Fourth Story Media

Remember your childhood love of Choose Your Own Adventure books? Where you were the star of the story and could decide whether to stay and fight the ninja/dinosaur/spy, or run away screaming/fall in love/jump off a cliff?

Well now the format has been updated YouTube style.

Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Rob Polonsky (collectively known as CMR) have produced a series called The Timemachine about three 30-something office dudes (Chad, Matt & Rob) who are trying to make it to a 12:00 pm meeting. The trouble is that Rob has stumbled across a timemachine, and the three are now bouncing between multiple eras. Each webisode is a few minutes long with a choice at the end (”Do Chad and Matt get in the garbage can?” – “Get In” / “Not a Chance”). Clicking your answer propels you to the next mini episode in the series (which is surprisingly addictive).

According to BuzzFeed half a million viewers have started the journey, but only 100,000 have made it to the end.

Watch the first episode here!

(via Buzzfeed)

No longer limited to catch phrases and mini alligators, 2d code is reporting that the world’s first multimedia novel as a t-shirt has just been published:

“Winksite have teamed up with author Alexander Besher to publish his latest novel “The Manga Man”, not as a book but as a T-shirt . The “Manga Man” T-shirt (photo below) displays a QR Code that links to a mobile site from which a prospective reader can display the narrative directly. There is much more to this than appears at first sight and you can read more on Winksite CEO David Harper’s blog.”

Although the design and tag line are a bit lacking (what is that climbing thing? “sayonara you’re about to be digitized”???), I love the idea of using QR codes in innovative ways. Especially in support of a larger narrative.

Check out 2d’s site to find out more.