Well I know this is a bit of a plug but we are all very proud of this site.

Today we launched the 3rd evolution of the Lipton Braintrain site. It is packed full of new games a new ranking system and the ability to challenge your friends through Facebook as well (here).

There is also a mobile site which is worth while a visit if you have a couple of spare minutes.

Check it out at: http://www.braintrain.com.au

Legend has it that one of Amnesia's producers fooled his wife so badly with this soundboard he ended up on the couch for a night. No names mentioned.

Instructions: Simply call a friend on speakerphone (with PC next to you, speakers turned up) and press buttons on soundboard at the right moment (practice for a couple of minutes b4 you call) ... There's two characters to choose from... They'll never guess what's going on :)

http://officepranks.archive.amnesia.com.au/soundboard.html

Old archived Office Pranks website here (has a few broken links so please forgive any niggles. Note this site exists for portfolio purposes and is not attached to any current Pepsi marketing).

Enjoy.

Ladies and gentleman I give you thewayin.com.au! What is it I hear you ask? In a nutshell, it's a big-ass treasure hunt to give away tickets to the Smirnoff Experience Secret Party 2008.

Clues are released on a blog to tickets hidden all across Australia. There is also a facebook group which gives help and exclusive clues to ticket hunters. If that's not enough cyber-fun, there's also a GPS ticket tracker, which is switched on from time to time. There's even a moonvert thrown in there for good measure.

The rules are simple. First to find the tickets, wins the tickets. And there's none of this 'hidden under pixels' stuff. These are in the real world... fresh air is good for you. Tickets have been found in places such as under a bench in Surfers Paradise, in a Russian deli in Victoria and even in a Russian Orthodox Church.

It's just getting going so take a look and join the fun and you might just bag yourself a ticket to the Smirnoff Experience Secret Party 2008.

Here you'll find our favourite global online flash games,
plus a show case of our own work.

Check out this weeks featured game. It just so happens that it's one of ours!

Participate in our monthly poll or check out some game related cool stuff.

http://www.minigames.com.au/

Thanks to the Amnesia team - and especially to Unilever and Lynx for putting faith in the idea :)

View the Red Team's After Effect's volley posted on Vimeo here: http://www.vimeo.com/870313

The Red Team has already won but now there's insults on our injuries as the bombs come raining down once more. Shell shocked and unsuspecting, the Blue Team runs for cover. But will there be revenge? If so, it will hardly be sweet as Mr Moldan holds the dark key to full motion and audio retaliation.

Incidentally, the video's creator was also the recipient of the coveted People's Choice Award with this fine overhead smash:

http://amnesiablog.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/red-v-blue-designer-tennis-volley-7/

Still no idea what we're on about? Read the original post here: http://amnesiablog.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/red-v-blue-designer-tennis-begins/

On Wednesday night I attended the launch for the MySpace developer platform. I was asked to create a simple application for the platform that gets the current users local postcode and retrieves from truelocal a list of businesses in the area according to five categories (Café’s & Restaurants, Clubs, Hairdressers, Bars & Pubs, Take Away Food). I then used jQuery to display the results in an accordion. All in all a fun learning experience and i've put together five points about why YOU should be thinking about writing apps for MySpace!

1. MySpace provides an easy to use JavaScript library that implements the OpenSocial API which makes it easy to read in a users data.

2. Porting an application written for MySpace to other social networking sites that follow the OpenSocial API should be a fairly trivial task.

3. They have a great online community of developers at http://developer.myspace.com

4. A rich REST API for server to server calls

5. At the moment the interface is quite young and undergoing rapid changes but in the future will allow for applications to tap deep into a users social graph.

Here are three things to be wary of when looking to develop MySpace Open Social apps.

1. Access to the full set of Open Social calls are only half implemented and interacting with a users friend network isn’t implemented.

2. Developing can be time consuming as a developer cannot test applications locally, they have to copy and paste the code into a web form and then submit it.

3. Access to popular JavaScript libraries will soon be limited once they implement “caja” (pronounced caha) a Google spec that attempts to make third party JavaScript safely interact with a clients browser when embedded into a site.  Although MySpace does promise access to the most popular libraries via a white list when creating an application so things shouldn’t be that bad.

Your 'circle of influence' will attract anything that moves! - BEHOLD the power of combining Lynx fragrances to make a killer third fragrance!
 
