Meteor Ireland Music Awards: Most Promising New Artist 2010

December isn't over, the jolly fat man hasn't come down your chimney, and not a single chorus of Auld Lang Syne has passed a pair of lips, but even so there are many people already thinking about January. The music community will shortly be gearing up for Ireland's annual celebration of national and international musical artists. This year, however, there may be a slightly longer list of nail-biters when it comes to the big night.

Today, Meteor announced that there's a sunny January for one lucky unsigned artist in search of their big break. Next year's Meteor Ireland Music Awards are introducing a brand new category, the Most Promising New Artist 2010. The brand new category will celebrate the best original song from an individual or group, who is currently not signed to any record label (small independents excluded) or publishing house.

The winner will be determined by composition, lyrics, melody and originality, and will receive the prize a host of seriously, seriously cool prizes, including:

• Live performance on the New Band Stage at Oxegen 2010
• One day of recording in Grouse Lodge Recording Studios
• One day of Mastering in Masterlabs
• 150 copies of the CD single
• Designed CD sleeve and photo shoot with top celebrity Photographer Barry McCall
• Radio/PR distribution

On top of all that, the lucky winner of the new category can also look forward to being presented with a gong, as the winners of The Most Promising New Artist for 2010 award at the award show in January.

Entry is simple and all hopefuls have to do is upload a video of themselves performing their song to www.themeteors.ie. From there it's all down to public vote for the top 10 shortlist, then on to an industry panel to select the top 5 acts to become the official nominees for the Most Promising New Artist 2010 award.

The closing date for applications is January 11th 2010 so if you're interested get cracking now!

Augmented Reality: Avatar iTag Toys

James Cameron's new film, Avatar, is without doubt one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Between Cameron's own goliath status and ability to make record-breaking movies, Twentieth Century Fox Film's global marketing activities, and the overall promise of new, never before seen, ground breaking fully immersive next generation special effects, this movie is going to be BIG. There has been more talk and speculation about this film then probably any other in the last 24 months. Special extended trailers were shown to select audiences around the world. Strategic partnerships were developed with leading technology providers. Basically if there was something that could be done to promote this, it was.

So with the film now in the cinema, what's next?

In my opinion the coolest thing coming next is the Avatar toy line. Mattel’s Avatar toy line is set to revolutionise toy play. The Avatar range of toys marks the industry’s first range of toys to incorporate i-TAG technology. This is essentially Augmented Reality enhanced toys. When held up to a webcam, each toy's unique i-TAGT creates a three dimensional, Augmented Reality image on your computer screen.

Here is a video of exactly how the system works...

Panic Attack!

Panic Attack! is a shortfilm Animated, Directed and Produced by Fede Alvarez. Basically it's stunning and is a must see video...

Oh, did I mention he did this on a total budget of $300!

Unsurprisingly, the amazing shortfilm and catapulted Fede to the attention of Hollywood, and he has reportedly now signed a deal with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures to develop and direct a full lenght feature project. The deal with Ghost House has been speculated to be worth a six to seven figures.

Ballantine's Rock Bottle

When it comes to the spirits market, getting your brand, your bottle, placed in a position of prominence behind a bar is essential. This is especially true for whiskey's as the vast majority of drinkers will order by name, and it can be next to impossible for a brand to break a seasoned whiskey drinkers brand preference. So what do you do?

A simple solution is to grab the drinkers attention. Do something to make them want to give your brand a try. Ballantine's Scotch Whiskey have developed the "Listen to Your Beat" campaign, which, unlike other drinks campaigns, isn't based on point of sale creatives or engagements, it's based on a cutting edge new bottle design.

The new Ballantine's Scotch Whiskey bottle features a graphic equalizer that reacts to the ambient sound of its surrounding. Seriously.

Yeah, the Ballantine's seems to want to kill the competition by at least viral and word of mouth, as compared to consumers not think so.

Ballantine's decided that they don't want their customers to just dance with their drink when they drink their whiskey, they want their customers to dance to their drink. The gorgeous new black bottle with luminous blue bars that jump in time to the music is eye-catching and mesmerising. Designed by London-based design company, The Core, the bottle is being launched in bars across the UK as well as 35 other markets. In total there are 20,000 bottles in production.


This is the bottle in question...

Augmented Reality: Shopping (Part 2)

A while back I wrote about Zugara's Augmented Reality Shopping experience. Pretty nifty. As suspected the technology has now been adapted and put into full use. This is the Fashionista Augmented Reality dressing room service developed by Tobi.com...

Fashionista describes itself as a new social shopping tool combining the benefits of the fitting room with the convenience of online shopping and the power of the social web. Fashionista shoppers virtually model clothing via their own webcam, being able to instantly switch into recommended clothes and immediately share favourites via Facebook.

-----UPDATE-----

While this isn't an Augmented Reality application persay, this is a great example of online shopping striving to deliver a richer experience, and to offer shoppers a better way to see exactly what they are buying. KnickerPicker.com have created a flash interactive that allows the shopper to choose between a range of different virtual models so that they can view their product range on someone of the same figure as themselves. This is a great idea and something I really think adds to the online shopping experience. Admittedly the service is limited at present but with the right retailer this could easily be done for a large range of clothing, for both men and women.