Protein^® Feed

Our good friends at Vimeo have just launched their first Festival + Awards. Long overdue do I hear you say? Well, we think so too ... so we're very much looking forward to seeing the results on the 8-9th October in New York City.

If you fancy winning ‘Best Online Video’ Award and walking away with $25,000 then submit your film now at www.vimeoawards.com. An independent panel of judges comprised of luminaries and experts within their categories will evaluate and select award winners, including David Lynch, DJ Spooky, Doug Pray, Morgan Spurlock and Roman Coppola.

The Vimeo Awards will accept submissions from June 3, 2010 – July 31, 2010 for a $20 (U.S.) fee per-video ($5 for Vimeo Plus members) at www.vimeoawards.com. Entrants can submit any original work as long as it has premiered online between June 3, 2008 and July 30, 2010 or has never been premiered anywhere.

In the last 6 months, our “boutique” ad network has grown to over 200 million impressions and 18 million unique visitors. There's still quite a long way to go, but this feels like a big milestone for us and so thought we should let you all know. We are always on the lookout for the best of the best sites, so get in touch if you'd like to sit alongside LOOKBOOK.nu, RCRD LBL, The Cool Hunter, Fecal Face, Fact Magazine, Beautiful Decay, Today & Tomorrow, Superfuture and Dezeen.

For those that don't know, Protein Networks is our client agency that helps Nike, Adidas, Diesel, Absolut and Samsung target 16 to 35 year old “creative influencers, tastemakers and media makers” across it’s music, fashion, design, film, travel and culture channels.

Last week Dutch agency Muse and Samsung introduced the brand's new line of 3D LED TVs with a large-scale commercial 3D outdoor projection onto the Beurs van Berlage, a historic building in the center of Amsterdam. The event lasted for three days and also included live demos of the new Samsung TVs in an adjacent square. Participants also had a chance to win new Samsung 3D LED TVs on site and via a Foursquare promotion. Via Creativity Online.

Our man Dante Gonzales is on the move. Not content with blowing things up with M.I.A., Theophilus London, and Santogold, DFC has launched Ride or Fry, his take on this whole underground/mobile dinner party concept.

Instead of getting you to ride down to a secret location for a pop up, underground restaurant, the fine dining now comes to you. Dante's “ChickenRidaz,” a largely rail-thin and hoodie-clad group of friends from the music and art scenes, will deliver $10 boxes of food in ecofriendly containers for free below 14th Street (minimum order is four boxes, or it’s $2 per box), or to Brooklyn with a $10 delivery charge. The four-box minimum is not just for convenience: The chef hopes friends will get together and send out for chicken. "We’re trying to create a viral party experience," he says.

There are limited numbers for each day with preference given to pre-orders via pay pal. Hold tight for more news on DFC taco truck launching soon in LA.

Developments in nanotechnology and planetary-scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with one person's dream to make clouds "snow" ice cream inspired The Cloud Project.

“Imagine, at the very point where humanity begins to push the boundaries of sustainable existence under existing conditions, we develop the means to conform our global environment to our needs—inverse-evolution if you like. We discover that science and technology give us a lever large enough to shift the world, metaphorically speaking. We find that by controlling matter at the nanoscale, we can bend it to our will at the megascale. In short, geoengineering appears to be humanity’s right-of-passage to planetary maturity. But these abilities seem to far outstrip our understanding of their consequences. It almost seems that scientists are in danger of applying the hypothesis-driven science of the laboratory to the whole world, while forgetting that when the hypothesis fails, there aren’t too many options to go back and start again.”

Dr. Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor, Project of Emerging Nanotechnologies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Not content with winning a Webby the other week, our friends at The Auteurs have decided to rebrand themselves Mubi. Why? Well, it might have something to do with a partnership they've just announced with SCEE to bring the service exclusively to the PlayStation3. We're all for this as there isn't enough decent independent film out there and to see it on a platform like the PS3 can only be good news for all the filmmakers and the filmlovers out there.

MUBI founder Efe Çakarel said: “MUBI is the fastest growing online destination for lovers of independent, foreign and classic film - and it is amazing how many people that covers. Our partnership with PlayStation brings online cinema to TV screens in homes around the world giving PlayStation owners a whole new world of entertainment to explore. And discovery couldn’t be more fun - from finding out about the films behind the latest buzz at Cannes, to taking the film recommendation of MUBI members like Martin Scorsese.”

MUBI for PS3 will be launched this autumn initially in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Iberia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand. Prepare to dim your lights and enjoy the main feature.

