “vanity” URL. Of course, you’ve gotta buy that, but that seems to be worth the investment, when it matters to you that your stuff is branded.

If you’re intruigued and want a short tutorial about all the awesomesauce that is Droplr, The Next Web won’t disappoint.

One downside, right now you’ve got to have a Twitter account to sign up and login, so for those folks not into the whole Twitter thing, that’s an extra step. But that’s rumored to be changing soon, so if you’re not using Twitter and/or not interested, you’ll probably get a chance reasonably soon to test the functionality of Droplr in other ways. And, shameless self-plug, if you’re reading this blog because of a link you saw on Twitter, dudes, follow us there and share your brilliance.

The upside: when a product is identified by Macworld as a Mac Gem, it’s pretty much a testimonial to the fact that you should check it out. We did – and we’re glad! Oh, and if you’re totally geeked out by this topic and want to discover more Mac Gems, check here for Dan Frakes’ (MacWorld’s resident Gem-meister) August 31, 2010 recs.

September 17th, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Interactive TV – ABC’s “My Generation” iPad App

My Generation iPad App

I love my iPad. And so when I read AdAge’s piece about ABC launching an iPad app in conjunction with the premiere of its “My Generation” series, I was intrigued. Now, instead of being annoyed by pop-ups on the screen, viewers can participate in polls, trivia, social networking features and other interactive elements on their iPads. This is yet another innovative step in brands’ quest for the oh-so elusive, yet highly sought after “engagement element.”

The My Generation Sync app will keep up with the series, whether or not you’re watching live and the “sync to broadcast” app is part of the magic that everyone seeks – value for both advertisers AND viewers. So far, this app goes a little further than others out there, following along with the episodes intuitively.

ABC isn’t alone in their quest to bring interactivity to the TV viewing experience. Some networks have partnered with companies like GetGlue and Miso and feature all the social connectivity, rewards for checking in (similar to Foursquare and Facebook Places) and perhaps even couponing and other specials.

Bottom line, devices are front and center in our lives today. Interactive TV, whether served up on the iPad, SmartPhones or via social networking is here. It will be exciting to see what develops in the coming year.