With this new tee shirt you don’t need to have a friend to play rock paper scissors. Just stand in front of your webcam and go play.

The Nikon Coolpix is a new digital camera that can take pictures and videos but also project images on a screen. This video of the “Helicopter Boys” shows how this functionality can be pretty cool.

There is no sense denying it. Some of us at the office for sure watch the Jersey Shore. That gif of Snooki getting punched got passed around the office more than one time…well we are an internet company! So anyway this week when Snooki appeared on Leno to answer 10 questions we were of course online the next day watching the segment online (I am not even going to get into the Leno thing here) and IM it around.

Want TV so real it comes right out of the screen? Then your moment has come last week at the International Consumer Electronics Show Samsung unveiled a 3D home entertainment system. They teamed up with Dreamworks animation and Technicolor to build it and the result is unbelievable. They are opening an app store that will allow users to download games and apps to their Samsung TVs, blue ray players even to their mobile devices. Also featured in their lineup were LED TVs with screens as thin as a pencil. 

If you can’t wait for the home entertainment system to come out and need 3D now you can get it on new Samsung TVs. But be prepared, 3D still means wearing some dorky glasses.

Guess what — the Facebook guys are into Nintendo.

Enter the Konami code on Facebook (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, a, b) and there is a lens flare effect, little circles appear in the background. It is a completely useless feature but pretty cool looking. 

For other sites that use the konami code go here and of course enter the code. 

AR is really catching on with marketing projects. It is growing steadily because it is fairly inexpensive, it can fit on a website and it is new.

From a marketing perspective what is not to love? It is a an opportunity to get clients involved and excited. It creates an emotional connection to a product that no one can fake.

This sort of relationship between people and a brand allows them to experience it or its benefits in a brand-new way. People are becoming more comfortable with this technology and that means they are engaging in it more often. Marketers see this and have responded with more AR based initiatives.

One place with a lot of growth is in kid’s toys and games. For instance Nestle in France released a cereal box that that when held up to a web cam becomes a game console with a motion sensor just like Wii. Their video explains pretty well this unbelievable technology. Check it out:

For more cool examples of AR check out this article in Bussinessweek.

A call to action is an important part of successful web design. When done right it can help users to navigate seamlessly through a site when done wrong these little buttons can cause big frustration for users and have an even bigger impact on a page’s success. It may seem like a lot for a little button, but think about it, these buttons are asking users to do something (usually click!). You want to ask nicely!

Let’s start with a lesson on how to make a bad button. Make it indistinguishable from the rest of the page. In fact make it not even look like a button, just link the copy. Use a word on it that people aren’t expecting and would never look for when they are trying to checkout, buy, contact you, or whatever. This way even if they do manage to figure out where it is they’ll be confused and unsure if it really is a good idea to click it. Fill your website with buttons like this and you won’t have to worry about customers complaining — they won’t know how. In fact pretty soon if your website is frustrating enough you will not even have to worry about pesky customers at all!

Now if you’d like to make clickable buttons that isn’t too tough either, it just takes some design and common sense these and the right call to action make people click happy. Start off by making it easy for people to find it, if they are looking for it, it is your job to make that button pop right out. Don’t make them work! If they can’t see where to “Buy Now” who’s to say they’ll hang around, they will probably just go somewhere else and get it. It is silly to lose people at the crucial moment because they can’t find a button! Make them distinct. They should be big and filled in with a color that contrasts with the background. The easier they are to pick out, the easier they are to click.

Another equally important thing to consider is what copy to goes on a clickable button. This is crucial; the right words on buttons can encourage more click thru. Choose them carefully. People are wary of clicking on buttons (especially for downloads); tell people exactly what clicking on the button will do and gain their trust. If you can reassure them and communicate the benefit for responding at the same time you are golden. This can be a little tricky to do in only a few words, but think urgency, use action verbs and your button will be clickable!

For more about buttons read here