Stickybits

This looks exciting.

It’s a network that allows you to attach photos, music text, PDFs, zips, etc to any barcode. Use existing barcodes or generate your own through the site. Think we may be seeing a whole lot more of stickybits.

@handypearce

Brain controlled pinball machine

Brain controlled pinball machine. NUI 2.0?

@handypearce

Best Music video ever

From the new album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky" OK Go on Tour. Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

I think it it bloody awesome

Use your arm to play Tetris

Skinput is based on an armband straddling the wearer’s biceps and detecting the small vibrations generated when the user taps the skin of his arm. It measures the vibrations and differentiates them based on bone densities, tissue mass and muscle size.

You can use different parts of your arm and even fingers to interact with it.

According to them it is 95% accurate and you can combine it with a pico projector and get some display on your arm as well.

check out the video

definitely an interesting concept, but until it is integrated into my T-shirt I doubt I will be interested in wearing an armband.

Take your score wherever you want

At the TechEd Middle East Microsoft showed off a game developed in Visual Studio. The interesting thing about this is that it plays on Windows with a keyboard, on the 360 with a controller and on your Windows phone 7 series using the accelerometer.

The real awesome thing about it is that you can start the game on your phone, then keep playing (from the same spot) on your PC at work (in your lunch break of course) and then finish it on your 360 at home.

check out the demo here

A little dynamic content while you wait sir ?

The New York Times and RMG digital out of home networks have just launched a content partnership that will deliver Times content to screens in a variety of place-based locations, according to Dmnews.

RMG’s 850 screens are found in environments where waiting in line is common (coffee shops and grocery stores). The plan is to deliver content via the screen and to promote Times’ mobile content via SMS and Bluetooth.

The Times’ strategy shows a great understanding of environmental conditions and multi-screen media consumption habits; two key pillars to a successful digital out of home installation.

Valve Software is up to something. More cake likely.

It’s been a crazy week for fans of the Portal that have been following the gaming press. After last patching the game with minor fixes in June 2009, Valve have pushed two cryptic updates live for the game this week, both of which made changes to the game itself.

The first added several radios to the game’s levels in addition to the ones already present in the game. Usually these just play some fairly crazy, mexican sounding musak, but several forum-posters on various sites have found that placing these radios on the various red buttons scattered throughout the game as part of the game mechanics, causes them to broadcast a new series of signals.

Things only get crazier from there. Portal fans from a bunch of fan forums, bless ‘em, have examined the transmissions and managed to decode them into morse code and images of security camera footage from Aperture Labs – the installation the game takes place in. The rabbit hole went further, though, as an MD5 hashed phone number for an old-school Bulletin Board Service was found in the images which itself had MORE cryptic images.

Kotaku’s Michael McWhertor has a great write-up of the findings.

I love that Valve put this stuff out there knowing that their fans are crazy enough to do the work. I guess that’s what happens when you have to wait so long for sequel announcements! <cough>Episode 3</cough>

The second update to the game, which JUST went live actually changed the game’s ending – albeit very slightly.

I’m not going to spoil it for you, but if you HAVE finished the game, you can see the updated ending over at Giant Bomb.

All of this looks like it points to an announcement for Portal 2 at the GDC next week where Valve’s Gabe Newell is receiving the Pioneer Award for the Game Developers Choice Awards 2010.

Oh, yeah. It also looks like we might have a Mac version of Steam soon. Awesome.

One thing’s for sure. These points of data make a beautiful line.

See the future at Microsoft TechFest

Techcrunch was able to get a preview of the upcoming projects that MS will show off at the upcoming TechFest.

As usual not all of these will become an actual product but most of them are definitely interesting.

Here are the once I like:

Immersive Digital Painting

The translating telephone

Cloud Computing

there are a couple more here if you are interested

@maniac13

Creating Digital Solutions for Retail Environments

(photo by Sherbet)

The recent launch of Microsoft Surface in Australia last month is a reminder that we are entering the digital era of retail shopping.

While the prospect of building immersive digital retail solutions in malls and  stores is exciting, the luster of $50,000 in quarter inch thick screens and multi-touch tables will turn dull if the installation does not increase foot traffic, lift sales and/or enhance the customer service experience.

