Earlier this year at Google I/O, Google gave developers a sneak peek at Movi.Kanti.Revo, a new sensory Chrome experiment crafted by Cirque du Soleil and developed by Subatomic Systems that brings the magic of Cirque du Soleil to the web through modern web technologies. The full experiment, which allows users to follow a mysterious character through a beautiful world of Cirque du Soleil performances, was launched today at the Big Tent event in New York City.

The experiment was created using just HTML5, and the environment is built entirely with markup and CSS. Like set pieces on stage, divs, images and other elements are positioned in a 3D space using CSS. To create movement, CSS animations and 3D transforms were applied making the elements appear closer and further away. Everything is positioned and scaled individually to create a highly realistic interactive environment. In addition, the experiment uses HTML5

We are honored to have worked with Subatomic Systems on this project. Congratulations to Aubrey Anderson and his team at Subatomic for a job well done.

Head over to Movi.Kanti.Revo at www.movikantirevo.com to check things out.

Marcus V Colombano: advertising and communications is an inherently international exercise

With Berghs c/o Academy of Art University summer program in San Francisco getting closer by the day, Marcus V Colombano, course director, has his hands full. His task is to find interesting companies and industry expert lecturers, a task for which he is perfectly suited.

Wordnik, the largest English language dictionary and provider of word related services, just launched NOOK Word of the Day with Barnes & Noble for the NOOK Color.

The application helps NOOK readers to expand their vocabulary while also discovering great new books NOOK Book Store. Powered by Wordnik, the world's largest online dictionary, the NOOK Word of the Day app shows interesting words in context, as they are really used by the best (and best-selling) authors. It also includes audio pronunciations!

It is available on the NOOK Color from the NOOK App store.

As part of an ongoing partnership with the Rights Workshop, Avantgarde co-hosted a special solo performance and talk with Stephin Merritt at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He performed three songs including Book of Love on his Ukulele and then Brooke Wentz, the Rights Workshop, interviewed Stephin and his manager Claudia Gonson and then moderated an audience Q/A.

Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields have just released Realism on Nonesuch records and are touring the West Coast.

Waffle Mania, one of my favorite street vendors in San Francisco, is benefiting from our social media strategy. We found them a new location on Tehama Street @ 2nd St. and established a twitter feed for them (@WaffleManiaSF) in January and they have taken off. They just doubled their followers in one day with a post on KQED's food blog Bay Area Bites and are thinking of getting a new truck.

a downtown trek to waffle nirvana

The "waffle man" that many people seek out is, more often than not, Alain Dupont (while there are a few other business partners, Dupont is frequently working the waffle irons). While he's a familiar face at many of the local markets, the Tehama Street routine is new. I asked Dupont why he decided to spend more time in San Francisco and how he chose the quiet, unassuming street. After doing a very successful catering event in mid-November at BarrelHouse (@barrelhousesf), friend and marketing guru Marcus Colombano encouraged Alain to come down to BarrelHouse on a more permanent basis, and the CBS folks across the street have welcomed him with open arms. The rest seems to be history.

I am happy to announce that Particle Programmatica has asked Avantgarde to come on board and help craft their marketing communications strategy. We will be working with them to develop their brand platform and messaging as well as assist them in the development of strategic press, influencer and co-marketing relationships.

"We make massively small products that shorten the distance between the internet and awesome," says Aubrey Anderson, Particle Founder and CTO. "We look forward to working with Avantgarde to continue that mission and make the conversations we have with our customers and partners as meaningful and as resonant as possible."

Last November, Avantgarde worked with Pereira & O'Dell to produce Creative Social's tenth creative summit this time in San Francisco.

Creative Social

Every big idea started out as a question. Global brands, political revolutions, successful blind dates—they all began with What if…? What if we put cotton on a stick? What if we sent bits of data through the air? What if we made a car that runs on feelings? That last one’s made up, but then again, so is everything.

This year’s Creative Social brought together some of the world’s most notorious what-iffers from 15 cities across 10 countries. These infamous innovators assembled in a 100-year-old former speakeasy, the BarrelHouse, to share stories and discuss the future of their respective fields—Design, Music, Film, Technology, Food and Business.

It was only fitting that the Fall ’09 Creative Social landed in San Francisco. A notorious bubble of innovation, ideas, and liberal politics, the city by the Bay is the perfect backdrop for this weeklong what-if-a-thon. Each day, talks explored concepts, products, and movements that began locally, but grew into global phenomena. All this occurred over delicious local fare and the muffled din of smart people whispering excitedly to other smart people.

Timbuk2 Yoga Bag $100

For the yogi on the go, we couldn't find a better choice than this bag by Timbuk2. It's sturdy, compact, stylish, and fun. It comes with a detachable padded shoulder strap and an easy-access pouch for a water bottle. The mat buckles to the outside of the bag, leaving plenty of room inside. There's a large inner pouch plus four small pockets for essentials like your keys, wallet, and cell phone. One zipper pocket is perfect for file folders and papers.

- Check out Yoga Journal for a full read.

America's Role in Asia is a 310-page volume of recommendations on U.S. foreign policy for the new administration from some of the world's preeminent American and Asian experts. Their analysis and insight came out of a year of closed-door summits convened across Asia and the U.S. by The Asia Foundation. Completed just prior to the presidential conventions last fall, we created a sophisticated rollout strategy aimed at getting America’s Role in Asia (ARA) into the hands of every influential advisor on both campaigns. Our ads complement that strategy with the aim of conveying the seriousness of the content, while evoking rich cultural aspects of Asia. The ads feature brilliant, arresting Asian images and elegant artwork in a palette of plums and golds, with crisp language to quickly attract and communicate with our audience. Targeting changemakers, foreign policy advisers and other influencers, our first ads ran on Foreignpolicy.com, and Newsweek.com, leading up to our Washington and San Francisco releases. Ads then ran in The Washington Post.com, and in a targeted “Today’s Headlines” New York Times blast. Finally, at dawn on the day President Obama took office, we ran a dramatic, rich ad at the top of The New York Times inauguration blast, offering “Foreign Policy recommendations for President Obama”. The entire campaign funneled unprecedented web traffic, dramatically overtaking all previous records; the final New York Times blast resulted in the highest ever number of visitors to our site in a single day, tripling our average: 10,790 visitors.

Just ran into this interesting review of the design aspects of the Timbuk2 retails store written for a design class out of Stanford.

"When I first embarked on my research for this project I was looking a for a few specific things. I was trying to discover what were the human factors behind design. How was the object culturally appropriate? What does it say about the user and what does it reveal about their status? What I began to see was how a company chooses to market themselves. How they companies position themselves in the market. It seemed to be a complex formula about perceived value, price points, and target market. I thought to myself that the world of merchandise was a sterile formula applied universally to a baseless market, that was successful for a handful of well financed companies. However, In the midst of my research I found a company that was above that influence. A creatively unique brand, with a story and product to match. That company is Timbuk2."

- Check out Ten things 2007 for a full read.

Our take, "Throwing tons of money at all the influentials in the world won’t work if the product itself doesn’t meet a genuine unmet need. The brand experience has to be a reflection of the personal creativity of the user in order for a product to translate from a small circle to mass consumption."

Read more on this blog: Bernaise Source

As the Creative Director for the Asia Foundation, Kristin Colombano has won the Internet Advertising Competition award for Best Non-Profit Online Ad. Since 1997, the Web Marketing Association's annual WebAward Competition has been helping interactive professionals promote themselves, their companies, and their best work to the outside world.