iPhone users will be happy to hear that the net based phone service Skype is rolling out an app for the popular mobile device this week. If you use Skype then you know that calls between Skype users are free and there is a rather small fee for calling non-Skype users or calling traditional mobile or landline phone numbers. If you use a Blackberry, Skype will launch a service for this device in May. It is already available on a few other platforms such as Nokia, Windows Mobile and Google Android.

Skype Chief Operating Officer Scott Durchslag said he has high hopes for the application’s success on Apple’s popular iPhone as he expects Skype’s most feature-rich mobile offering to appeal to new and existing customers.

“The No. 1 request we get from customers is to make Skype available on iPhone. There’s a pent-up demand,” Durchslag said in an interview before the CTIA annual mobile showcase in Las Vegas, where Skype plans to launch the service on Tuesday.

Skype only works over Wi-Fi networks, but if you travel internationally, this will be a huge plus and help iPhone users avoid AT&T’s high roaming charges or having to use the carriers network. This first version is also short on some of the elements that you may have gotten used to on the desktop, such as proper conference calling, video and voicemail but according to Skype, these are all expected to be rolled out at a later date for iPhone.

Can you unplug from the grid and turn off the lights for at least one hour?

The World Wildlife Fund sure hopes you and millions of other people will do just that.

This Saturday, March 28 at 8:30 p.m. local time, you can join millions of other people across the globe as they collectively turn off the lights for WWF’s Earth Hour 2009.

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, and it was a big success. Last year it grew exponentially to include many cities across the globe. This year, the Earth Hour website states that for 2009, “2,500 cities in 82 countries will be participating, quadruple the number of cities that participated last year.”

So this Saturday night, give the overworked grid an hour’s rest, and turn off the lights.

If you Twitter, you can follow Earth Hour here.

Time is running out if you’re interested in getting married on MySpace.

MySpace is taking a leap into the world of reality programming with an upcoming series, Married on MySpace, which will follow one couple on their journey to wedded bliss. MySpace users will get involved in the show, voting on everything from which couple should be featured on the show’s 13 webisodes to the bride’s dress and the all-important bachelor party.

Even though MySpace growth has slowed, it’s still a popular destination online. It’s a good move for MySpace to embrace entertainment with a community tie. It might not help them win the MySpace-Facebook war but it’s at least a step in the right direction.

For couples interested in getting hitched via the MySpace community, the deadline for applications is April 17th.

Married on MySpace Trailer

If you’ve heard the band Backyard Tire Fire, you’re probably already a fan. If not, go and listen to the band’s latest album The Places We Lived and you probably will become a fan. If you like your rock ‘n’ roll steeped in the crunchy power chords of vintage Neil Young with a dollop of richly orchestrated piano based balladry, then Bloomington, Illinois-based Backyard Tire Fire is a band for you.

I had a chance to chat with singer-guitarist Ed Anderson (pictured above) and his band mates about music, life on the road and their influences before the band’s show at Savannah’s Livewire Music Hall.

Click below to hear Backyard Tire Fire podcast:

 

 Backyard Tire Fire: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With Earth Day less than a month away and Earth Hour coming up this Saturday night, the environment has been a regular topic lately. For those of you tech savvy greenies out there looking to do something good for the Earth, a new iPhone app might be right up your alley.

The iPhorest app makes you become a virtual gardener as you plant a seedling, shake your phone for rain and eventually watch your tree grow. The good news for the Earth is that you may be able to watch a real tree grow too. For each virtual tree planted, The Conservation Fund will be planting a real one. They plan to begin their tree planting along the Gulf Coast.

You’ve probably become aware that a plastic water bottle, you know, the one with the picture of a glacier covered mountain and a cool stream featured prominently on the label, is not the best thing for the health of our environment. Because long after you’ve quenched your thirst, that plastic bottle, if not recycled, will stick around for a very, very long time after it has been used (plastic bottles take 700 years before they begin to decompose in a landfill).

So, here’s an idea to transition bottled water drinkers away from the traditional plastic containers. It comes from a small start-up out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, called Boxed Water Is Better. Guess what they sell?

Started with the simple idea of creating a new bottled water brand that is kinder to the environment and gives back a bit - we found that it shouldn’t be bottled at all, but instead, boxed. So we looked to the past for inspiration in the century old beverage container and decided to keep things simple, sustainable, and beautiful.

About 90% of the Boxed Water container is made from a renewable resource, trees, that when harvested in a responsible, managed, and ethical way serve as an amazing renewable resource that benefits the environment even as it’s renewed. Our carbon footprint is dramatically lower as our boxes are shipped flat to our filler and filled only as demand is created, opposed to most bottled water companies that ship their empty bottles across the globe to be filled, then shipped back for consumption. The flat, unfilled boxes we can fit on 2 pallets, or roughly 5% of a truckload, would require about 5 truckloads for empty plastic or glass bottles. Our cartons can also be broken down to their original flat state, are recyclable in most areas, and will be everywhere shortly. We’re also giving 20% of our profits back to the resources our product is composed of - water and trees. Not only does it simply make sense, but we really enjoy supporting water and forestation organizations as it’s part of our company’s ethos and way of thinking to give back and participate. All that and an over-arching focus on simple and beautiful design that compliments our brand as well as the spaces it’s sold and consumed in.

