Entertaining and unprecedented use of web technologies. Very cool. Check it out, and be ready for a surprise.

http://users.telenet.be/kixx/

We were pleased to recently learn that Splat the Mat, the viral microsite that we developed for Milliken YES Essentials earlier this year, won Best in Show for the Branding category at the 2007 W3 Awards. This was truly an honor seeing that there were over 2,700 entries this year and only the top 1% of those entries were given Best of Show. It’s been great to watch Splat the Mat become quite the viral success, maintaining a steady stream of traffic since its launch back in March.

It was a big team effort, but special thanks goes out to Mike Gowan for the Flash ninjitsu, Michelle Breeze for the copy (including the domain name), JJ Puryear for art direction, Chip Caddell for the development and most of all, thanks to our client for being supportive of the idea in the first place.

EPInteractiv just launched a website for a Charleston real estate development that was featured on CSSRemix.com. We are not too proud to ask you to log on and vote!

When it comes to the web, content is king. The Smashing Pumpkins have launched a new website, and they’ve turned their content over to the fans almost entirely. Giving back to the fans is a familiar concept to the Pumpkins. In 2000, they released the concept album Machina II exclusively online, and entirely free. The album to date has not seen a commercial release.

The new site comes alongside a string of tour dates, beginning last month in Europe and landing in the U.S. on June 23rd for a 9-show residency in Asheville, NC then off to San Francisco, CA to play 11 more. The band has instated an open-camera policy and are encouraging fans to bring their cameras and recording equipment. This will be their first show in the states in over 7 years. The new site requires visitors to create an account in order to contribute photos and videos. The fan-submitted content implements a simple user-rating system to determine things like ‘Most Recent’ and ‘Most Popular’ and what shows up on the home page. Tickets were sold exclusively online, and the residency dates sold out in 5 minutes.

My take: A clever way to populate a website, create a buzz and ultimately give back to the fans.

Big props to Nokia for this one. Not only is the “News” section on their NSeries product site void of any boring corporate press releases, but it is filled with blog articles ranging from the installation of Ruby on Rails to integrating Google Maps. A blogroll, Digg and del.icio.us links, RSS feed, and a Send to a Friend feature round out one of the single best integrations of Web 2.0 into a mainstream product website that I have seen. The fact that the product itself offers some really cool technology doesn’t hurt either.

P.S. The all flash interface is pretty slick too… but sorry Tim, no CSS here.