Living in a digital world

Text my shirt!

Reactee is a fascinating online t-shirt site which not only offers shoppers the opportunity to share their views on any subject that takes their fancy through a personalised t-shirt – but takes t-shirt communication to a completely new level by creating clothing that “texts back”.

Every t-shirt displays the wearer’s personal slogan plus a keyword and SMS shortcode. Anyone interested in knowing more about the slogan – or the wearer – can text-in the keyword and will automatically receive a response set by the wearer. The responses can be updated as often as the wearer wants, and they receive a notification each time someone texts their t-shirt.

So far, Reactee t-shirt wearers range from those just looking for a personal response (“Am I hot?” seems popular) to those wanting to raise awareness of charities or political campaigns. One young Democrat has created an “Obama for President” t-shirt and updates her text response each week with a new reason to support him.

June 20, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

YouTube goes local

The immensely popular Google-owned video sharing website YouTube has just announced the launch of nine country-specific site versions for Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.

Each has its own country specific domain, such as youtube.jp or youtube.co.uk, with fully translated homepages and search functions. Over time, this localisation will also extend to include country specific video content, rankings, and special promotions.

Opening the site to non-English speakers, combined with the provision of more international content through recently signed deals with various major international media partners (as opposed to the predominantly US content available to date), is expected to fuel a fresh wave of interest in the site and further establish its position as the leading source of internet video content.

This announcement comes just days after the launch of YouTube Remixer, a new online service enabling users to edit their videos from within YouTube – simplifying the editing of uploaded video content and so also opening-up the site to a wider audience.

June 20, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment