This week’s Best of the web looks at web design and we have selected four great sites to wet the lips of any web designer.

First up is Lois Jeans with their Autumn Winter 2010 2011 collection. Are you Red Army or Blue Army?

Next up the work of Uli Heckman presented through revealing fonts and accompanied by some groovy tunes.

Next up the Scandavian design team of HelloDave who specialize in motion design and live action.

Last but not least is the awarding winning agency DriftLab featured in TASHEN ‘s web design series.

Earlier today we tweeted about the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and the opportunity to win the chance “to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days”. One lucky winner will live in the museum for thirty days, reporting their experience to the outside world via a blog, Twitter and online video. The lucky individual will also walk away with a prize of USD 10,000, an honorary lifetime membership to MSI and a package of tech gadgets, including the notebook computer and camera provided to document the experience.

This campaign is reminiscent of Queensland’s groundbreaking “The Best Job In The World” campaign – a PR and viral marketing phenomenon that generated worldwide media attention. While the success of the Chicago’s Museum engagement initiative remains to be seen, the rise of these kinds of competitions and their success begs us to consider the question, are marketing funds best spent on ads?

Now that we have that off our chest, let’s consider some of the necessary ingredients required if you are thinking of a similar social media campaign.

1. The bigger the incentive the bigger the chance of getting noticed; it’s true sometimes size does matter.

2. Knowing your target market is key, as it will guide you in designing the campaign that will intrigue them and lead them to take actions. With the array of online monitoring tools around today, it is now easier to understand where they are, what they are interested in and what kind of content resonates with them.

3. Be creative, innovate, and try not to imitate. It’s amazing what can happen if you get in a room with a white board for an hour and think outside the box. If that’s not your forte then work with a team (like ourselves!) who will help you create, develop and implement your social media plan.

4. Don’t underestimate the time and resources you will need to engage effectively. You will need to be on your toes to engage in conversations, posts, chats and/or forums taking place regarding your product, service or campaign.

5. Measure it – monitoring tools will also allow you to measure your campaign’s impact and help you form a social media habit moving forward.

Have you come across similar types of campaigns? We would love to hear about them, what is your favourite? Best answer wins the chance to live on a dream island for life!

Google has made another significant change to their algorithm which has seen a monumental development in how search results are displayed in the natural section. This has far reaching consequences for four key stakeholders.

For Brands
Previous to the change, advertisers battled for the real estate in natural search results against Publishers/Affiliates and Retailers for the share of voice on their products. Look at how many times Amazon would dominate search results on brand items which they themselves were only a retailer of, or quite often, merely an access point to other retailers who sold the product. Apple iPod would have been a good case in point. Previously, if you typed in Apple iPod the search results heavily featured Amazon, Play.com and other third parties who either sold the product or published information on the product i.e. Publisher/Affiliates.

That landscape is now turned on its head. Google are giving the Brand owner more voice and therefore causing a detrimental shift in traffic for Publisher/Affiliates and Retailers alike. Type in Apple iPod and Apple have approximately 80% of the share of voice within natural. This could result in less being spent on brand terms in PPC by large brand advertisers. Alternatively, Google are offsetting this potential impact by driving third party PPC sales by the very act.

For Consumers
A poorer experience? When consumers type in a brand product, not only do they want to be provided with access to the brand owner’s site, they also want to access the rich tapestry of information that sits on third party sites. Pages that are information rich on user experience and product reviews which brand product pages don’t typically cater for.

Google claim that providing more results from the same domain will provide a “deeper set of results for navigational search queries”. However for these searches, many of these extra “deeper results” from the same site were already available as site-links in the normal results making this change unnecessary for many searches.

For Publishers/Affiliates and Retailers
Third parties will now have to find other sources of traffic through other channels – PPC, Display, Social, Offline advertising etc. In general, it is a detrimental move for third parties and could impact the sales of brand products by decreasing their visibility on independent sites.

Eamon Collins, Cybercom’s resident Search Expert and Industry Analyst commented –

“This change by Google who claim it will make for richer results for navigational queries seems to be an unnecessary step towards favouring bigger brands and diminishes a searcher’s options overall. SEO results seem to be negatively impacted in favour of driving more PPC clicks and ultimately a poorer search experience overall.”

In summary, this move, while focused on providing greater navigation from Google, is an unnecessary step for consumers based on their wants and needs. If consumers tend to populate most of their clicks in the top 2/3 listings, having brand owners populate 7/8 natural listings seems a pointless move by Google, benefiting brand owners more so than consumers. Having a larger set of results from the same domain will undoubtedly help big brands with their reputation management but for the general consumer it is restricting their choice and impeding their search. If the page is full of results from the same domain, many people may turn to click on PPC results instead. Or, as recently reported, people may click away from Google and into the arms of Bing.

Google launched Gmail phone calls in the US this week, with one million phone calls placed in first 24 hours of its release. Read more on PC World.

Embarking on a little Facebook research when considering a new hire? According to an article from ReadWriteWeb.com this will soon be a thing of the past in Germany. The government there has introduced a draft law that would restrict a company’s ability to consult social networks like Facebook when making hiring decisions. The company could use the Internet in general, and job-specific networks like LinkedIn, but not social networks.

On the sustainability front, we were intrigued to learn that MIT researchers tested the first prototype of the Seaswarm, a pack of robots that use nanotechnology to suck up oil from the surface of the ocean for immediate processing.

Mark Oct 29th free in your diary – Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder is coming to Dublin, where he will speak at the Dublin Web Summit

Techcrunch covers Yelp deals, launched officially in San Diageo this week. They must be feeling the pressure from group deal site groupon.com Bring on the Dublin deals!

