*impulse

He's Got The Netherworld Look

 
Viktor

Shiny black supervillain wardrobes, rampant ponderous goth countenances, a retro-future backdrop, gargoyle-ridden skies with splashing thunder, and ignorant clans clashing by night.

This is Underworld.

Finally, an exciting website to accompany the sleekest of horrordom, the dark opacity-graded scape, and the steaming pits aside cathedral-skyscraper hybrids: much finer than steampunk.

This is our favorite film series of modern times. 30 Days of Night, Twilight, and the rest just do not compare to this Matrix-oumpyre cinematic reflectionless third-eye candy.

Three Addicting Little Minigames:

Night Patrol

Essentially a Robotron-like game, and quite fun, though I have a hard time achieving independence between each hand and utilizing the W-A-D cluster and the arrow keys to move and fire, even considering that I have total independence when playing the percussives (drums!). Go figure.

Guard The Castle

Almost makes you jerk back when the lycans reach the parapet and pounce. Awesome!

Catacombs Maze

I like mazes, so this is ok by default, otherwise, it is ok. Not as good as the other two.

Final word: this is a fresh Flash site, with the 3D navigation-scape and all the little things to click on for games, info, pics, etc., and the other trappings of modern Flash websites. We are not particularly interested in cheats or easter eggs, but will keep a fourth eye open for them on game sites, forums and other blogs, and, if they are cool, we will post them as updates. And, though not a site issue, we are kind of curious as to whether the new Sonja will be able to fill the Hot Topic platform boots of Kate Beckinsale.

Enjoy until January 23rd. Then, check out Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

Giorgio Armani Skin Minerals For Men Grows On You After A While

At first, I admit, the site seemed wholly devoid of substance and rife with platitudes, but it is not style without substance entirely.

And, the trios are unlike other clean, correct and protect trios, though it appears that they all have to have trios, tercets, triangles, threes, as if two is not enough and four is too much. And, being an IT-wanna-be, use of the term 'matrix' impresses.

Trio One:

Strengthen the skin structure
Refine the skin texture
Unify the skin tone

The site is like a black panther in its power and beauty.

 

Trio two:

Primers
Boosters
Masters

Capturing the volcanic force, the lava rock's living essence, the tidal pool that spawned life. Iron, silicon, and other mercurial minerals: that is Volcanic Complex.

Rounding out the site are video tutorials on how to apply the products: the dos and the don'ts. Not bad.

 

All in all, a trip through the ads and spreads in GQ magazine, but with undercurrents of useful information and purpose that is more potent than the fall fashion lines.

A City Of Ember

Everything you need to appreciate and work up a furor for this film, City of Ember, is within the walls of this widget contained:

There is much more to do, so let us leap out from within the gadget google and hop high to the snooty wangdoodles.
 

Can Twitter Contain The Truth?

Roswell on Yahoo, Loch Ness on MySpace, NORAD on Facebook and, now, Quarantine (the 2008 film) on Web 2.0's darling microblogging site, Twitter:

Twitter: Contain The Truth
Only 135 followers as of today?!
That is shameful. Let's amp that up to 1000 by EOW.

Is Twitter still vibrant and viable? Not sure. Haven't been there in a while, but the site should still get some props. Now that I'm thinking of it, maybe it's grown huge since I left, which would be really cool.

Onto the official widget:

The widget: trailers for the game and film as well as sweepstakes entry forms and info.

Onto the official site:

Official Site: Contain The Truth
The hub from which all widgets, trailers, downloads and games may be accessed.
Sweepstakes? Sounds real old school, but prizes are digital camcorders, DVD packs, and video game systems.

Galleries? The photobucket kind. Movie stills.
Promotions? Yes, the aforementioned lotteries and sweepstakes.

Onto the game:

The Game: Quarantine Game
Yes, it's the same website, but it's in Flash, so just head to lower right quadrant and click on Play The Game. It's a pretty cool first person shooter with a mildly interesting mystery to unravel.

Onto the trailer:

The official trailer.

Onto the synopsis:

Cool synopsis with grainy, fuzzy font.

Concluding data:

Race to get the glass, take the walk of no shame, and struggle to reveal the contained truth, but, whatever you do, don't use the product name in the website title!

RIYL: Doom, 28 Days Later, REC, Cloverfield, Night Of The Living Dead, Blair Witch Project, Halo, 30 Days Of Night, overly contrived viral marketing, glossy Flash websites, glittering 21st century horror films.

Barcinski & JeanJean Web Studio

These meddling 3D artists are all messed up.
They're darn near ruinin' the net for the rest of us.

