Rahaf Harfoush
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Well Played- Penguin UK’s “We Tell Stories”
September 30th, 2008
As an avid reader, I’m always on the look out for that next great book to lose myself in. While many authors have embraced social media and have incorporated blogs and personal websites into their marketing strategy, I had often felt that there was a lot of untapped potential for social media to really captivate potential readers and connect them to new stories. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon We Tell Stories, an initiative by the UK division of Penguin Books.
The premise is this:
Over six weeks, Penguin enlisted critically acclaimed authors to create stories that are made specifically for the internet to promote these six Penguin classics.
The 39 Steps- by John Buchan
The Haunted Dolls House- by M R James
Fairy Tales- by Hans Christian Andersen
Thérèse Raquin- by Émile Zola
Hard Times- by Charles Dickens
Tales from the 1001 Nights- The results have been really cool.
21 Steps
- The 21 Steps was inspired by The 39 Steps and uses a Google Maps Mashup to tell the story of a man who finds himself embroiled in a murder. Readers follow his journey around the city as he tries to put the pieces together to figure out what was going on. This was a really cool use of map mashup technology as it gave a unique perspective of the character running all around town.
Slice
- Slice by Toby Litt, tells the story of an American girl named Lisa (aka Slice) who moves in to a creepy old house in London with her parents. Strange occurrences lead her to believe the house might be haunted, and she decides to investigate. You can connect with Slice and her parents by reading their respective blogs or following them on twitter. It’s a new take on The Haunted Dolls House.
A teenage girl, a haunted house, a ghost story for digital natives
Slice’s parents, Ray and Lynn, find that an ordinary home exchange can lead to extraordinary discoveries
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“btw It wasn’t a rabbit, it was a hare. Jacomo and he’s amazing. Be nice to hares, they are more important than you know.”
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“This time, I’m going back for good. It’s so much better there than here – this crummy life. This is my truck.”
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“Now I know everything. Much more than I knew before.”
Follow Ray and Lynn on Twitter
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“If anything it’ll put my mind to rest. Wish us luck. God bless. xxx”
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“@mbhulo I’ll show Ray Lisa’s journal when we get back. We’re going to look in the hole at the bottom of the garden.”
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“Ray’s back. He’s got the batteries. I told him about the hare and he’s right, I’m overwrought with worry.”
Fairy Tales
Fairy Tales (a tribute to the Hans Christian Andersen Tome) is an interactive choose-you-own-adventure type story where readers get to pick out the elements that shape the plot.
Your Place and Mine
In Your place and mine, authors Nicci Gerrard and Sean French wrote their story in real time. For a one week, they spent an hour each day writing the story in real time. Readers could watch the story unfold, as each sentence was created before their eyes. (A tribute to Therese Raquin by Emile Zola)
Hard Times
Matt Mason’s Hard Times is told via online slide presentation, it’s a wonderfully visual interpretation of Charles Dickens’ book of the same name.
The (former) General
The (Former) General let’s you choose the direction of the story literally - by choosing which way you want to either left or right. This one is an ode to 1001 Nights, the famous Arabian tale.
My Two Cents
- I loved going through these stories as it showed the evolution of story telling blended with technology. As we continue to get more digital in our every day lives I am eager to see the direction in which interactivity will shape new content. My thirst for stories is never ending, and while I will always love curling up with a good book, these digital experiments captured my imagination in a new way, by putting a technological spin on an old classic.
- I can’t wait to see what they come up with next. I should also add that I found this experiment to be successful as I ordered three of the books off of Amazon.
Posted in Blog, Tech & New Media, Well Played | 1 Comment »
Well Played : Obama & “Unnecssary” Quotations
August 19th, 2008Short post today, I had actually written this post last week, but had some huge WordPress problems with uploading images. Problem fixed thanks to some blind blog surgery on my part, which isn’t usually recommended but sometimes you just have to close your eyes and hope for the best. I’ve got some awesome posts coming up filled with glorious, colorful images, so check back in soon!
Obama surpasses Kevin Rose on Twitter
Wired reports that Barack Obama has surpassed Digg founder Kevin Rose as Twitter’s most followed person. Over 56,000 follow the tweet updates from the campaign, and more are expected as the announcement of Obama’s running mate is announced.
In celebration, I also give a “well played” to the guy who made this video. Well played sir, well played.
“Unnecessary Quotations”
My friend Dan Smith over at Smithereen’s Blog shared this with me the other day. It’s a blog that tracks and shares the wonder of people who use unnecessary quotations. It’s laugh out loud funny, and I can see this becoming the next stuff white people like.
A sample:
Posted in Blog, Tech & New Media, Well Played | No Comments »
Well Played- Steve Jobs + 3G iphone=SHAZAM!
June 10th, 2008
On the heels of my well timed post about how technologically awesome this summer is going to be, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced some fabulous news about the new amazing 3G iPhone.
What you need to know:
- The 8GB iPhone will retail for a stunning $199!
- iPhone will be rolled out to over 70 countries.
- Full enterprise support on the back end.
- Each unit will feature a built in GPS
- Even longer battery life for browsing, video watching, and 3G calling
- Mobile Me - a new system that will sync all of your gadgets seamlessly and instantly. [This is huge considering I can't find an app that will properly sync by Blackberry Pearl with my Mac.]
- Loads of applications to download through the new App Store, which you can access via wireless connection and download right to your phone.
You can see the liveblog of Steve Jobs’ address via the good guys at Engadget, they also provided the photos in this post.
Where is Rogers?
After hearing this news, I excitedly went to the Rogers.com website to see if I could learn more detailed information about exactly when the iPhone would be available only to find…nothing. Instead of riding on the huge discussions and debates surrounding the iPhone and using it to bring more visitors to their site, no hint of the iPhone on their website since their initial press release a few weeks back. To give you an idea, this past week along saw more than 36,000 blog posts about the 3G iPhone!
Seriously? Rogers should be all over this. They should also be releasing confirmation about what the data plans are going to look like. I would personally do this now, because if it’s bad news (Rogers never liked the idea of unlimited data) then people would be outraged for a bit, but would eventually forget their anger amidst the launch hype and probably end up buying one anyway.
I don’t understand why they would release the news and then not follow up with details. I know that this has personally frustrated me when dealing with them.
Interestingly enough, they did have a small add for the BlackBerry bold, which if you’ll recall isn’t supposed to be launched until December. Hmm…
What do you guys think?
Posted in Tech & New Media, Well Played | No Comments »