Some on-point viral marketing from the guys at Grasshopper.com

Just off the plane from New York and thought I should post the pictures from the Protein Forum #5 last Thursday. From all accounts it was a great success with a really good mixture of people and insightful discussion. Massive thanks to Marc and Sara at the beautiful MEET space, Lance, Johnny and Karol for their talks, Bear Flag for the wine, DFC for the food and our Protein US team for making it all happen.

Watch this space as there's more US events in the pipeline ...

This is quite exciting. The first issue of our Protein Journal has just arrived. We weren't expecting it till next Tuesday, but the boys at Newspaper Club have excelled themselves once again. Part magazine, part trend report, part marketing brochure, you can read it in its entirety here. The plan is to produce the Journal every couple of months to give you an insight into what we've been thinking and doing here at Protein.

"I thought you said we were only doing 2,000?"

It's still very much a "beta" release, so have a look and let us know what you think. We'll be distributing them to our clients, channels and cool spots around the world, so keep an eye out for them and if you ask *very* nicely, we might send you your very own copy.

Protein is celebrating the opening of their US office with our friends Good Peoples at B.East next Thursday. It's free and the line-up speaks for itself, so come down and say hello. We'll be at the bar.

After some late nights and last minute wrangles, we're proud to announce the beta launch of the Protein Reader. As you'll see, it's a rather nifty tool that aggregates all the feeds from each of the Protein channels into one place ... making it easier for you to "read" the entire Protein Networks.

It's still very much in development, so as always, we're keen to hear your thoughts, suggestions and feedback ....

Some pics from our event on Tuesday, which by all accounts, went really well. Hypebeast have also just posted some more here.

Photos by Pixie

Nice little collab between American Apparel and Protein channel LOOKBOOK.nu

Our boy Bjorn has made this rather awesome messaging service. Best of all it's 100% Chromo Enabled.

Protein friend David Bausola's latest project is taking the social conversation to a whole new level. Props to the Herdmeister for the tipoff.

Via Koldcast

One of the more interesting launches at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week is the Puma Phone. It's a white labeled Sagem with a few extra "sporty and fun" features, so we will watch how this one develops with interest.

With Protein TV shortly returning (shhh, don't tell anyone), I thought I'd share this Jim Jarmusch classic featuring GZA, RZA and Bill Murray getting "delirium" over coffee and cigarettes:

Props to Mr Moo for the link.

Recent D&AD winner and comes c/o the clever folks at Mytton Williams.

We've been waiting for this for a while and now can show you a sneak peek of the future of online video. Please be upstanding for HTML5.

What's all the fuss about? No flash, no plugins, no buffering issues, no worries. Yes, this is what Steve has been waiting for and one of the main reasons why you find any Adobe products on your iPhone. Props once again to cousin Ciaran for the linkage.

American Apparel are good for two things. White vests in the summer and hot girls in their ads. It seems they're running out of models, as they've just launched a search for the "best bottom in the world". Amateur porn or the most perfect marketing campaign? I'll let you to decide ...

• Shoreditch locals, Tweetdeck isn't new, but certainly remaining fresh with regular feature updates and a super loyal community. As a standalone app developed in Adobe Flex, it allows for greater functionality and the recent iPhone version allows you to take it with you.
• CoTweet started making some noise mid-last year. It is now out of beta and running supreme in the "enterprise" market, aimed squaring at larger organisations with multiple Twitter teams. Tweet assigning, redirecting and commenting is incredibly useful and the Outlook-style UI makes for very easy use.

I've been a big fan of Nicholas Felton since he produced his first Annual Report in 2006 and the awesome Daytum site. His 2009 report is more of the awesome same and as data visualisation is very much "on-trend" at the moment, will surely boost his already rising profile.

Get yours now at Beverly Hsu (via The Cool List)

Well, they're not "officially" Moleskin, but who's complaining ...

Protein idol, Tim Berners-Lee opened up the UK Governement's data.gov.uk site to the public yesterday. It might not seen like big news to most of you, but we've been tracking the site for some time as it marks a big step in creating a truly open source public data service.

While taking a page from the US with the launch of its own public data hub, the UK data portal offers almost three times the number of data sets available on the US site.

Speaking at the launch, TBL explained, "Data underpins our economy and our society - data about how much is being spent and where, data about how schools, hospitals and police are performing, data about where things are and data about the weather. Yet until recently not many non-technical people concerned themselves with data and how it could be used better."

Our friends at Shooting People (the world’s largest network of independent filmmakers) are always looking for ways to help filmmakers make money. Their latest initiative is Mofilm's Make An Ad competition, which culminatas in Barcelona this February. Open until 1 February, filmmakers are asked to make an ad of less than 90 seconds for one of five brands. Prizes include a car, going to Tribeca Film Festival, designing your own film tech packages, and a bunch of other cash prizes (ranging from USD1,000 to USD10,000). Boom.