After a half hour brainstorming meeting between me and Simon Wilson over a cup of coffee, and 2 weeks hard slog from the team at fuse8, I can proudly confirm that our fun World Cup website ‘World Cup Stick Up’ has now gone live!

The basic concept is this, you can upload your own picture, pick from one of the set sticker templates (currently Charlton, Keegan, Waddle, Beckham, Beardsley, Seaman and Graham ‘Turnip’ Taylor) and turn yourself into a football sticker. You can then upload your pic to facebook, where it creates your own World Cup Stick Up album. Twitter integration is coming soon.

Despite working on several pitches which have facebook connect at the core of the concept, and some experimentation with our developers, this is our first proper attempt at using it on a site. It’s been a hectic week in which we’ve experimented which the flash and javascript APIs, but we got there in the end, and it really has made a massive difference to the campaign. The vast majority of early visiting traffic has come from facebook, showing that a fun tool, and a snappy bit of copy on each upload can make a huge difference.

The last time we created a self-promo site at fuse8 was at Christmas, with our Powered by Sprouts website. The launch of that site was under similar circumstances, in that there is a crowded marketplace. Replace Christmas, for the World Cup, and as you can imagine there are a lot of agencies and brands doing their own thing. It was imperative this time that we created something that could be updated and tweaked periodically to maximise word of mouth. So, the idea this time was to create different ‘packs’ of stickers, so we can continually update and offer more choice on the site! The great news for non-England fans, is that the next pack is our first ‘Rest of the World’ pack, hopefully containing Maradona, Valderamma, Voller and Gullit! Keep an eye out on the site, and follow World Cup Stick Up on twitter to keep up to date with all updates.

Have fun using the site, and let me know what you think! Always great to get some feedback!

If you haven’t heard of Moshi Monsters then chances are you don’t have kids. It’s fast becoming THE social networking site for kids under the age of 13, and after a few weeks of playing with it, after daily persuasion from my 4 year old girl, I can proudly come out and say it’s brilliant.

The basic premise of it is simple, you create a cute little monster with a house, you look after it, buy it clothes and furniture and then mingle with other monsters. It is in essence a safe social network for children. It’s very simplistic, but the design and details make it great fun, and hugely addictive.

I’ve been doing a lot of research recently into designing digital content for children, on the back of being involved in the BBC @North initiative with fuse8, and Moshi Monsters hits the nail on the head. Cute characters with big eyes, great sound design, easy to use, and engages you on a daily basis to collect ‘rox’ (Moshi Monsters currency)!

It’s also educational, and that’s the main reason I keep going back with the kids. The daily quiz, which gets you the most rox, is a collection of different puzzles and quizzes. It’s a good way of getting kids involved in elements of maths, english and geography. There are also a selection of downloads for kids to colour in.

So, if you have kids, check it out, but be careful…it’s addictive!

John Barnes is apparently coming out of retirement to start rapping again, El Tel is doing some schmoozy rat-pack number, but that’s about it. Step forward an initiative setup by NorthernNet to showcase their network of media access bureaus across the North of England.

The Old Chapel Studios in Leeds, home to local bands such as the Kaiser Chiefs and The Pigeon Detectives, were contacted by NorthernNet to find a band interested in recording their very own world cup song to represent the North.  Local lads, The Defenders, stepped up to the mark with an instant classic…Mr Capello.

The band are well known to me, as the guitarist and singer is in fact my brother Chris. So it’s exciting to think that it’s going to get some exposure in the coming months. The song has been recorded in a top notch studio, and the video is in production at the moment. As part of this, the production company involved, Magic If, have set up a facebook group that encourages people to record themselves signing along to a snippet of the song.

So if you fancy being in a music video, join the group and follow the instructions!

In the meantime, check out my eldest daughter getting well into it!

It was to be expected. It’s a bold strategic move to compete directly with newly designed Facebook, who have reworked their user interface to look and act much more like an email inbox. But who is Buzz targeted at?