With this is mind; this post is a first draft in an evolving guidebook for delivering effective digital retail experiences.

At a high level, there are three digital opportunities available in most retail environments.

(1) Product & brand visualization: Sales tools that show shoppers the potential of a boxed up widget, break down complex products, or open up a window to the full product inventory.

(2) Branded entertainment: Installations that draw the attention of foot traffic through an interactive solution and/or provide valuable content on behalf of the brand.

(3) Branded information services: Solutions that add value to people with a form of some kind of practical application (a way finding tool, a calculator, some tips or tricks, etc.)

All of these activities hold the prospect of being interactive, traceable, personalized, integrated, manageable, and innovative digital solutions.

For anyone of these activities to become a success, you must build upon a strategy based on the needs of the users in each scenario. That’s the philosophy the Amnesia Razorfish Emerging Experiences Team is guided by as we begin our journey into these new digital sales & marketing scenarios.

During a shopping experience there are number of players but at the heart of the situation are a) the shopper and b) the sales team. The question becomes: what can we do to amplify the sales experience for both players and not get in the way of the sales process?

One way of avoiding the latter is by understanding what services customers currently value.    The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) publishes quarterly reports that show which brands are delivering quality customer service across a variety of retail verticals (department store, specialty retail, supermarket, banking, insurance, gas stations, to name a few).

According to ACSI commentator Professor Claes Fornell analysis of Q4 2009 polls, while the harsh post GFC climate in the U.S. forced the overall rating down by 1.4%, each vertical had a strong performer from which key assumptions can be made:

Top Performers:

Nordstrom: The Seattle based department store company prides itself in informed and helpful customer service. Customers agreed and gave them a 83% on the scorecard for a satisfying experience.

Small Banks: In a vertical that saw zero overall improvement and was hit hard this year, small banks scored well because they specialize in personalized customer service.

Publix Supermarkets: Although Wal-Mart grocery chains beat Publix on price, Publix scores high in another sector (Grocery & Pharmacy) that customers are generally not thrilled with the current experience. Their secret: in-store demos and organic goods.

These top performers give us three important insights when thinking about digital retail possibilities.

(1) People are not necessarily unhappy with their current human-based shopping experience. This makes sense because humans are not robots and we generally enjoy communicating with one another; even in a sales situation. Therefore, sales personnel are staying put and the goal of what we build should be to help the sales team convert and up-sell, not to erase the sales team.

(2) Grocery & pharmacy environments are filled with so many choices that customers need additional experiences to help them make a purchase. This insight parallels a survey of 5,000 U.S. grocery shoppers in 2008 that found that 65% of shoppers thought they did not have enough information to make an informed purchase (as quoted in Burke, 2008).

(3) Personalized services are greatly appreciated by shoppers; especially during major decisions like selecting a mortgage or investing for retirement.

While these conclusions are the tip of a very complex iceberg and the specific approach will vary from case to case, the major point to be made is that it is important to balance the thrill of amazing new technologies and possibilities with a foundation of strategic thinking. The novelty of new technology should never take backseat to delivering on practical business objectives.

The next chapter in this thread will be about the spatial dimension of out of home and retail digital strategy. Stay tuned

Brett Robinson, Emerging Experiences Program Manager

Sources:

1. ACSI Quarterly Commentaries Q4 2009.

2.Behavioral Effects of Digital_Signage (2008). University of Indiana Press.

Amazing holographic drumkit and turntables

Neurosonics live. Ammmmaaazzzzing.

Official promotions roll out across FourSquare

As I am sure anyone with an iPhone is currently aware, the latest darling of the social app scene is a little location based game called FourSquare. FourSquare allows a user to “check in” to locations and through doing so you can become the ‘Mayor’ (most frequent check-in’s in a designated period) and earn ‘badges’ for completing certain combination of check-in’s.

