[d]online

This is hands-down the coolest video I’ve seen in a long, long time. The last video I remember liking was the one for “Bedshaped” by Keane. Watch it and love it as I do.

By the way, don’t forget to fall back this weekend!

era//404, who has worked with author, Jonathan Safran Foer, on The Project Museum (his personal site) and Who is Augustine? (the exploratory site for Everything is Illuminated) just launched the site for Foer’s much anticipated third book, Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Company, 11/2009). This book, though focused on the same audiences as his fiction, departs from his traditional work in that it is an exploration on his paternal concerns for meat consumption. Watch the trailer, learn about the book and author and interact in the Eating Animals forums.

Be careful, though. He has already converted Natalie Portman. You could be next…

I’ve been following the success of UMapper (formerly GMap, provided by the good folks at AFComponents.com) since a client of mine asked era//404 to build a dating search with results based on proximity around a geographic area. And while the site has taken a slightly different direction since then, UMapper piqued my interest. In their latest newsletter, they cited creating Google Maps-style widgets from any image. And sure enough, it works!

I started to think of all the useful applications this could have for my companies and clients. For instance, Lyrek CEMS, which manages our clients’ contacts, events and venues, could plot their contacts on a world map. Clients seeking geographic searches (such as the dating site, previously mentioned) could now brand and custom design their national or global maps. Game developers and Facebook Application developers could use this functionality for GeoDart Games and MapWikis. And who is to say that the map has to be a geographical representation of land? Any application where a user would want to plot points of interest/note on a 2D plane would work: It could be a hi-rez scan of an organ or anatomical figure for physician studies, or a zoomed micro electron slide of pond water for biological research. The possibilities are endless.

And with AFComponents/UMapper’s analytics tools, you can also create surveys, questionnaires, tests/quizzes, census studies and a whole host of other information-gathering applications.

Watch their video, here:

In 2005, Sharon Haskell contacted era//404 to work with her on developing the portfolio site for Lorne Michaels‘ production company, Broadway Video. era//404 previously worked with Ms. Haskell on the site for her motion, still-life and collage work, sharonhaskell.com. The site enjoyed four years of steady traffic until Broadway Video updated their branding and marketing campaign.

This is when Creative Director, Katherine Burke, returned to era//404 to develop a new site that was in-line with the production facility’s new image. This morning, nearly four years to the day, the new site launched.

The site incorporates 80+ streaming videos in entirely dynamically loaded content, deep-linking through SWFAddress, daily news/press updates with advanced searching and RSS  feeds, archival footage and information about the production facility’s legacy over the last 35 years.

Visit BroadwayVideo.com

Thanks to SwissMiss for pointing this story to my attention. From Smashing Magazine, learn tips and tricks for working with: The Passive-Aggressive, The Family Friend, The Under-Valuer, The Nit-Picker, The Scornful Saver, The ‘I-Could-Do-This-Myself’-er, The Control Freak and The Dream Client.

Of course, all MY clients are “Dream Clients”, however some of you may have to deal with these other types.