The image of a remote phonebox with tumbleweed blowing past it has long been a symbol of isolation and the wilderness. Will the phone work? Will someone have hidden some sort of message there, perhaps instructions on how to get to an old school rave, or will it be full of old takeaway and worse? Placing itself firmly in the middle ground between fixed landlines and the always-on lifestyle associated with a mobile phone is Skype, thanks to a new campaign from the Viral Factory, London.
www.phoneboxexperiment.com 

We wouldn’t normally sit glued to a two minute TV ad, but this is spine-tingling. Colenso BBDO in New Zealand came up with this beautiful animation for the New Zealand Book Council: http://bit.ly/nzbooks

Innovative retailer Miele has opened a London store which encourages people to trial the products before they buy. Any students not wishing to take their laundry home for Christmas, this is for you: http://bit.ly/dirtysocks

Movie releases, particularly those targeting families such as Up, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and the just-released A Christmas Carol, have been experimenting with 3D to add extra va-va-voom to the big screen. But now cognac brand Courvoisier has dipped its toe in 3D waters.
The ad, ‘Cognac With Another Dimension’, shows cognac in a balloon glass exploding and then spinning into a vortex that forms a cocktail. Don your 3D glasses and watch it in all its glory here: http://tinyurl.com/Courvoisier

You might remember Toshiba launching a chair into space recently from the desert in America. Well, the footage from that projectile has made its way back to earth and has been mashed together to form ‘Space Chair’, the brand’s latest TV commercial through Grey, London. Watch the biodegradable chair and its specially built camera rig’s graceful and surreal journey to the edge of space and back at http://bit.ly/1hflUf

BBDO Buenos Aires and Sake have completed the human race 10k campaign for Nike. Five celeb runners commentated on their race in real time, via a mobile phone and earpiece, and the resulting wheezing and insights were broadcast live and could be followed via Twitter, GPS and Google Maps. Over 650,000 people followed the race live and online. Watch the action at www.vimeo.com/7424458 and check http://thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo

Dell has partnered with MTV to try and create the world’s largest online choir, Amplichoir… in their words ‘we have no idea just how big it could become, but, deep down, we really want it to be the biggest one there is’. http://ema.mtv.co.uk/amplichoir, http://amplichoir.com/    

The Icelandic village Seydisfjordur was filled with speakers broadcasting music from an eclectic bunch of artists including Bob Dylan, Federico Cabral and Guillemots as part of a film by Fallon to promote the high sound quality on Sony TVs. According to Fallon's Juan Cabral, who directed the spot, Sony turned the village into ‘an extraordinary sound-system for a week’. Watch it here. http://tiny.cc/Soundville

On the subject of Sony, three new Sony Ericsson handsets - the Yari, Aino and Satio - are being championed via a global campaign masterminded by Saatchi & Saatchi, Iris and Dare, London. It kicked off last week with a viral video showing a flash mob of 500 brightly coloured space hoppers invading Barcelona which has racked up nearly 30,000 views on YouTube. Watch it here: http://tiny.cc/Hopper161.
Anyone envying those bouncing Barcelonians can create their own hoppers online and join in the fun. www.hopperinvasion.com