There has been a lot of conversation around the potential use of FourSquare by local businesses but until today the only Sydney based use I had seen was a cafe that gave a free coffee to the “Mayor.” However earlier this morning I was visiting Sydney creative agency Lowe Sydney and when I went to check in I was presented with an interesting little tab in the top right corner (fig. 1)

Fig. 1

When you select this tab you are then taken to a promotion screen for a local business (in this instance the Baroque Bistro Patisserie) and you are presented with the opportunity to earn a gift if you check in 3 times. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2

This is a brilliant use of location based data to target users and bring a point of difference to a business. While FourSquare doesn’t have a large enough user base to work as a reach medium, it is perfect for small businesses working to increase their repeat business. Were I in area and assuming that Baroque do reasonable food and drinks this incentive offer could very well be the differentiator in where I go to get my morning coffee, after all if their coffee is just as good as the next place why wouldn’t I go there and get a free French Macaron.

From a glance it appears that the process of implementing one of these specials is a reasonably straight forward matter of filling out an online form.

The one feature I would really love to see added to the promotion page would be a ‘tell your friends’ feature, so that even if you’re not checking in there, you could push a ’shout’ to your friends via FourSquare/Twitter/Facebook and share the promotion with others who might find it interesting.

I personally will be paying very close attention to see what kind of traction this gains with Australian businesses.

- @JoelyRighteous

Chatroulette: a game, a social experiment, or a site for voyeurs?

Whatever it is, Chartroulette is both entertaining and addictive.

If you’ve ever Skyped with someone, then you are already familiar with the awkward experience that is synonymous with video chatting. Now imagine chatting with a total stranger, or multiple strangers, in rapid-fire succession. Sound like fun yet? Add a hint of speed dating drama and a pinch of chat room mischief, puree it together and you’ve got Chatroulette.

It is something that is both difficult to watch, yet hard to leave.

My past experiences on the site range from: strangers reading poetry, strangers asking me to flash them, strangers flashing me, familiar viral video feeds, occasional legitimate conversations, staring contests, and a lot of male anatomy. In fact, more than 25% of everything I stumbled upon would be rated XXX. Have no fear though, you can always ‘Next’ the crazy ones.

The site is a few months old and was created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17 year old in Russia. It currently has about 21,000 users from around the world it at any point in time, and seems to continually grow.

So if you’re an adrenaline junky, if you have a strong stomach, or if you just like meeting random people… test your luck and play a little Chatroulette. Be careful, you might poke your eye out!

Running Tally (out of 220 ppl):

Girls: 20	XXX: 55
Guys: 200	Real Conversation: 13
	No Front Teeth: 1
	Nothing special: 151

Ubisoft’s new copy-protection system to assassinate PC gaming?

Of all the millions of issues the Digital Age™ has introduced to our lives in the last couple of decades, Digital Rights Management (DRM) would have to be near the top of the list of ‘topics most likely to ignite into a white-hot debate’.

Copyright holders continue to pour billions of dollars into new ways to restrict the distribution of digital content such as music, movies, tv shows and games. In a world where all of these things are increasingly being purchased in digital form only, the issue becomes more and more of a concern for the publishers as the uptake of digital distribution channels increases.

The latest episode in the War on Game Piracy stars Ubisoft – publishers of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, the second installment of which releases on the PC next month. Ubisoft have previously spoken about their new DRM system that requires users to be constantly connected to the internet to play, but now that reviewers are getting their hands on review copies, the finer points of the system are becoming known.

Ubisoft say:

Ubisoft’s number one goal is to provide added value that will facilitate and enrich the gaming experience of our PC customers. The Settlers 7 beta version is enabling players to discover that this platform empowers them to install the game on as many PCs as they wish, to synchronize saved games online so that gameplay can be continued from where they left off (from any computer with an installed version of the game) and frees them from needing a CD/DVD in order to play.

The platform requires a permanent Internet connection. We know this choice is controversial but we feel is justified by the gameplay advantages offered by the system and because most PCs are already connected to the Internet. This platform also offers protection against piracy, an important business element for Ubisoft and for the PC market in general as piracy has an important impact on this market. Any initiative that allows us to lower the impact of piracy on our PC games will also allow us to concentrate further effort to the creation and expansion of IPs for the PC – our goal is to deliver the best gaming experience to our customers, anywhere, anytime.

PC Gamer magazine found, when playing an advance review copy, that if they interrupted their internet connection in any way, the game uncermoniously booted them back to the main menu and all progress since the last checkpoint was lost.

