Apple uses synchronised banners to great effect here on the homepage of the New York Times.

Just recently Facebook started a limited trial within their office and at select US college campuses, where users could gift virtual currency to each other for use in the Facebook gift store.  The idea seems to be centered around rewarding your friends for posting interesting content so is linked to the "comment" and "like" buttons in the news feed. And now it looks as if the experiment has been widened to augment branded virtual gift campaigns like this effort from Mars. When you visit say the Snickers fanpage, click through to the Gifts tab and up comes a free branded virtual chocolate bar that you can gift to your friends.  But the free gift also comes with a virtual gift certificate of 10 Facebook credits which will go to your Facebook Gift Store account - so you can keep spreading the love! According to Inside Facebook,

Branded virtual gifts are one of the more promising new forms of online advertising in social environments, because studies show they're often a form of advertising that people actually like to receive.

The addition of credit gifting is only going to strengthen that proposition.

Amir and Streeter from college humor have been engaged in a prank war going back several years.  Each prank has got progressively more elaborate than the last, recently culminating in Amir getting completely owned at this basketball game. But for the first time a sponsor got involved.  Axe helped Streeter pull off the prank, got mentioned in the video and then ran ads around the clip at www.collegehumor.com.  While many companies are out there trying to create viral content, Axe took a different approach by connecting with talent who already have a huge on-line following and helping them do their thing.  With over 1.6 million views on YouTube since March, it's looking like a really smart move. 

Mike Skinner, better known as The Streets just released a new track taking a well deserved satirical pot shot at the media hype and hysteria whipped up around swine flu.   It's hilarious but the Beat Stevie video stitched together from a wide array of Zombie films is a little gross - you've been warned!

Web based font recognition tool "what the font" has been around for awhile.  But it's now available for the iPhone.  Currently free at the appstore. http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/iPhone/

  Turn your speakers up and get a taste of Britain - the one beyond Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and Corgis that is.  Set to background tracks from Don't Knock the Rock this OgilvyOne worldwide site is a completely different take on Britain as a tourist destination. Oh, and if anyone knows the name of the first band playing - could you let me know?   www.visittheotherbritain.com

There's nothing particularly special about this site technically, but it's very, very effective nevertheless.  The site promotes Philips cinematic (ultra-widescreen) TV.  It does such a good job that it made me want to buy one and I don't watch television!  You can toggle the cool Ambilight feature on and off and switch between cinematic and ordinary 16:9 modes to see the difference the screen format makes.   But to be honest, the thing that makes this so cool is the inspired piece of film used to showcase the product.  As you're watching you can click on links in the timeline to bring up contextual commentary.  I recommend watching it once straight through and then viewing the commentary on the second pass - it's very cool. www.cinema.philips.com