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.
The Rotten Fruit Tardis is an animated vehicle that transports viewers between a myriad of dimensions and nested worlds and displayed as a wall-projection. More than 5000 of Jason’s drawings are drifting in a space with each viewer explores the omni-directional interface.
Having read Flow recently and watching Stuart Brown at TED, it’s no wonder my recent focus on interactive experiences that involve play, and how digital communication uses gaming metaphors. And even if my PC/videogame marathons are now long gone, i try to stay alert for new stuff that uses the web as gaming platform, stumbling upon great stuff like iProphesy.net.
The web based MMO playing game, created by The Secret Location and the playful folks at Phantom Compass, is based on Vision’s TV documentary “Iprophesy” , extending the show to the web, with players creating customizable 3D characters, that can talk with other players, and travel between 13 different environments, each reflecting an episode from the TV show on Vision TV.
It’s the next evolution of online forums, with posts available as external RSS feeds, with collaboration and chat amongst players. By exploring the multiple worlds and answering challenges, each player earns point with winners awarded on the TV show. With TV feeling the pressure from online media, it goes with the saying: “If you can’t beat them, join them”.
It’s nonetheless remarkable how long have we progressed these past few years, with the rise of broadband and better browsers allowing experiences that were once reserved to desktop or console games.
As promised, here’s the presentation from yesterday at RIApt AUG, on a 30 minutes talk about why you should care about Progressive Enhancement and how it can be applied to websites developed with the Flash platform.
Having a full day job and being a active blogger, makes it hard to find some free time to give presentations and worshops. But as I always wished for an active Adobe User Group in Portugal, it was hard to decline the invitation by Paulo Moreira, for the next meeting, February 27th.
I’m not really a full scale programmer, but having worked over 7 years with Flash, and being recently seduced by the advantages of web standards, the best i could remember for my session was the subject of Progressive Enhancement, or how to present rich media experiences while delivering alternate content.
Armando Alves: Progressive Enhancement: Enlarge your Flash Accessibility
1) Technology isn’t always a hero: From Flash to Ajax
2) Graceful solutions for alternative content
3) Transformation: reusing your XML data
Ricardo Neves:
World Video Digital Signage
A project developed by JP Sá Couto and AmplitudeNet for low cost digital signage basead on the Flash Platform.
I’ll try not to be too technical, so if you’re interested in the subject, please drop by (signup required) . If not, i’ll post the the presentations slides here.
Brainstorms are the quintessential tool for creative people, and though the results are not always tangible and reflected in the final concept, they remain one of the most effective tools to think out of the box.
The web has given us other similar tools like mindmaps, but none was so powerful has the freshly released Moodstream by GettyImages, produced by Barbarian Group.
With the imense amount of metadata that image banks have, with additional assets like video and audio, it was a matter of time to mashup all these creative assets and come up with a imagination machine like this.
We can fine tune our settings, select the transistion to the moodboards or adjust the audio. Once you pick enough inspirations, it’s all up to execution.
Great work by GettyImages, a worthy successor to the previous 10 ways.
Olá ! (hello in Portuguese). We’re all set for the last day and it’s been great.
Check this flickr set from Pedro Sousa to get a feeling.
12:00
Entering the afternoon with several directors from Boolab, a motion studio, and an almost oficial partner of Psyop.
13:00
Adobe misses their talk. Missing evangelizing opportunities like this one brings no good karma. Chris, of Crashmedia, Canada, is filling their shoes.
14:00
Oh great, porn ! The Shai project, with compliments by Agence7seven.
16:30
Onesize, Gmunk and Minivegas answer how creativity and technology shape motion graphics. Minivegas showed a impressive software to create generative station ID’s, based on live footage. And also, more penis.
Gmunk debunks motion-fx houses, claiming they don’t know shit about design. The discussion goes into the domain of pushing interactivity (live data, user input) into motion graphics.
18:00
Group 94 is now on stage with a behind-the-scenes of their web design work. They applied a panorama transition of Jeronimos Monastery to their Nokia project.
Awesome.
19:00
Devoid of yesterday premieres the event titles. Lots of fish. I’ll post it as soon as it’s available.
Ideas are leaps of imagination … with commercial consequences.
Of course they showed Cadbury’s gorilla. Which is just a stunt by a production company (Glass and a half full) whose goal is to deliver joy.
Digital makes ideas more useful and involving.
Ok. we’re done. As the conference organizers just confirmed, see you next year at OFFF 2009 Lisbon !
50Done & friends is presenting. For those who don’t know yet 50Done & friends is a project of Rui Vieira ( currently Creative Director at Fullsix Portugal) to do out of the box projects in the areas of digital creation and communication they work with real clients but in a diferent way of communication. Rui presents the Body and Soul, a project for Nokia that showcases beautiful models (one component shows the body , the other a more emotional soul) .
Ingrediente X – A motion design showcase.
Carlos Matias – Dialectica shows his creative work applied on t-shirts and shoes, and some of the illustrations shown here at the venue.
Pedro Pinto, a 3d motion designer at Fullsix with some sample work.
13:00
Karlssonwilker with a weird piece: a spoken portfolio, on audio tape.
14:00
Regine is on stage, sharing how We-Make.-oney-Not-Art evolved and reflecting on emerging art and the relation with technology. Right next to her, Andy Cameron, now creative director at Fabrica, talking about his work and what interactive media means. They both hate Second Life, and finish their talk with a discussion on the challenges of nem media art.
16:00
Hellokimori is now on stage.
17:00
A great panel on information visualization. Quite more useful than the usual showcase that we’ve seen today.
18:00
FakePilot rolling his impressive ground of work. Feels a lot like Chris Cunningham.
19:20
Now a Interaction Deigin Panel, starting with the folks from naninka. Beats me why the organization decided to this “panels” when no interaction with the audience kicks in. Surprised to find out that Nanika was involved in the BBC radio (below).
20:00 -21:00
After some astonishing works by Alex Trochut, we’re ending with Hi-Res.
Hello everyone. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted, but back from vacations (and a bit sick) I’m ready for the full 3 days at OFFF Lisbon 2008, live blogging and twittering.
12:00
Loads of people outside (an estimate of around 2000). Collecting their tickets, getting a sun tan and drinking beer. I’ll need to do an errand, but i’ve been told the doors are already opening.
Just found out that some conferences are being broadcasted at
http://videos.sapo.pt/offf. For those abroad, Sapo is a xtra cool portuguese portal, and i’ve met with some of their team here at the event.
13:10
Dino dos Santos, one of Portugal’s most famous type designers, talking (in English) about the process and themes that inspire him.
18:00
Late lunch and more errands, after watching Eric Natzke (North kingdom cancelled their talk).
Now watching Trafik and their several interactive projects.
19:00 – 22:00
Last but not the least, the all exciting Joshua Davis, with his humorous talk, inviting everyone to get naked. The day wrapped with the work of PsyOp (and a wonderful making-of their latest commercial for Absolut). See ya tomorrow.