Obviously, gmail users will be quick to adopt as it will be added automatically to their account. But the masses are much less likely to change their webmail provider than they are to adopt a new independent social network, so is it ever going to achieve widespread usage?

I’ve watched the above video from Google, and to be honest my instant reaction was…well…meh. It simply looks a lot like Friendfeed/Facebook, so how is it going to differentiate itself? what’s the big deal?

Well, to state the obvious, Google’s strength is in search. It’s search results pages are also going social, we know that for sure (enter link). So this raises some interesting questions. Will content aggregated by Buzz be given any form of priority? Will users profiles be highlighted in any way?

I can personally foresee a future where when searching a topic on Google it will return not only site listings, but a list of the key influencers around your search term.

For that reason, I’m going to dip my toes in and keep on top of any future developments.

I’d never be stupid enough to underestimate the power of search.

This book came to my attention via a colleague of mine (@mspownall) who sent a link to a competition on the e-consultancy website. I’d never heard of the book, or the author, but e-consultancy is a trusted resource of mine so I entered it. All I had to do was explain what my passion was.

I sent an email:

My passion is…divided. Work/life balance is very important to me, so family always comes first. Parenting is a hugely rewarding challenge, especially when you have 3 children at the age of 28! Professionally I thrive collaborating on exciting, innovative products and campaigns for a variety of clients.

Anyway, a few days later I received an email with the subject line WINNER. Bonus! Another few days went by and the book landed on my desk. A signed version no less. Queue the questions from everyone in the office asking who the hell Gary Vaynerchuk was.

“No idea” was my reply.

But hey, what better way to find out than stick my nose in on my daily travels to and from work!

It turns out Gary is a the epitome of the American dream. And was recently listed in the top 10 internet entrepreneurs of the moment.

Born in Bosnia (or Serbia, I can’t remember) he moved over to America when he was a young lad, and eventually ended up working at his fathers liquor store. He’d always had an entrepreneurial instinct but working day in day out in a liquor store has it’s limits.

Then the spark happened.

Gary discovered the Internet.

There are lots of similar stories out there, granted, but Gary’s sheer enthusiasm for the power of the Internet, and belief in following and promoting the one thing you are truly passionate about really struck a chord with me. He also stresses the importance of personal branding, and delivers some great insight into how to promote yourself whilst remaining true to your personality. He is a family man, like myself, and it is refreshing to hear that you can put family first, but still ‘crush it’.

Anyway, this lad Gary really knew his stuff when it came to wine, so he set up a video blog, pimped himself all over forums and the social web, and Winelibrary.tv was born.

The hard work didn’t stop there though. His straight forward language and abrasive style really caught on, and his sheer determination and effort to engage fully with customers and prospective viewers/ customers very quickly made him his fortune.

He now runs a consultancy firm that guides businesses on how to reap rewards from the Internet.

It’s a really easy to read book. Gary’s personality really comes across and his advice is spot on.

Passion + hard work + good use of online tools = success

Simple as.

You can buy the book from Amazon or if you want further views email me at mail@kevcharlton.com – (tip from Gary, include your email address as often as you can )

So a few days after getting back from btween09 and on reflection it was an amazing experience. For those who don’t know btween is an Interactive Digital Media Forum set up by Just.b Productions in Sheffield. It was sponsored by the likes of The Guardian, The Big British Castle, Ogilvy and NewMediaAge and attracts some of the brightest minds from the worlds of Advertising, Creative Technology, Film, Games, Mobile, TV and Web.

It was spread over two days so there was a lot to take in, but it was an extremely inspiring few days. I loved the twitterfall feed screen, and the way that opened up the debates to the audience, and the venue itself (Fact in Liverpool) was a great place.

As well as the great talks and debates I did pick up on a few sites/projects that I hadn’t come across before! As ever, I’ve bookmarked these under a specific tag in delicious. Check them out here: http://delicious.com/kev_charlton/btween.

Below is a short video created by Ogilvy at the end of the first day. Looking forward to btween10 already!