Universal Studios are launching the horror film Dead Silence shortly; and I’ve been impressed with the Online Marketing Campaign so far.

The have a well designed Micro Site with the movie trailer, mobile cinema listings download and bonus footage from the film.

They also have a well executed MySpace page. MySpace allows for easy segmentation of audiences, as users are encouraged to categorise and describe themselves.

Universal Studios seem to have targeted horror enthusiasts as friends, and they have included games and widgets that can be used by other MySpace users on their profiles - thus further spreading the reach of the campaign.

Viacom Media, the massive entertainment company that owns MTV and Nickelodeon are suing YouTube for showing content from MTV uploaded by viewers.

This could change things in the online community considerably; copywrite is a major consideration for organisations maintaining websites but the general public are more likely to copy, share and upload without thinking of consequences.

I would imagine that YouTube, along with the other content sharing community sites, will have to enforce tighter controls on content that users provide. This is bad news for the user, and for artists/directors who benefit from having clips of their work distributed.

The BBC are approaching their relationship differently, by allowing content in a more controlled way, they are agreeing that YouTube can show approved clips. Find further information on the BBC website.

ContractStore has re-launched their site; this is a great example of well written, relevant content which can act as search engine food, increasing search engine rankings and also as a great resource for users.

The site is an E-commerce store offering free business templates, and also premium contracts which can be downloaded and used for a fee.
The descriptions have been enhanced to be relevant and to include important keywords for the site, whilst still being nice for a user to read.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 has been available in a Beta version for some time now, they have been testing and modifying based on user feedback.

It looks like they will be launching CS3 in two versions; a standard CS3 and Extended version with more advanced measurement tools, 3D imaging, and support for motion.

Adobe are doing some great marketing for the launch; the release of the beta version wets your appetite and gives people the opportunity to write reviews prior to launch.

Adobe are also promoting the product using blogging - they have their product manager blogging about developer and design issues, details about Adobe products, along with a running commentary of the run up to the CS3 launch.

I like the fact that Puppies are 30% fluffier with CS3! Have a look: John Nack on Adobe CS3.

I love this debate; I’m finding it really interesting to hear different peoples’ opinions about this topic. I don’t think there has ever been this much publicity about technology and operating systems.

The launch of Vista has been controversial, many people remember the initial problems when XP first launched, so are staying away. Vista has been available for some time in Beta, which has allowed for extra testing, and for hardware/software companies to update their products to be Vista compatible… this doesn’t mean it’s a problem free zone, but people are in for less of a shock than last time.

It has coincided with a massive Mac campaign, with a new positioning as a mainstream home computer for fun, not work.

‘The thinking blog’, written by Ilker Yoldas has a couple of articles on Mac v PC; the article The Cult of Apple provides a refreshingly different view of Apple branding and culture, and there are a couple of cheeky YouTube video parodys of the recent Mac ads.

I think Linux is brilliant, there are various different versions of it and I love open source, but if you’re thinking of putting it on your computer be very very careful. I would go as far as saying I would recommend trying it on a spare computer, or running it on a CD rather than installing to your hard drive. Changing the operating system is a big deal.

At the moment, when you buy a PC it generally comes with Microsoft Windows pre-installed, and if you buy a Mac it comes with the Mac Operating Sytem. Linux is being used in 3rd world countries, to make computers cheaper and more readily available to poorer communities, I think it would be interesting to see if Linux becomes more widely available on PCs over here… We’ll see…

Adobe have created a tool to help choose complementing colours for your web projects. It has different colour rules, and shows the colour references for design programs and HTML… Although I could be quite tempted to use it for the colour scheme in my house!

It’s quite sweet, have an experiment with it: