2009 has been abuzz with Augmented Reality, and what was once novelty is now on the verge of becoming a fad, a “Me Too” marketing strategy. As i still think there’s a lot of bright people researching new ways of interaction, here’s a short selection of videos collected in the last few months, featuring the best augmented reality examples used for marketing purposes.
Mini.de
One of the first AR examples used in advertising, by Mini.
Papervision meets FLARToolKit for a digital hologram of GE’s Smart Grid technology. Developed by North Kingdom.
Wear Your World
The Fluid Interfaces group from MIT showcased their work on a recent TED Talk, with Pattie Maes demoing the sixth sense, a step towards the ubiquitous computing vision of Mark Weiser.
Topps 3-D Live cards
One of the quickest ways for AR reaching a mainstream audience is definitely sports. With Topps 3-D Live cards by T-Immersion, you can bring life to players, with the help of a webcam.
Wikitude AR
The iPhone might get all the buzz, but one of the promising AR integrations is on Google’s Android, with Wikitude, a mobile travel guide based on location-based Wikipedia and Qype content.
A virtual toy, with their 64 page instructional manual, with all the Japanese idiosyncrasy, developed by Geisha Tokyo Entertainment.
Sekai Camera
Mainly a mobile technology, but with a promising marketing future, the Sekai Camera is a system for using online data to navigate the real-world, featured on the latest Techcrunch 50TechCrunch 50.
While this kid of experiences has all the eye-candy, the real trend that interests me is “The Internet Of Things”, with technologies like Arduino or companies like TikiTag and Violet.
For related information, check out this great resources:
Johnny Holland, about the interaction between people and products, systems or processes.
Just in case you haven’t stumbled upon it yet, here’s the masterfully produced interactive narrative for Philips new TV set, by Stink Digital and Adam Berg.
Lots of stuff going on lately, and didn’t had the time to process all the inspirations, so here’s some recent highlights to digest during this Easter break.
Multitouch and Experience
An extensive multitouch applications roundup by PointAndDo. And of course, Bumptop has launched.
With regards to Experience (and interaction design), there’s plenty recent material where to choose from. Start with the IA Summit and JJG‘s plenary (avilable at BoxesAndArrows) and end with Dan Saffer’s Attention Awareness for Interaction Designers
The “Your Mom” thinking has been picking up steam. From TechCrunch to Chris Messina, lots of places discussing this emerging need to enable portable profiles and filters.
And to end, here’s something your mom would find really useful on Twitter: BakerTweet, a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven.
Nokia has launched today several new features at IdeasProject.com, where your can submit your ideas to be chosen and discussed by thought leaders and industry experts.
The recent branded content platform provides a way for users to get involved and stimulates innovation sponsored by the technology company.
From Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson to Nokia’s VP Ari Jaaksi, it’s something betweeen TED and Innocentive, with a twist of My Starbucks Idea to go along.
The new Ideas Map, where you can focus on the relationships between the big ideas.
The past few weeks, sites and blogs have been pushing their trendsetting articles. I haven’t decided yet if it’s worth publishing one myself, specially after reading Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan, and realizing that trying to predict these sort of things is mostly an exercise in futility.
Nonetheless, as some of these “trends” do carry a reasonable amount strategic thought, a few highlights about trends:
Consumer
The obvious place to start is Trendwatching’s Half Dozen Trends for 2009.
On a recent discussion at work, it was interesting to realize that i guessed half of them right, before the report was published. Key trends: NicheTributes, Luxyoury, MapMania
Marketing and Media
Mark, Wendy, Dale, Eric and Ben at Talking Digital have been publishing their trends since October, with a plenty of creative juice to drink from. Key trends: Digital Growth, newspaper recession, Ad market competition, Privacy. On this latest trend, do check out also a interesting article by Pedro Rocha at Will It Brand, on the larger trend of Protection.
Design
The classic Pantone color forecast has to be mentioned. Key trends: Fuchsia Red, Salmon Rose, Lucite Green, Lavender.
Technology
I’m picking the recent Gartner study, Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009, with a lot of focus going, of course, to cloud computing and virtualization.
Gaming Trends
Jerome, at Advertising Pawn, as a compact presentation on games. For someone who doesn’t have the time to spend their time on the Xbox, the Wii or PS3, it’s a great shortut to connect to gaming culture. Key trends: Connectivity and participation.
On a post about trends, a closing reminder on the latest Google Zeitgeist, an annual report on the hottest worldwide search trends, where you can find the usual suspects (sarah palin, obama). And if you’re really trend freak, there’s always live services like Google Trends or Twitter trends.
The gap between real and virtual has been narrowing the past few years, with hardlinking technologies like QRcodes and RFID connecting objects to the network. Another common strategy is to emulate the physical world, using a web cam and processing the data input to create augmented experiences.
One of the best examples of this reality bridge is the latest Virtual Mirror by Ray-Ban.
On the website, access to the Virtual Mirror section, and download the application powered by FittingBox, and have virtual eye wear room, were you can try the glasses that fit you best.
The 3d technology brings the retail experience to your desktop and, as Igor notices, it’s too bad that no e-commerce functionality was integrated on the application. Nonetheless, it’s a great showcase of the technology. Now that we’ve managed to get hearing and sight, there’s 3 more to go: taste , touch, and smell. Interesting times we live in.
Last week i was fully immersed at Shift08, the Lisbon conference on Social and Human Ideas for Technology. First, let me thank the readers who bought the ticket with my promo code, as it awarded me with a golden ticket (full refund). Awesome #1.
The first day was full of FREE workshops, with a guerrilla usability workshop by Andy Budd involving wine tasting, courtesy of Cortes de Cima and Adegga. Awesome #2.
On Thursday, the sessions started with a massive amount were to choose from. As far as i could find out on the coffe breaks, highlights were Julian Bleecker’s Design Fiction and Mark Wuben’s Home Made Ubiquitous Computing (today i’ve realized he’s also the co-author of always useful sIFR). I really enjoyed the session on Designing with common sense, by the folks of AllOfUs. Even more after i had the chance of having a great talk at lunch with Nick and Sandy. Andy Budd closed the day with a great presentation on User Experience, an appetizer for the last day main theme. Awesome #3.
Friday started with another great session by Brian Suda about semantic web and microformats, and the morning ended with our own robotic curator Leonel Moura discussing Artificial Creativity. The afternoon had the most expected sessions with Stowe Boyd and Tara Hunt focusing on social flow and social capital. Awesome #4.
Having attended the 1st one – and loving it – i’m expecting the same amount of enthusiasm and interesting discussions on how technology is shaping society and our daily lifes.
The event is organized by close friends Bruno and Pedro (at non-profit), with 60 speakers during the 3 days, at Parque das Nacoes FIL (Lisbon). The subjects in discussion include: Education, History, Genetics, Economics, Accessibility, Usability, Mobile Technologies, Open Source, Transportation, Energy, Architecture and Art. Quite a treat, eh?
The video of the week goes to a recent TED talk by Peter Hirshberg, discussing “how the computer ambushed television”.
Peter Hirshberg is now on the advisory board of Technorati and authors a weblog on disruptive culture and technology, having worked for Apple, Microsoft, AOL and NBC. His talk is a a great overview on the evolution of media and the new role of the web.
Some appetizer quotes:
(…) the tech world is best understood not as a business cycle, but as a messianic movement. We promise something great, we evangelize it, we’re going to change the world, it doesn’t work out too well and so we actually go back to the wall and start all over again, as the people in New York and LA look on in absolute morbid astonishment, but it’s this irrational view of the world that drive us on
(..) when we emerged from this into what we called Web 2.0, things actually are quite different
and i think it’s the reason that TV is so challenged. If Internet 1 was about pages, now is about people. It’s a customer, it’s an audience, it’s a person who’s participating, it’s the formidable thing that is changing entertainment now.