 
Avoid making "abominations" (Male / Female combos)!!!! YUK!

Make sure you check out www.lynxeffect.com.au - it's really fab, honest, or PLAY THE GAME HERE:

Revisions coming very soon:
Over 50,000 gives you a password to view the 'ultimate girl'.

CULTURAL REFERENCE:

Discuss your ranking, scores and cheats below...

Amnesia - AdNews Interactive Agency of the Year for 2006 and 2007 – is committed to helping young designers and students get the best possible start in their career and is hosting two evenings of seminars and dialogue this April in conjunction with Semi-Permanent.

PLEASE NOTE NEW START TIME: 6.30pm 

Our program is open to all design students and young designers and is focused on giving practical advice on a variety of topics through short seminars and one-on-one sessions with our Senior Designers and Art Directors.

The evening runs over two nights and includes:

Brainstorming seminar
Tips and tricks on how to generate ideas and think outside the box

Getting your career started
Practical advice on how to break into the world of design

Designing and developing with Flash
The dark art of Flash explained

The future of digital
The end of the world is nigh, digital is just beginning

Portfolio review
We’ve seen a lot and can help you tweak yours

Creative surgery
Designer’s block? Get some advice from our Art Directors

And best of all, it’s totally free, no strings attached!

Space is very limited and it’s first come best dressed, so register immediately to avoid disappointment.

REGISTER ONLINE at www.amnesia.com.au/openstudio

Learn more about Amnesia on our website and our blog

Recap of events:
1. Naked Communications post a dubbed video of Tom Cruise claiming he's their latest employee (here).
2. Amnesia sends a fake email (read on to view this) to Naked Communications impersonating Tom cruise's agent. The email threatens a lawsuit.
3. The YouTube Video and fake lawsuit email story grabs the media headlines in Australia. (read on, Adnews article below)...

After some attention and speculation, we confessed today seeing as it was starting a bit of a fuss...

Tom Cruise sues Naked

SYDNEY: Naked Communications has received an email from Tom Cruise's publicist, Rogers and Cowan in New York, demanding its "Tom Cruise works at Naked Communications" video be removed from YouTube.

The email, sent yesterday to Naked's Sydney office, claims the video constitutes an infringement of the 1968 Australian Copyright Act.

"The unauthorized use of the likeness of my client Mr. Cruise, and the copying and distributing via the internet of the aforementioned material without express permission, constitutes an infringement and violation of the Australian Copyright act of 1968 / 31 and recognized international copyright laws," reads the email.

Digital agency Amnesia has fessed up to the prank, however.

"We figured if they could impersonate Tom Cruise, then WE could impersonate his agent," Amnesia CEO Iain McDonald said.

Some intentional typos and the fictional name sign-off of Heywood Jablome (standing in for "Hey, would you blow me") were designed to give the game away, McDonald said.

Naked's Simon Corbett said the agency sussed out the email was a hoax early on. "Either way, it's really funny," Corbett said.

Amnesia's blog entry on the Cruise / Naked affair has been ranking highly on Google search results. "We’d like to thank Naked for promoting us so well," McDonald said.

Speaking before Amnesia owned up to the prank, Neil Wallman, lawyer at Powel Legal, said the use of satire meant the Australian Copyright Act did not apply. "A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work, does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of parody or satire," said Wallman.

Story by: Mark Chenery
- 05 March 2008

Image of email below:

The offending Naked email (header and footer info have been removed, but we made it look authentic as we could to cause a stir) :

"By the way, how nice are the Sputnik Agency from Melbourne...? It's obvious why they've had such a great year - quality from end to end and Nick Cummins even stopped by this post and left a message in the comments. Full respect Sputnik and good luck this year to you all. Along with our old friends Soap and The White Agency who are both 'world class' digital agencies producing amazing work year after year I would have hated being on the judging panel this year."  - Iain

Classic from the Vault http://testyoursenses.archive.amnesia.com.au/ we've just put this site back up for a bit of fun. There are plenty of screamers around these days (eg: scary maze). But we were quite happy with the ridiculous premise of a full senses test, something different. Stupid - but many people still fell for it at the time :)

So turn up your volume, sit in a dark room and TEST YOUR SENSES!!!

