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Apple wins Cannes Lions top prize for its ‘Shot on iPhone 6′ ad campaign

Jun24
by on June 24, 2015 at 3:03 am
Posted In: Around the Web

apple

Apple’s World Gallery ad campaign — launched in March featuring photos from its new iPhone 6 — has won the top prize in the Cannes Lions Outdoor category — a competition that focuses on open air ads such as billboards, posters and creative environments.

In this campaign, popularly known as ‘Shot on iPhone 6,’ Apple curated the best shots taken on that model by ordinary users to highlight the camera’s capabilities. Pictures from around the world were gathered into the gallery, detailing the apps used to capture the shots.

Apple had contacted users from popular online photo venues like Flickr and Instagram for permission to use their photos in ads on TV, print media and billboards. It featured 162 users and more than 10,000 installations in 75 cities in 25 countries.

The result? Jury president Juan Carlos Ortiz, creative chairman at DDB Americas, proclaimed the campaign a “game changer.”

The campaign, a collaboration of Apple and TBWA/Media Arts Lab, also won five Gold Lions awards for individual ‘Shot on iPhone 6′ posters.

Apple recently expanded the World Gallery to include videos as well.

➤ Apple takes top Outdoor Lions prize at Cannes Festival for its Shot on iPhone campaign [9to5Mac]

Read next: Facebook’s concept for mobile ads uses rich imagery and 360-degree views

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Reddit celebrates its 10th birthday with a ton of wacky stats

Jun23
by on June 23, 2015 at 11:16 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

upvote confetti

It’s been 10 years since Reddit first launched – basically an eternity in Web time – and it’s celebrating its birthday by looking back at its history, as well as some statistics on where the platform is today.

In the ten years since its inception, Reddit has garnered over 16 billion upvotes, compared to ‘just’ 2.6 billion downvotes. It’s kind of nice to know that in a platform often infamous for its trolls, more feedback has been positive than negative.

There have also been 190 millions posts, 64 percent of which are links. On these posts, there have been 1.7 billion comments, of which 0.36 percent have mentioned cats. That’s over 6 million cat comments. Lower than expected, if you ask me.

byMonthLong

Some other notable numbers:

  • $29,559,467.54 spent on 877,218 presents for RedditGifts exchanges
  • $1.8 million donated to Extra Life, Haiti, teachers and Nepal.
  • 1,867,184 months of Reddit Gold purchased (nearly half of which were gifts)
  • 853,824 subreddits created (only 9,600 of them active yesterday)
  • 36,136,190 user accounts

Reddit says that if it were a country, with its active users as its people, it would be the 8th largest nation in the world. Given that Nigeria (#7) has 182 million people, Bangladesh (#8) has 169 million, Reddit’s 173 million unique monthly visitors would check out.

If you’re wondering what sort of content garners the most attention… well, it involves phalluses. The most gilded post (gilded posts are those that have earned gifted Reddit Gold memberships) is one where a user comes through with eating a bull’s privates after claiming he’d do so if a certain unrelated comment achieved 400 gildings. It did.

Meanwhile, the most viewed Reddit post is an AMA session with a man who has two penises, beating out an AMA with President Obama.

The most commented post, however, is one where the reddit team congratulates two staff members who were getting married. Because Reddit engineers would be at the wedding, the team asked redditors to not generate a giant comment thread that might tax its servers.

Needless to say, they generated a giant comment thread. 358,913 comments to be precise – so many that the post had to be locked, as miscreant redditors would keep resurfacing it.

Check out Reddit’s blog post for more nifty stats and top posts and comments. And if you want a more in depth look at the numbers Reddit has amassed, check out the full set at /r/redditdata.

➤ Happy 10th birthday to us! Celebrating the best of 10 years of Reddit [Reddit Blog]

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Web replays now available for Periscope for both iOS and Android

Jun23
by on June 23, 2015 at 10:38 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web

Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 3.24.57 PM

Twitter’s live streaming app Periscope is great for impromptu on-the-spot videos, and it has long been possible to view such videos after a shoot.

Now, even if you don’t have the app, you can still watch the movie. Periscope now lets you click on the link to the stream, then click the play button in the browser to see any video you missed.

This accompanies a recent update to Android whose new features include the availability of sound, vibrate or silent notification settings, phone number login, viewing your personal broadcast history, better comment synchronization for replays, editing profile photo, display name, and description plus other bug fixes.

An iOS update a few days ago squashed bugs and improved comment syncing with replays.

➤ Periscope [Android and iOS]

Read next: How to make magically transforming Twitter images

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Google’s Sidewalk Labs takes over plans to line NYC streets with free Wi-Fi hubs

Jun23
by on June 23, 2015 at 10:14 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Insider

sidewalk labs

Launched earlier this month, Google’s Sidewalk Labs, an initiative to improve quality of life in big cities, has kept fairly quiet about what exactly it was doing to create a better metropolis.

Today, we’ve learned more about its first project: Sidewalk Labs has launched Intersection, a new company that aims to bring free Wi-Fi to New York City using various pieces of public infrastructure as hubs, such as pay phones and bus stops. The hubs will offer free connectivity to those within a 150-foot radius.

If that concept sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been in the works for some time now. Alongside its Intersection announcement, Sidewalk Labs also confirmed it has acquired the companies behind LinkNYC, the initiative that pioneered the concept last year.

link3

Bringing Wi-Fi to New York before other cities makes sense for Sidewalk, given that its being run by the former NYC deputy mayor for economic development. If the project works out, the company plans to bring similar solutions to other cities,  although it has yet to specify which.

Alongside Wi-Fi connectivity, the hubs will also provide free cellphone charging, domestic phone calls, city transit information and more. LinkNYC initially said it planned to implement hubs in 2015, so keep your fingers crossed for the next six months.

➤ Sidewalk Labs

Read next: New Google startup seeks to improve life in the big city

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