Harold Moss and Tammy Walters, partners in New York-based multimedia design and animation studio FlickerLab, have launched MOSS (www.thinkmoss.net), a brand initiative that will focus exclusively on producing media across all platforms fostering environmental, social, and political awareness and change. MOSS is housed in FlickerLab’s Manhattan headquarters.
For nearly a decade, FlickerLab has concentrated on animation and storytelling for film, television, commercials, and the web. Along the way, the studio has gravitated toward environmentally and socially relevant projects. Among these were: an animated campaign for the American Heart Association featuring the Bad Fats Brothers and The Better Fats Sisters; a viral short, How Pregnancy Happens, for Planned Parenthood; anti-smoking campaigns for the American Legacy Foundation and Comedy Central; work for Michael Moore Productions (A Brief History of the USA, in the Academy Award-winning, Bowling for Columbine, and graphic design and effects for Moore’s Fahrenheit 911); a range of ads for Green Peace and MoveOnPac.org; co-creating and producing the web series This Modern World (which satirized political inequities, corruption, and environmental destruction); and Trouble The Waters (consulting Producer and graphics for this 2008 Sundance and Full Frame Festival Grand Jury Prize winning Katrina documentary).
“Launching MOSS allows us to more single mindedly pursue these kinds of projects while deepening and extending our commitment to this kind of work,” explained Moss who is creative director of MOSS. “Einstein once said something that gets to the heart of our project: ‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’
“MOSS is our way to help develop and support those new kinds of thinking to surmount the critical challenges we face today as a planet,” he continued. “We are storytellers and are using those skills to inform, provoke thought and discussion, and galvanize people into concrete action around issues of the environment, poverty, peace, and social justice.”
Executive producer Walters added, “MOSS is fulfilling our mission through a broad range of projects including advertising campaigns for public service and non-governmental organizations working for social progress, original television series and films, and the creation of new fair-trade/green brands. Our first two series are currently being shopped to the TV networks.”
MOSS recently wrapped a one-minute animated short film,Dogsharks:Climate Change, that went online on Earth Day (4/22). The piece, which addresses global warming, was created by MOSS in conjuction with Robert Wurzburg, creator of the Dogsharks brand. In the short, a Dogshark demonstrates how easy it is to substitute an energy-saving compact fluorescent for a standard incandescent bulb. The Dogshark’s performance sparks wild applause and bouquets of flowers from an audience encouraged to act now.
MOSS is offering creative services to develop campaigns for important public service ideas; to develop brands that have an environmental message but are also proactive in rethinking the way things are made; and, in general, to be a change agent.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More