And just because we have loads of biking enthusiasts in our midst… Garmin rolls out touch screen-based Edge 800 cycling GPS – Is it too soon to mention Christmas presents?

After months of testing and internal wrangling, Digg have finally released version 4. The new redesign is a testament to the influence of social as My News takes centre stage in the new interface displaying stories “digged” by you and submitted by the people you follow.

Load times have improved significantly and the content submission process now features the “Digg It” submission bar top and centre (you no longer have to navigate to a separate page to submit content). Facebook and Twitter’s influence is obvious as submissions can now be shared through these channels as well as email.

There is a lot to digest and for a full review we recommend you check out Ben Parr’s piece on Mashable. Of course, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new offering, good or bad? Too little? Too late?

The new Cadbury campaign designed to boost Britain’s community spirit and bring a “spirit of play” to the UK ahead of the 2012 Olympics is a game of two halves. The “Spots v Stripes” campaign conceived by London agency Fallon delivers an integrated approach including Nemoesque TV adverts, print, online, events and social media sites, with separate Facebook pages for Stripes and Spots.

This is a ‘bait it’ campaign with the TV adverts drawing you in to investigate the social media site www.spotsvstripes.com, where you can join a team and compete in any game you wish, from golf to tiddlywinks, building up national totals online for each side. It’s a bit reminiscent the British 1966 show It’s a Knockout.

TV adverts drive people to social media through to real world events, with Cadbury soon to undertake a national tour in order to get the whole of the UK involved and ultimately promote the Challenge Bar, a milk and white chocolate bar divided into three sections; one spotty, one stripy and one chunk in the middle which the Spot and the Stripe must play for. Each Challenge Bar has one of 20 different games printed on the inside of the wrapper to get consumers playing for the “winner’s” chunk and driving people online to claim the points for their chosen team.

In addition, the concept of play is brought to life through a YouTube clip titled the Importance of Play (reminiscent of Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory ). The clip explores why play may be the single most important factor in determining our happiness and success.

This campaign highlights the importance of an integrated approach to online and offline marketing activity.

The Economic Winter Collection has arrived and smart phones may become the must-have accessory this season. It is clear that people are taking more control over their finances; this is both a characteristic and the legacy of any recession. Sophisticated digital banking and personal finance tools have been gradually emerging over the last few years. Integration with banking services is the key link which has provided the biggest challenge.

Some institutions have shown more agility than others in this regard. First Direct in the UK have lead the field in providing their customers with convenient access, visibility and control over their Banking services. In return they have been rewarded with a customer satisfaction rating that is well ahead of the field, check out their blog on this. According to a recent CNET article most of the leading UK Banks are now offering mobile versions of their online services to 3G phone users.

Across the pond the situation is similar if not a little further along. Mint is a third party mobile application that has been around since 2007. It allows users to aggregate their information across banks, view and classify their transactions and plan their personal finances all within a slickly designed application available on iPhone and Android phones. This kind of application offers a huge potential for affiliate marketing. Indeed Mint have started to tap into this with their ‘find savings’ service.

In Ireland it looks like we may have to wait some time for these kind of integrated services. The ball is very much in the Banks court as we wait for them to catch up with their European and US counterparts. That said let’s not hold our breath too long as it seems the banks may have some more pressing matters to attend to.

This week’s Best of the Web has heart, and focuses on products and services with a sustainability and social twist.

First off is GOOD, a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits purposed with pushing the world forward. Since 2006 they have been publishing magazines, creating videos and hosting events for people who give a damn.

GiveMeTap lets consumers in the UK refill their water bottles for free at participating cafés. They have signed up restaurants and cafés willing to supply free access to clean tap water. To partake, consumers need to be carrying one of GiveMeTap’s branded aluminium bottles, which are priced at seven quid. 70 percent of the profits from those sales then fund independent water projects in regions where they’re most needed.

With two restaurants in New York and London, Australia-based Otarian bills itself as “the first ever low-carbon restaurant chain, using a cradle-to-grave analysis in the carbon foot printing of every menu item”. Tasty looking burgers too!

Last but certainly not least is Kiva, dedicated to empowering individuals to lend to entrepreneurs in developing countries. By combining microfinance with the Internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending. Their mission is simple – to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Question: How can traditional media house make money from digital? Answer: Realign distribution with consumption. Time Magazine on the iPad, its immersive, interactive, engaging, social ……. Current!

Across many industries and organisations, crowd sourcing has become a growing tool as part of various outsourcing strategies. Mountain Dew recently took three new Dew flavors to fans as part of the Dewmocracy initiative asking for feedback on placing ad media buys. The move represents the latest in a series of attempts through Dew Labs to turn over the entire product development cycle and marketing process to consumers who love the brand most.

From political canvassing to software development, the growth in crowdsourcing models is growing, provoked in part, and led by digital social media strategies. Even here in Ireland the recent Ideas Campaign is asking the collective intelligence of the country to propose innovative ideas to boost economic activity in the country.

But what if this collective intelligence were asked to build a more sustainable world? Well this is the objective of the Globe Forum, which hopes to use crowdsourcing to help people around the world build a more sustainable future. The Stockholm based Forum run conferences and an online community dedicated to bringing together people with ideas and those who can help them bring them to life. Their next large-scale conference is being held in the newly opened Conference Centre in Dublin in November this year.

Here at Cybercom we are committed to implementing a sustainability practice with the help of RealEyes Sustainability and abide the simple reality as espoused by David Brower of the Sierra Club that, “There is no business to be done on a dead planet”.

But more importantly, we believe it is the right thing to do even without any business benefits. We believe that trying to achieve sustainability in the long term is the right approach for any company to take, and we believe that doing it together leads to a unique and intelligent set of solutions.