Plumb Design,
United Media, and Intel today announced the launch
of the Comic Explorer, the
new “Rube Goldberg-esque” Java-based machine.
Available comics include Dilbert, Peanuts, Marmaduke, Nancy, and the rest
of the thirty-one daily comics that are available at United Media’s Comic
Zone.
The Comic Explorer enables visitors to surf through hundreds of comics, and
is designed to encourage the site’s visitors to read comics that they might
normally not have read. The Comic Explorer designed and developed by Plumb
Design, is a visual spectacle with “burbling vials of liquid, animated
cartoon icons, and peel-away comics.” Plumb Design wanted to make the
process of finding a comic as fun as actually reading it.
>From Intel’s viewpoint, the Comic Explorer was designed to showcase how
sites can take advantage of the Intel Pentium II processor’s performance.
By utilizing animation and other effects which are calculated in real-time,
the Java applet becomes a visual experience that will encourage visitors to
read more comics than normal.
Additionally, the Comic Explorer is the first Java applet to serve ads
using the DoubleClick network. For more information about Comic Explorer,
or to give it a try, visit the Comic Explorer Web site.