Hasta La Creative!

The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and were the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.

This future just got one step closer today with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, “a shopping assistant meant to help you fine online and local prices when you’re out and about shopping.” For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.

How much time do you give for this app to hit the market: you go into a Blockbuster, scan a box, and the movie is cued up for download on your BitTorrent client?

In a post last January on online experiences and offline expectations, I wrote, “Retailers gotta act quick if they want to have some control over the converging experiences. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won’t be needing all this retail innovation. Then they would go to Barnes & Noble to browse books and order the ones they like on Amazon right from the store. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won’t be needing all this retail innovation.”

That part about “a few years” was probably too optimistic. If you are a store, you might consider investing into a cell phone jammer or printing out this free “No iPhones on Premises” sign.

“synchstep (now for the iPhone & iPod Touch) plays songs from your music library that match your pace. Every step you take lands in-time with a drum hit, a bass pluck, a piano chord.”

Somewhere, an ad mind is thinking: “Great! Now we can play an ad variation that corresponds to the natural rhythm. Gait-optimization.”

What would happen if you tried to scan a pdf of your boarding pass on your iPhone? It would work!

I’ve got too many Firefox tabs open, each waiting to be blogged about at just the right time. Well, I need to restart the browser, so here’s everything at once.

– I’ve been looking for self-help books published during the first dot-com era. Drop a comment if you have an interesting one in mind. Here’s one with a funny cover on e-Branding (love the “e-“) from 2000.

– Dropclock, a really cool screensaver (video below) with Helvetica numerals falling in water in slo-mo.

– Polaroid has come up with a portable instant photo printer to bring us back the beloved functionality of the classic camera.

– How about computer-generated books? Here’s a story about a professor who has his computers scrape and digest content from the Net and spit it out as books. Here’s one out of some 200,000 created to date.

Just got hit up with a press release about Fog Screen, a cool screen technology mentioned here last year, announcing that the European company is now open for business in the US and is having a demo in Las Vegas this week. Lost of pictures, details on the event.

They say: “Our patented technology produces a virtually dry fog using ordinary tap water with no chemicals whatsoever. Viewers can stand inside the image and remain perfectly dry!”

How long will it take for face recognition technology that has already found its way into inexpensive consumer electronics to be integrated into digital signage?

Check the specs on Sony Cyber-shot T200:

“Because the face makes the photo, Sony has created Face Detection technology that recognizes up to 8 faces in a photo and automatically controls focus, exposure, color and flash to bring out the best in everyone. Unlike some competitive systems, Sony Face Detection makes skin tones look more natural and reduces red-eye with pre-strobe flash.

In Smile Shutter Mode, the DSC-T200 helps you capture more smiles by shooting automatically when your subject laughs, smiles, even grins – only when focus is fixed. You select the person to watch and the expression to catch — your Cyber-shot® camera’s Face Detection system and intelligent Smile Shutter algorithm do the rest!”

We know that the advertising applications are already in the labs: Last year, Microsoft showed off one such billboard.

Earlier:

• Device Measures Engagement Through Face Recognition
• Animated mannequins with face recognition
• Smart Fitting Room Gives Fashion Advice
• Mirror as Intelligent Computer Display
• Concept: Social Retailing

Reuters: “A Dutch company [Phillips’s spin-off Polymer Vision] has squeezed a display the size of two business cards into a gadget no bigger than other mobile phones — by making a screen that folds up when not in use. The 5-inch (13-cm) display of Polymer Vision’s “Readius” is the world’s first that folds out when the user wants to read news, blogs or email and folds back together so that the device can fit into a pocket.”

The final product differs from the last year’s prototype that was truly “roll-up”. It features a 5″ display and is coming first to Italy some time this year.

image source

AFP/Breitbart: “A Japanese company Tuesday unveiled a new device that will allow people “speak” through their ear so they can use their mobile telephones in noisy places. The device — named “e-Mimi-kun” (good ear boy) — doubles as an earphone and a microphone by detecting air vibrations inside the ear, developer NS-ELEX Co. said.”