Elf Yourself!

I found this site called elfyourself.com. It is hilarious and the ultimate example of interactivity on the web. On this site the user literally becomes a part of the animation. It is sponsored by Office Max to bring holiday cheer to all of its customers, and gain a few more in the process. I posted earlier about how interactive sites boost sales!

The website works by uploading a photo of yourself. The website allows you to adjust the size and cropping to get the perfect picture of your face! Next you will adjust your mouth, so your animation can sing, of course! After this is done you can add friends. You can have up to 5 elves within your animation.

Finish adjusting your friends and play your animation. If that doesn't put you in the holiday spirit, I don't know what will!

Online Video Statistics

Online videos are viewed by nearly 73% of the internet population. This is about 123 million Americans that watch online videos every week. 26% are humorous 60% are ads. 44% of people watching these videos will take action on an issue because of an online video. 76% of viewers will share a video they have seen with a friend.

These videos are short and easy to access. Of the 2.5 billion videos being viewed on the web, 2.4 billion come from YouTube. The average length of these videos is 2.6 minutes. The average viewer watches 68 videos a month, or 3 hours worth of videos. Businesses also have seen a 35% increase in sales when they offered some kind of virtual tour or video showcasing their product.

I found this article interesting because the internet and online media has become part of our everyday lives. In recent years the YouTube internet video phenomenon has started. Videos are everywhere on the internet and these statistics just show how useful internet videos can be, especially in marketing and sales or products.

Google Real Time Search Results

Google is one of the top search engines used on the web today. A single term can render thousands and thousands of results. Google has now added a new feature to its site. Now when entering a term into the search criteria, the user can view results from Facebook and Twitter in their search results. If your Facebook profile is set to public then anything posted in your status could possibly turn up in Google's search results.

The same is also applicable to Twitter. Anything that you post on a Twitter site can also show up in Google's search results. The Facebook and Twitter results will show up in their own section. They are constantly update. Four or five results will show up at a time and will update as soon as new results that match the search criteria are posted.

Rule the Stars

Interactivity has been a consistent theme throughout my classes this semester. Interactivity is a way of creating an application or website that allows the user to have a greater experience when visiting a website. They become a part of the website and get to adjust the atmosphere they are in.

I was searching for different examples of interactive websites when I cam across RuletheStars.com. This is a fun interactive website. It isn’t meant to teach a certain message, it is purely recreational. The website opens with a main page that asks, “What would you do if you could rule all the stars in the sky?” The viewer is now left in there own world that they are totally in control of.

The tool used is similar to the Pen tool in illustrator. It allows the user to create shapes using points. These shapes can be bent or manipulated however the user wants. My favorite part of the site is when you navigate to the link that says “Preview”. This allows the viewer to see their star creation in the sky, and it is rotated 360 degrees, so it actually looks as it is floating in space. I thought this was a unique website and a good example of the interactive pieces that we have talked about.