Good idea?

Contemporary character design is all around us, though how often do you stop and think about it? From advertising to fine art, street graffiti to album covers, the art of creating abstract characters is now being appreciated on a much larger scale and even has its own festival to celebrate the artform.

In March and April, Berlin will be transformed into a character biotope and a meeting point for an international scene of designers, artists, producers and an interested public. At the heart of the festival is an exhibition which explores the huge diversity of the character universe, where artists remix and sample, condense the surreal and uncanny, inflate all proportions and stage bizarre rituals to introduce their characters into contemporary culture.

The Pictoplasma Festival kicks off in Berlin this weekend.

JetBlue Airlines has launched a new viral campaign lampooning the plight of corporate CEOs. “Welcome Bigwigs,” which has begun popping up on blogs across the web, thankfully manages to squeeze some humor out of the decidedly unfunny financial crisis. In a series of videos, a distinguished, scenery-chewing host helps befuddled execs acclimate to commercial air travel; for example, checking in to your JetBlue flight is “easier than writing off a toxic asset,” and every plane has leather seats—just like the private jet you’re used to! And while these little features might make the transition from bigwig to bourgeois a little smoother, there’s no avoiding the fact that airport terminals are still filled with—gasp!—regular people.

It seems like each day brings the news that another once proud newspaper, such as The Rocky Mountain News (which closed) or The Seattle P.I. (which went totally digital this week) is printing its final edition, or that another once popular magazine is biting the dust. So, it is no surprise that in today’s digital world, print is feeling somewhat maligned.

Due to this, traditional media like mags and newspapers is constantly seeking innovative ways to appeal to, and more importantly retain, readers who have gotten used to surfing the web and cherry picking content.

In the spirit of the mash-up, Time, Inc. is rolling out a new magazine title, Mine.

It is a magazine that gives readers the opportunity to select preferred content from five its magazine titles. Backing the venture is one advertiser, Lexus, who views this as a unique opportunity to “hyper-target” the mags readers who, if they fill out a survey, will see ads directly focused towards the them.

Lexus, which came up with the idea, will be the lone advertiser and will buy four full pages of ads for each 36-page magazine.

“I wouldn’t call this an ad, this goes much beyond this,” said David Nordstrom, Lexus’ vice president of marketing. “Our message of ‘driver-inspired’ and ‘customization’ will come through a lot stronger.”

Without specifying, Nordstrom said the venture did not cost more than other advertising campaigns. He suggested that the potentially higher costs of individualized printing would be worth it if the ads got a better response from a greater number of readers.

As for the mag itself, readers can choose to receive content from five mags, such as Golf, Travel & Leisure, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine and Time. Editors will then choose the relative content insertion. Right now, the magazine is free to the first 31,000 people who sign up and the another 200,000 will receive and online PDF version that will look something like a newspaper, and readers can then print it out. It’s an interesting experiment as old media tries to find new ways to utilize its traditional print resources in an increasingly digitized world.

[via AP]

Walking out of today’s SXSW panel on the future of visual storytelling, I’m inspired by the ways interactive can enrich narrative. It can allow the user to get close to the story and direct it in what today’s panel called “the choose your own adventure model.” It can also open up possibilities on enhancing narrative when you give users the option to see a story unfold from the perspectives of other characters, be they major or minor. This is what the panel referred to as “the contained environment model.” And finally, there’s the possibility of letting users control a narrative and its outcome in what the panel called an “open framework model.”

All of this is not only interesting from a creative and filmmaking point of view but also from the ROI and business point of view. Panelist Rick Webb gave an example of a Dove project he’d been involved with in Canada where they were trying to reach a younger audience about a new product. They came up with Waking Up Hannah, an interactive video that falls into the “choose your own adventure” bucket. What they found was that older site visitors tended to watch the video in a more passive way while younger visitors played with the interactivity of the story a lot and actually spent about eight minutes longer than the older demographic. As a result of the project, brand affinity grew by six percent, Webb said.

Of course producing something like this can also mean much bigger expenses and additional time invested. The Dove project, for example, had 45 different outcomes, which meant more needed to be written, shot and edited than if they’d just gone with one linear story to tell. Of course, they wouldn’t have had the richer rapport with the younger audience either.

Panelist Victoria Ha of Stitch Media raised another point that almost went overlooked. She pointed out that it’s important to remember how interactive video can work with other Web elements like blogging or chat. CNN partnering with Facebook for live community commenting is just one example of this could work.