Teehan+Lax Labs, a design firm from Toronto, has developed a web application that makes it simple to create a hyperlapse.

“Hyperlapse photography is a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements,” wrote Teehan+Lax founder Jon Lax. “Typically, the camera focuses on a point-of-interest and is then moved while the focal point remains constant.”

Traditionally, creating a hyperlapse is a tedious process that requires a large amount of time or cameras. The Hyperlapse web app requires neither.

It works by stitching several Google Street View images together and then enabling the user to look around.

The application is clever, but I found the Teehan+Lax video a little misleading. I was expecting a tool that would also allow me to take virtual road trips. Unfortunately, the maximum time on a hyperlapse is about six seconds.

“The Hyperlapse site lets you create your own hyperlapse movies,” according to Lax. “The web version is stripped down so that everyone can enjoy it, which meant restricting frame rates and controls like speed.”

If you want to create videos like the one produced by Teehan+Lax, a more robust version can be downloaded from GitHub. (Open viewer.html in the examples folder.)

The code is open source, which means developers will be tinkering with it. Perhaps we’ll see a racing game built on top of Hyperlapse?

SOURCES: Jon Lax on Medium

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For two years, the tech world has been buzzing with rumors about a Facebook phone. Friday, it arrived in the form of the HTC First.

The First is the first phone to feature Facebook Home, a layer that sits on top of the Android operating system. It replaces the traditional Android user interface with one built from your Facebook profile.

The goal of Home is to shift your focus away from apps and toward people, according to Adam Mosseri, director of product at Facebook.

Home upends traditional mobile UI patterns. Lock and home screens have been replaced by Cover Feed, which pulls photos and status updates from your News Feed. The experience reminds me of Flipboard, as beautiful full-screen images move across the display.

The interface puts Facebook first. Instead of strictly being an app, Facebook is baked into the core of your phone. This marginalizes other social applications. If you want to Tweet something, you have to go through Facebook.

Chat Heads is a messaging system that integrates into all apps on your phone. Every time you receive a message or text, that person’s head will appear in a circular icon on the side of the screen. If you are in another application, the chat head will overlay the app.

Jumping back and forth between apps and Chat Heads seems intuitive; however, I could see it as a burden with more than five conversations.

The design is fantastic, but will people use it?

Its success depends on how much consumers trust Facebook. Om Malik wrote a
scathing article on the privacy nightmare that Home presents consumers.

This is a big worry for me. Right now, Home gives Facebook access to information about the applications you run on your phone—it could pick up information about your calls, messages location and more.

“We store this information in identifiable form for 90 days and use it to provide the service and improve how it works,” said Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Michael Richter in a Q&A.

Facebook has said things like this before. Last August the company settled with the FTC on charges that they were “deceiving” consumer’s by telling them they could keep information private.

The trade-off might make sense for Facebook power users, but I don’t think most users trust Facebook enough to make the leap.

Facebook Home is available from the Google Play Store for the HTC First, HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III and the Samsung Galaxy Note II.

OTHER SOURCES: FastCompany, Mashable

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There is probably no finer example of the simultaneously changing nature of journalism and advertising than Buzzfeed. Here’s a fascinating profile on the site from New York Magazine.

I love the simple premise that the audience decides what thrives, but is that really happening based on paid content? Is “paid viral” viral?

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How will brands tell stories in a connected world?

Simultaneously a challenge and an opportunity, it’s the question posed by Google at SXSW 2013. No doubt, the advertising industry is at a crossroads. Some media are dying, others metamorphosing, while new media are born each day. Agency business models, traditional skill sets and team structures all must be rethought. Now.

Art, Copy & Code is a series of new experiments by Google that aims to “re-imagine advertising.” The name of the project itself is a prescription for the future of the “creative team” within an agency. The major points of focus of the experiments will be:

1. Re-imagined canvases: This urges us to grow new ideas in familiar ground. For example, what could we do with the traditional banner ad that hasn’t been done?

2. Connected objects: How do we connect physical objects with digital?

3. An audience of one: Think about ideas that can be crafted specifically for and delivered to one person. A great example is “The Wilderness Downtown.”

4. Collaborative storytelling: The audience is now part of the show.

5. Data-driven stories: We’ve got more data now than we know what to do with. These figures can tell human stories if we look at them the right way.

6. Useful marketing: Instead of just building ads, let’s build tools for people.

This is how we all must think—push ourselves and our clients. There’s no doubt we’re at the beginning of the next great creative revolution in advertising.

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Every time an agency wins a whiskey account, an angel gets his wings. So you can imagine our joy when we were recently hired by Asheville Distilling Company, the makers of Troy & Sons Platinum Heirloom Moonshine Whiskey.

Troy Ball represents one of the few woman-owned distilleries in the U.S. and is beyond passionate about her craft. Her whiskey is made with an open-pollinated heirloom white corn and pure Appalachian spring water in small batches. (Only the hearts of each distillation run are bottled for market.)

For now, Troy & Sons is available for purchase in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, as well as online. Before we are finished with our job on the brand, it will be the first whiskey distributed on Mars. It’s that good.

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