Cleanliness Linked To Ancient Warrior Kings And Princes

Though not typically associated with cleanliness, it is the vigor and freshness felt on the battlefield and in the stony throne room that has been captured in the shower gels held in these containers.

The Warriors:

Ulysses

1. The Legendary Greek King of Ithaca
2. Persona: Witty and Cunning
3. Essence: Light Exotic Scent
4. Key Ingredient: Sesame Extract
5. Benefit: Moisturizer
6. Origin: Coastal Mediterranean Region

Cyrus

1. Persian Ruler
2. Persona: Benevolent and Kind
   
3. Essence: Sensual Smooth Scent
4. Key Ingredient: Carrot Extract
5. Benefit: Natural Moisturizer
6. Origin: Eastern Region of Persian Empire

Julius Caesar

1. Emperor of Rome
2. Persona: Ruthless and Ambitious
   
3. Essence: Refreshing Citrus Scent
4. Key Ingredient: Almond Extract
5. Benefit: Skin Softener
6. Origin: Southeast Region of the Roman Empire

Charlemagne the Great

1. King of the Franks
2. Persona: Practical and Intelligent
3. Essence: Cooling Icy Scent
4. Key Ingredient: Chestnut Seed Extract
5. Benefit: Natural Astringent
6. Origin: Northern Region of the Frankish Empire

ZIRH typically develops high quality men's grooming products, and the site is a really well done Flash site.

The Trouble With New Media Is That It's Full Of New Media

And Errol Schwartz seems to know this better than anyone.

New Media characteristics courtesy of Wikipedia:

1. manipulable
2. networkable
3. dense
4. compressible
5. impartial

Some more subjective New Media impressions courtesy of Errol Schwartz:

1. Corrupted files
2. Deadlines
3. Web fonts
4. Stock Imagery
5. Clients
6. Missing plugins
7. Rendering
8. Drop shadows
9. File Sizes
10. Action Script

The two shuffled together:

1. Reefs filled with blarble
2. Tricky Flash
3. Slick iMac-iTunes-iPhone-iEverythiing
4. Hep happenin' digital culture at book stores where everyone reads and wants to be the next Bill Gates
5. If everyone went 'ahhh', and the aliens replied 'eeeee', then the full moon would talk to the old moon and the wild Aries would party up there with us down here

Why don't they just let everyone pose on the corners of cyberspace urban scapes?

The Age Old Question

Which is more 'serious', the bleeding edge Flash site [Belgium Village, BioShock, BBH, Get The Glass, Hancock] or the envelope-pushing, ajax-ridden, xml-tormented Web 2.0 startup [Pipes, Wufoo, Twitter, Pageflakes, CokeTag]?

Which has a more sacrosanct space reserved in the gray urban scape of the tech-psychic realm?

Is the future Flash or Web 2.0?

Creative License Taken When Everything Matters

The Adobe Creative License 360 degree interactive Flash-scape template is beginning to proliferate across the marketing web. Here, the green of toy soldiers, conservation, and conscience interweave in a warm and fuzzy way that makes you think that this technology company, Panasonic, cares at least a little.

Site: Everything Matters

Dr. Roizen's Inspired Antiaging Feature

Fun, informative widget on antiaging entitled Eating Younger.

Upbeat presentation, sensible suggestions, and state of the art Flash development in the guise of a middle of the road aesthetic: AOL does this so well!

Each section is different: video, prose, quizzes, and more, are present.

Useful and vanilla.

Pure Utility

UPS is pure utility, but their entire WorldShip site is bleeding edge Flash interactivity and integration, creating demand and awareness via its charm.

The casual dabbler of today will become the enterprise user of tomorrow.

From Keats To Halo Chronicles, Bypassing Lincoln Center

As a lifelong devotee of art, music, and literature, some find it strange that the thought of Lincoln Center, SoHo, and dramatic black and white photo shoots, fills me with nausea, dark brooding cityscapes excepted.

They must be bypassed. Keats' Grecian Urn will dock with the Nanobot Mothership when a Flash-speckled, moon-flecked firmament shrieks at each star-tablet.

Pope's light militia of the lower sky will synergize with Augmented Reality.

Screencapture is from FlashFridge.com.

Web 2.0 And The New Demand Chain Meet Here

What is all this ado about social networking, user-generated content, and wikis? McCann Worldgroup may have caught onto something far deeper and more fundamental than any fad, or maybe they are just reaching for arbitrary novelty in their analyses to generate their own hype.

The space-time continuum will tell.

OK, that non-clever prose paradigm of overusing quasi-scientific jargon on our part is ending right here.

The real cliche: only time will tell!

Axe Bodysprays Make Girls Go Wild

Coke Zero, Axe, Nivea, BMW, Amp Relaunch, Iced Venti Soy Chai, the iPhone, and the ImmInst, together, accessorize the modern man, the daring lycan, and the media darling.

