Here are a couple of videos I enjoyed during the last months. Innovation is probably one of their common factors.

Toshiba Timesculpture Advert [YouTube]

If A Song Could Get Me You [YouTube] – Marit Larsen [MySpace]

One of the first videos shot with the MK5ii. By Vincent Laforet and his team.
Riverie [Vincent Laforet blog]

2008 Pop-songs in single mix [YouTube] – United State of Pop 2008 – djearworm

(Via Lifehacker)

A Year in Two Minutes [YouTube] – Eirik Solheim

Link: Eirikso.com Photo/screenshot: Eirik Solheim (Also check out A year in 40 seconds [Vimeo])

Joost is another online TV solution. It combines both software and content, with a dosage of advertising.

In April I gave Joost beta my first try. I tried it on a relativly fast PC’s with more than enough bandwidth. But I was constantly disappointed with the CPU usage and bandwidth the program required. Their content then was rather limited, still promising. Not personally owning a machine that managed to use Joost I forgot about it for a couple of months. Now for a couple of weeks I have had access to an Intel Mac and re-downloaded Joost to see a real boost in content and functionality.

The Mac remote works nicely with Joost and really gives the Joost feeling. Being able to provide the wide and impressive content obviously costs, and the ads in between every song or show proves this.
I could quickly now sit hours in front of the Joost-set. With the remote functionality it enhances the TV-feel, and allows you to relax. However I am still figuring out how to customize the content I believe that we will see a lot more of Joost to come.

At a first glance I found Joost’s featured selection more entertaining than Miro’s. With Joost you can’t download anything, but this is not a problem as long as the content remains searchable and accessible. Joost’s main downside for me atm is some of the lengthy advertising, I am find with splashscreens and short ads. But when I start to doubt whether this is an ad or a rogue channel this pulls down the Joost experience. Another Joost negative is the quality, although much better since April, they still have a way to go considering what you see is all transferred more or less “live”.

Years ago you perhaps had casett tapes of Genesis and enjoyed their music. I did at least. A couple of months ago in one of our sound production lectures one of the examples our teacher used I beliave was this very Phil Collins song to demonstrate how (noise) Gate was applied to the percussions. This ad is one of my favorites this past half year. View the video at Glassandahalffull (flash – WMV version here.)

Cropped screenshot from Glassandahalffull.com

From a photography and storytelling perspective I think that the creators manage to build a suspension and make the climax unexpected and at the same time fulfulling. Focus and depth of field is used actively in the beginning to establish the atmosphere and reminds me a little of on-the-fly reality zooming/focusing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This commercial I found via TechEBlog. The ad shows WindwardReports purpose with their software; that programmers now will have too little to do at the office.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A rather well made commercial for people who understand the tech-savvy or geek language used, otherwise for the average viewer, I do not know how effective this ad would be.

Microsoft’s Zune seems to continously experience oppositions. The latest joke is an iPhone parody poking fun at both Microsoft and the Zune.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Via TechEBlog)

In the days of CG it is sometimes a pleasure to see good old fashion clay animation. This commercial for the Xbox was created by Moo Studios.

The behind the scenes for the stopmotion can be viewed here.

(Via Ventilate)

I had not seen the WWDC (Apple Developers Conference) keynote. But I eventually stumbled over this short-clip somewhat resembling the “Get A Mac” ads, which I started to feel were becoming old and have stopped covering their releases. This clip is called: I’m Steve Jobs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

View the movie at it’s original location on youtube here.

More Apple celebrations. This time to their Think Different campaign with the monologue: Here’s to the crazy ones…

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this clip I especially like the motiongraphics timed to the rhythm of the reading. Not much info about who made it, but the guess is that it is a fan made ad.

(Via TechEBlog)

This past week I have been working on a production and got slightly lagged commenting on these new iPhone ads. My first impression after seeing the ads was: I want to get my hands on an iPhone. Even though I initially didn’t want one, the screen orientation and GUI (graphical user interface) looks so tasty.

See the new ads here. (The “first” iPhone teaser/ad I mentioned in February.)

Apple’s approach on these ads is somewhat distant from their iPod and iTunes ads (New iPod Shuffle ad, iPod watercolor ad). However this iPhone ad seems like a weighted approach considering their target group will not only being interested in the phone for its music abilities.

ScanScout is a new service that searches and analyzes the content of your user-submitted video. When the content is analyzed it determine which ads would be relevant to display for each of the displayed scenarios in your video.

According to TechCrunch ScanScout has some of the same concepts as what Google video is experimenting with. For more info check out the tour on ScanScout’s main page.