If anyone (evil enough) wants to film their friend being sucked in - please post video links here. We would love to see them :)

I had to tell my girl last week I was sorry but we cant go to the markets as planned on Saturday.

Very dejectedly I said I would make it up somehow...

She felt sorry for me though and said she would make it up to me!

Well check out the images below and decide for yourself how tough it really was... Any one want to apply for a job at amnesia?

Doing it even tougher (with their arms around the girls!) Andy and Sandor two of the creative geniusses behind the site!

See the final results over the course of the year at www.lynxeffect.com.au,

If you sign up to the database before Thursday (Valentines) you might receive a special surprise!

THE BRIEF:HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE PERCEPTION OF MIGRANTS?Australians are suspicious of migrants and more of us than not believe our intake is too high. A common perception is that migrants steal jobs from hard-working Australians. Create an ad promoting immigration as being of benefit to the country’s economy and/or cultural heart.

OUR ANSWER:KICK A MIGRANT - A game based on the extremely popular Flight Sim X paper plane game, (developed late 2006 by amnesia and has now passed 200 Million games played).

Don't judge a book by it's cover, play through and see what happens at the end...http://www.kickamigrant.com

UPDATE: WE DARE YOU to join the Facebook group... remember this is an experimental viral campaign - we ask, "Would you be willing to say you've 'kicked a Migrant?'" JOIN NOW!

One furiously productive day back in September yielded this incredible collection of Amnesia employee look-alikes. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21069237@N05/sets/72157603419808221/

Don't forget, you can 'cheat' using search (well actually it's part of the gameplay).

http://www.prizerush.com.au

Here's the story:
1) Run a workout in Sportstracker (Free download to the Nokia N95).

2)Watch how it absorbs all your GPS data as you take a drive around town. This data includes location, altitude, speed, distance etc.
  

OK - now dump this into some mapping software and straight onto the map. You simply run Google Earth (Desktop App) and Menu>Open the .kml file:
(You can save this data out of your phone as a .gpx for other sites like MapMyRun)

Note the height data is brought onto the map too.It's actually much more realistic than Googles height data.

The line is interactive, so you can see your fastest point etc.

So what are the specific applications? Well if you're into sport, then you can also import your GPS data into sites like MapMyRun which is a very good site. The point is that the phone GPS works well and contains a lot more data than say the NikePlus (ipod Nano add on for running). Maybe a bit heavy to carry tho. There are many ways in which GPS data can be used and we're only just seeing the start of B2B B2C and C2C applications. The good news is the technology is becoming affordable, and the dots are starting to connect.

RED TEAM
T. Stimpson
T. Caves
J. Chung
R. Barlin
A. Pearce

BLUE TEAM
T. Greber
S. Moldan
J. Somers
R. Cheshire
I. Clazie

 PLAY HAS FINISHED
WAITING ON JUDGING 

PLAY BEGAN TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2007
ORDER OF PLAYERS TO FOLLOW THAT OF THE TEAM LISTINGS ABOVE

THE RULES

The “serve” was delivered to T. Stimpson
in the form of an image of Master Chief.

He was given 1 hour in which to prepare his “volley”
using any graphics software at his disposal
to generate a 1600x1200 static image.

There are awards for thoughtful integration
of Xbox and Halo 3 branding and assets.
Judges will consider the use of team colour
as a key criterion in their selection as well.

T. Stimpson’s volley will be received by T. Greber who will have
1 hour to prepare his, and so on through the list.

Each player will NOT see the previous volley until they request it
from the previous player, at which point their
1 hour timer begins.

The judging will take place when all volleys have been created.

A volley may be posted on the Amnesia blog once
the next player has commenced their 1 hour.

D. Wormald will reside as Umpire and Chief Judge.

All team members and the public will be invited
to make comments on the blog postings.

The awards to be given by the judging panel are as follows:

1. Winning Team
2. Individual Player – Peoples’ Choice
3. Individual Player – Best Halo 3 Integration
4. Individual Player – Best Xbox 360 Integration

Cash prizes to be generously donated to RvB charities by Xbox.
This game is an unofficial www.redvblue.com.au
challenge – an epic battle for a great cause!

GOOD LUCK, GENTLEMEN. THE MATCH HAS BEGUN.

Slightly fewer outcomes but damn pretty:
http://www.pepsi.com.au/rps/