From Amp Relaunch To Motley Bird

Such a range of imagery and outlook to contemplate. But, both are all about not brooding, so, *impulse wraps around both:

From waking up hungover in a strange bed to aligning the cosmos and pattering through daisy fields whilst flinging poesy into the far flung universe.

To dally in the darning needle haze or to jet invincibly through the gray urban night?

The Dreamster likes the hummingbirds, so we will flit through the capillary dew with them. But, when the sun dips itself into the brine, I will dash about the barren city scape seeking fast cars and glossy branding.

Amp and Motley Bird.

Coke Zero Glitch

This game is so cool that I have played it enough times to notice silly little occasional glitches. The Flash loads fast, but not flash-fast enough to avert this harmless glitch.

Spot it?

Starbucks' Recent Marketing Whizzes

They used Venti Peppermint Mocha as their analogical example instead of Iced Venti Soy Chai, but these upstarts have such a delightful web presence that they are fully pardoned and my astral legions are still flitting about the pixellated halls of their Flash-substrate home.

Check out Communicator World.

Mega Zune Gadget Has Honalee-style Promotion Site

four realms to find them all
four realms to amuse them
four realms to integrate
and in cyberspace, refuse them

We have seen many recent examples of this type of sprouty, fidgety, dappled, impulse power, 3D Flash illustration and animation, most notably the Adobe Creative License My Space Cherry Coke  site, a kind of more animated version of the My Space Cherry Coke site.

But, after a brief moment of contemplation, we have concluded that this site outshines with sheer overwhelming volume of rainbows, yellow submarines, and sesame street splashes to the point that 80 gigabyte media players (the sites branding raison d'etre) barely hold their own.

Site: Zune Journey.

Song And Flash Merged By Skillful Alchemy

'Gothic' and 'web noire' are probably not tags or keywords used by the developers of this creepy-cool, interactive music video site, but, in its subtle artistry, it is more gothic and noire than any more overt example.

Anyway, I have a new respect for The Arcade Fire now.

Artist: The Arcade Fire
Site: The Arcade Fire presents though I guess you could call it by its anagrammed URL, beonlineb, as well.
Song: Neon Bible
Director and ActionScript Developer: Vincent Morisset

CityScape 3D Flash Animation Template

The FlashDen has templates that do absolutely nothing, but which are soooo nice to look at. This is why we browse.

Straight from the CityScape designer, majd_abdul: "Simple CityScape animation, for use in 'under construction' pages. All vector, contained within a single MovieClip, Animated simple tweens. Logo is easy to replace."

This Site Doesn't Do Much, But It Is Pleasing And Serene

Site: Prismgirl.

Jonathan Yuen's Static But Pleasing Musings

Happy, transcendent little emotes and opines on creativity, opportunity, and curiosity.

From Singapore, Jonathan Yuen.

DiggNation Is One Kool Programme

And, I don't even use Digg much.

No particular reason for title spelling abnormalities!

Scooby Snack Cereal

Shaggy and The Eremite share the chromatic treats with Scooby and the lithe spelunker.

Screenshot is from Scooby Doo Berry Bones Demo at Freedom + Partners digital design studio.

Vodafone Seeks The Singularity

They all seek the singularity that is only known on the heath when the air is hazy with mist and the membrane between dimension, multiverse, and consciousness stretches and morphs by whim and fancy.

Screenshot is from Vodafone's website.

Transcendent Einstein Words

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious"- Albert Einstein

Screenshot is from Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

"Custom Publishing Floor Please!"

...says the guest to the elevator man.

This navigation menu alone suggests that this advertising and website development studio is going places.

Check out Campbell-Ewald Advertising.

For Some Reason, Coca Cola Seems Apparelled In A Shroud Of Innocence

The Coke Zero Game

There seems to be no end to the line of cool games, gadgets, music, and, of course, beverages, being churned out by the Coca Cola Happiness Factory. And, additionally, Coca Cola is not like McDonalds or Thanksgiving: childhood dreamstates that lose their innocence after their murderous nature is realized.

Coca Cola is ringed by a mass media halo. Guiltless indulgence. Joy.

Bioluminescent Spider Bats

Angelo Bod's Website

There is really no other ways to describe these beasts from Angelo Bod's bestiary.

Okay, Twice

Help The Honey Bee by Haagen Dazs

This Haagen Dazs Flash site about the importance of the honey bee for pollinating many of our food sources is so delightful and info-lite, that, even though Haagen Dazs makes ice cream, we have to endorse beautiful and useful content.

So, this is the second and last time a dairy-based product's website shall be endorsed.