Our congratulations to the Guinness Storehouse for winning the prestigious ‘Best Hospitality Website’ at yesterday’s Hospitality Ireland Awards.

Designed and developed by Cybercom, www.guinness-storehouse.com was commended for its visual style, content and usability.

A bumper week for the Storehouse, it was also announced on Wednesday that over 1 million visitors passed through their doors over the last 12 months – a new record for Ireland’s number one visitor attraction!

The Acid House
http://www.acidhousepost.com/home.htm
2D, 3D, Flash, original animation – this studio of ‘Filipino’ illustrators, animators and designers are doing some fantastic, must-see work.

Dragon Hunters
http://www.dragonhunters-thegame.com
Action platform game, based on the stunning world featured in the successful Dragon Hunters TV series and animated movie, now on Nintendo DS.

Canadair Man
http://www.canadairman.com/
Practise your French while you get sucked into this extremely adictive and entertaining microsite. Axe have done it agian.

Harujuku Lovers
http://www.hlfragrance.com
Gwen Stefani’s new fragrance: Harujuku Lovers. Perform your favourite Gwen Stefani song in the karaoke section, read comments in real time, and register for a free sample!

Make History
http://www.makehistory-ap.com
Lee Jeans are looking for you to make history and submit the stories that describe our time. Couple your words and images and take part in this clever UGC campaign.

A new report released by the US Army has raised concerns over the use of Twitter by terrorists. Marketing Vox reported that the Army is currently investigating the possible use of certain mobile and web technologies for terrorist activities. The concern stems from the ability of the microblogging site to report and release news far faster then existing mainstream channels. In a chapter entitled “Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter,” it is highlighted that the BBC reported that during the Los Angeles earthquakes, which occurred in July, news appeared on Twitter ahead of the established media outlets. It is this ability to disseminate information over a large network, extremely rapidly, that the Army perceive as a major threat to internal security.

The report states that terrorists could use Twitter to plan and organize quicker attacks in a similar fashion to the protests organised this September at the Republican National Convention. “Twitter is already used by some members to post and support extremist ideologies and perspectives,” the report ominously states, and thus, “[terrorists] could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operational tool.”

Of course the report isn’t limited to Twitter; other sites/services such as VOIP, Facebook and MySpace are all also mentioned as concerns.

What next? Terrorist PPC campaigns?

BBC.com is the 2nd most popular news site in the market (just behind RTE.ie for Irish only traffic) and currently ranks in an overall 16th position for all sites (comScore September ’08).

BBC.com began accepting ads last November and Irish advertisers have been quick to use to reach a very discerning audience. The environment is also very good with just two ad placements on the page – both incidentally are collapsible, so if there are no paid ads then you won’t see any house ads.

Overall traffic is very strong (15m page views per month), with the most popular sections being sport (7m), news (4.5m) and the home page (2.5m) (source: BBC site logs).

Within the sport section, football leads the way and currently generates 5.9m page views per month.

In December a new half page placement is being introduced, a high profile position similar to that available on IrishTimes.com. The site is a great example of a business that has and continues to invest very heavily in digital and drive innovation (witness the BBC i-Player and the prototype www.radiopop.co.uk which is well worth exploring).

You may be thinking about all the late nights that political folk spend planning, strategising and campaigning to get their ‘man’ elected. But that’s not what we mean. The US elections start in just over a week, and the most accurate result indicator is already in full swing. It’s not a newspaper, or even a political mastermind. It’s cups of coffee.

During the election season, 7-Eleven run their tried and tested ‘Every Cup Counts’ campaign. Customers are engaged by letting them show their support with… a cup of coffee.

Every customer who goes into a 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee must choose either a blue Obama cup or a red McCain cup. And every cup counts. Looked on as a vote, the running totals are tallied and all you have to do is pop over to the microsite and check out who’s leading.

Bare in mind that that 7-Eleven sells one million cups of coffee a day.

Pull and bear the forest
http://www.pullandbear.com/
Pull and bear has created an ever green community to reduce C02. Choose your character and help re-plant the trees.

Honda Pilot Russia
http://www.pilotrussia.ru
The new promo-site for the just released Honda Pilot…

Save your sensible
http://www.saveyoursensible.com
Find your sensible and start re-building the bridge of kindness you burnt so long ago.

Creature Discomforts
http://www.creaturediscomforts.org/
A strong and impactful social campaign, with just the right combination of humour and information.

Herbert Richer’s Dub Yourself
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2008/10/herbert_richers_dub_yourself.php
An excellent example of what can be achieved with rich media banners. Engagement and interaction rates must have been very high!

We are delighted to have been recognised on the global stage for the first time.

Powerade has won the Best Digital Promotion in the WORLD at the 2008 MAA Globes in Toronto. Our ‘Never Give Up’ campaign beat off stiff competition from Vietnam and Australia to take the Best Digital Communications Campaign category. This is the seventh award that ‘Never Give Up’ has received (including Coca-Cola Worldwide Marketing Awards, Grand Prix at the APMC and Best Digital Campaign at the DMAs).

This is a major landmark for the Irish marketing / advertising and Internet industries.

The official MMA winners press release can be downloaded here. An official Cybercom press release will follow to all journalists this week.

Facebook has become the world’s largest online photo storage site with over 10 billion photos uploaded by users, trumping popular sites such as Flickr (two billion photos) and PhotoBucket (6.2 billion).

Although its photo hosting service has not been heavily promoted, between two and three terabytes of photos are uploaded to Facebook daily, with around 15 billion photos served each day. Accordign to an internal press release “photo traffic now peaks at over 300,000 images served per second”.

Rival MySpace is trying to monetise its own plethora of photos through a deal with HP that enables users to print photos or create customised items. Since its acquisition of PhotoBucket in 2007, it has sought various routes to profit from mass image uploading.

Boss Mark Zuckerberg also announced a possible push into the digital-music business in the wake of MySpace’s launch of MySpace Music last month. Facebook already permits a number of digital music services including Rhapsody, iMeem, iLike, and Lala to have a presence on the site, allowing its users to download streaming music applications to their profiles.

Absolut Mango
Put more samba in your drink. Fresh. Exuberant. Mango.

The Jingle Generator
Let Tommy Silk produce an 80′s power anthem just for you…

The Tin Shed
Pantagonia’s Tin Shed, the company’s first home. Here you’ll find climbing gear, stories, pictures and videos of outdoor exploits from all over the globe.

Honda – Drive every Drop
A 21st century road-trip featuring initiatives of sustainability, innovation and sheer driving pleasure.

With the US election process thundering away, Barack Obama has now made his first appearance in in-game advertising on Xbox live.

Posted by Xbox Live gamer Dragunov765, the message ‘Early Voting has Begun!’ is displayed with an image of Obama framed by a halo of light. This is another new step for the Obama campaign in the social space. Having also launched a social network, Obama is an avid participant on Twitter and has even used the iPhone to great campaign affect (launching an iPhone app that aims to improve supporter communication).