The Idea Bounty Blog

This is perhaps the funniest and coolest crowdsourcing projects I have come across in weeks. Wozela is a site dedicated to investigating different ways in which the Vuvuzela, one of South Africa’s greatest sporting artifacts (and controversially noisy instrument) can be used or ‘reused’ after you have annoyed the living daylights out of people. 

From watering cans, bangle stands, irrigation systems and even a muzzle for Mel Gibson, visitors are allowed to post any suggestions they may have a benefit to society at large. This is a great crowdsourcing platform even it if is full of fun and sometimes silly ideas. Having said there is always the chance that someone will come up with an idea that uses the Vuvuzela in a entirely suprising and beneficial way. If you have an idea about how to make use of your Vuvuzela throw you idea into the pot - there is a prize of R10,000 to the person who comes up with the best idea! 

There is not much to say about this weeks stop motion video apart from the following words - creative, mind-blowing, time consuming and mind-blowing again. Seriously im not kidding - Cesar Diaz spent 3 months making this stop motion film out of nothing but sand, a light table and camera….

So are we agreed? Mind blowing or not? Check out the making of below if you are not convinced! 

New technology is an interesting thing - often in the early days of a new technologies life there is an all out battle for setting standards and becoming the ubiquitous brand or product used - probably the most well known of these battles were the 'browser wars' of the late 90's. Currently the big battle for domination is in the mobile phone arena where domination over the smart phone market is being sought. The two big contestants - the iPhone and BlackBerry. 

Recently I have noticed that BlackBerry seems to be doing very well amongst the younger and less business orientated market. One of the reasons for this shift seems to be because BlackBerry has this amazing little service called BlackBerry Messenger or BBM for short. Basically BBM is an instant messenger service allowing you to chat, send photos, or share voice messages with other people who are also on BlackBerry. BBM has definitely helped capture a particular demographic of smart phone users and the networks have taken notice with some even tailoring their Blackberry offerings with a focus on BBM or as the UK provider O₂ calls it BlackBerry PING

I must say I really like the way that O₂ has taken BBM and almost rebranded it so it looks almost like an exclusive service - clever. Now they have taken it to the next level and added in a dash of crowdsourcing to the mix by launching the O₂ PING t-shirt competition. Basically they are on the search for a unique PING t-shirt (and slogan) design, an awesome move which will only serve to tether PING and BlackBerry to O₂ even more - clever again. 

The competition is being run off the O₂ Facebook page where you can download the competition rules and guidelines as well as check out some of the entries already submitted. There will be ultimately be ten designs selected - 5 by popular opinion and 5 by a panel of judges - and each finalist will win themselves a BlackBerry phone. There will also be one ultimate winner that will emerge from the competition after a judging panel has picked what they deem to be the best submission. Over all an awesome little crowdsourcing project from O₂ and a really good way to plug into the ever growing BBM (or should I say PING) community. 

Over the last year or so we have seen stop motion animation start to crop up more and more as a style in television ads for some big brands - the best examples have to be Amazon and Olympus Cameras. But today I thought we would take a few steps back and look at a much older stop motion animation (more of a short film really) that was created just as digital SLR cameras were becoming popular. So enjoy this little gem below titled Crooked (Orcus) Rot by David Firth;