They commented:

Even if everyone in the world had perfect internet connections that never dropped out, this would still mean that any time Ubisoft’s ‘Master servers’ are down for any reason, everyone playing a current Ubisoft game is kicked out of it and loses their progress. Even massively multiplayer games aren’t so draconian about the internet: you can’t play when the server’s down, but at least you don’t lose anything for getting disconnected.

Predictably, the backlash from the gaming community is fierce. Spending a few minutes on the Steam game forums turned up these comments from gamers:

Sanchless:

I can’t support DRM this invasive, Ubisoft just lost my sale on this and any other game in the future that comes with this.

Void(null):

Piracy is theft of the product from the Publisher.
This is theft of the product from the consumer.

This is not the answer to piracy, this is the cause.

DARKNIGHT:

This is a major invite to pirates, because they wont need an internet connection to play it after they cracked it.

Well Ubisoft, say goodbye to the pc platform already, get lost in your console world, if you are going to blame the suffering on sales to piracy, its your own damn fault.

Now for what I think:

If Ubisoft go ahead with this new system, I think we can expect Assassin’s Creed 2 to be one of the most pirated PC games this year. Warez groups will have the copy protection cracked in a week at the most, and when they do, the cracked version will be far less inconvenient to run than the legitimate retail version.

Once again, DRM is going to punish the legitimate users and not the pirates.

As more and more publishers go down the route of draconian copy-protection systems and PC game piracy levels increase, we’ll see less and less publishers that consider the PC platform worth spending development money on – all because of the way they treated their customers.

@Westpac Twitter Account is “So Over it Today”

Maybe one of the best brand tweets ever by @westpac, but sadly it appears to have been deleted. Some are calling it social media marketing genius whilst others suspect that Westpac may not have stocked the kitchen cupboard with enough TimTams today.

Here it is, preserved in screenshot glory:

Substantiated by a Google Search below:

Anyone know the real story – let us know in the comments

Why Amnesia Razorfish opted out of Hot or Cold.

Post by @eunmac – Founder of Amnesia Razorfish.

Hi, I usually try my best to fly under the radar with contentious issues but felt it time to pop up to explain some stuff, possibly at the risk of sounding like a bit of a t**ser! I’ve noticed there are a lot of questions (and even criticism) around why Amnesia, Deepend, White Agency, Host and Webqem all opted out of Bannerblog and Campaign Brief’s Hot or Cold list. Rather than leave people hanging and wondering why we abstained, I thought I’d put the record straight.

Three reasons Amnesia Razorfish does not want to be involved in the Hot or Cold list:

Really awesome T-Shirt War

found this browsing around and it is great so I thought I share it with you

@maniac13

Goggles with built-in GPS

With the Winter Olympics underway, I thought I would post something fitting. Whether you’re into snowboarding or not, these goggles are pretty cool. The head mounted display gives you a load of information and will tell you how to get to the nearest bar (hopefully). Check them out here

@handypearce

The future of computing

We all have seen Tom Cruise in Minority Report and even though the movie was pretty average, the computing system used in it blew us away.

I have been talking about multitouch before here, here and here but most of them talk about concepts.

Now there is a company called Oblong that developed a system for real and it looks a lot like the one in the movie.

I want to volunteer to test this system, please.

@maniac13

Update: I just read that the cofounder of the company, John Underkoffer, was the lead of the team that came up with the interface used in the movie in 2002.

How to extinguish Malaria

Mosquitoes are the prime movers of the disease and plenty of people have spend years trying to find ways on how to get rid of the little suckers.

Now a company called Intellectual Venture labs has a solution – you use lasers to shoot them down mid air.

They first publicly demonstrated this laser (which is made of parts of printers, digital cameras, and projectors) at the TED conference the other day, using hundreds of mosquitoes in a clear glass case to make his point. The laser’s software determines the size and shape of the target before deciding whether or not to shoot.The lasers could be used to protect hospitals and clinics in areas with high mosquito populations and in areas with a high rate of malaria infestation.

Here is a video of it working

I personally think that we should find a way to prevent malaria and getting rid of mosquitoes seems to be the way to go, but burning them alive mid-air doesn’t seem right.

@maniac13

The robot that will solve my rubik’s Cube

and it will do it in 10.75 seconds

don’t believe me, check this out