Focus sur Andreas Wannerstedt, ce graphic-designer suédois qui propose la vidéo “Genesis”. Partant du postulat que le futur nous permettra de comprendre la construction de l’univers, ce dernier a imaginé une simulateur de création de mondes. A découvrir dans la suite.
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Découverte de ce court métrage futuriste The Raven, se déroulant dans la ville de Los Angeles. Un film dirigé par le réalisateur Ricardo de Montreuil, avec peu de budget et une caméra RED en 1920×1080. L’histoire est simple : un homme doté de pouvoirs doit faire face aux robots.
Le SixthSense est composé d’une webcam et d’un pico-projecteur. L’appareil permet d’interagir avec le monde réel, et chaque objet du quotidien devient une interface. Les applications deviennent alors infinies, comme le montre cette démonstration vidéo disponible dans la suite.
Une réalisation du chercheur au MIT : Pranav Mistry.
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.
Big news today, if you haven’t heard already: Google released a 3D chat app called Lively. It’s the same thing that was being tested at a university in Arizona last winter, and probably the same thing that was rumored about in January 2007 and anticipated as early as 2006.
In a nutshell, it’s a 3d chat app where users can customize avatars and create environments (rooms) with stuff they pick from a product catalog. You need to install a browser (FF, IE, Win-only) plug-in to participate. And while it is not exactly an MMO, it is more similar to Second Life than early commentators admit.
First impressions:
1. While object creation is a process open only to participants hand-picked by Google (see a press release by Rivers Run Red, a creator of Second Life presence for many companies), Lively seems designed to be integrated with SketchUp and 3D Warehouse at some point. This would open doors not only to user-generated stuff, but also to branded objects (such as virtual Whirlpool appliances).
Rivers Run Red has a room in Lively, and so does Linden Lab.
2. While all of the stuff I’ve seen in the catalog is free, the very fact that there’s a price tag at all hints at a potential marketplace for virtual stuff.
3. The integration with the “flat” web is pretty tight. Each room has a “real” URL (here’s Google’s), each room can be embedded on other sites (and viewable with the plug-in), some objects can play YouTube videos and show pictures hosted elsewhere.
4. Characters can be equipped with animation scripts.
5. Similarly to Second Life, Lively allows movement around the environment and camera manipulation, and like in Second Life, the controls are not terribly intuitive.
6. Objects can be fitted with hyperlinks to “flat” web pages, just like the lava lamp on the screen cap below pointing to AdLab. This could probably result in some sort of on-the-spot transactional activity: you click on the lamp in my room and a window pops up offering you to buy the real thing.
7. There are half-rumors half-expectations that Lively will be somehow integrated into Orkut, which seems possible since Lively uses the same system-wide Google login.
Lively, of course, will become more, well, lively when Google integrates it with SketchUp and allows user- and brand-generated assets to become part of the marketplace. It could also be hypothetically integrated with Google Earth so that Lively “rooms” become inhabitable interiors of the 3D models on Earth or maybe in the sky.
A lof ot related links from AdLab’s past years here, so I’ll just give a couple of broad pointers:
Google and virtual worlds
Virtual worlds in general
Posts related to Second Life
Advertising in games
Keyword matching is so last decade: “Through Peer39’s proprietary SemanticMatch technology the most relevant ads are displayed in the most appropriate and productive content, assuring higher ROI. Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39’s patented algorithms understand page meaning and sentiment, and deliver the most relevant and effective brand safe online advertising.” (site, press release)
There are a lot of things left unanswered as far as our future is concerned and a lot of it has to do with where we will find ourselves in the course of time. One thing we have to note is that global warming and eco-friendly issues will be beside us all the way and with that in mind, we cannot help but think what companies such as Sony will have for us by that time.
Sony can help us get a glimpse of things to come and they are showing this to us with this video that gives us highlights of the future. Take a look at this video so that you will have an idea on whether to look forward to the future or simply keep on wondering what we have in a couple of years ahead of us.
Technorati Tags: sony, technology, highlights, future, advertising, video, eco-friendly, global warming
As if it weren’t enough that buying a domain name requires all sorts of linguistic acrobatics, creating an account with popular social networks and other online utilities is starting to be taxing as well. Pages at myspace.com/McDonald’s, GAP, Applebee’s, IBM, Xerox, Microsoft, Sony, iPhone and many others have little to do with the respective brands apart from the page owners’ usernames. Common dictionary words are long gone as well; here’s, for example “/sex” on MySpace and YouTube.
You don’t hear about username squatting much, although there was a blog post last year comparing twittersquatting to the domain name rush of the 1990s. Why is it important? Three reasons.
1. Convenience. MySpace.com/myblendtec is less obvious than /blendtec, which is taken by someone other than the socially successful blender maker.
2. Danger of misrepresentation. It is easy to recognize /billgates and /microsoft as obvious parodies, but hijacking an online identity of someone less famous can’t be too hard.
3. Search traffic. Perhaps not a threat to bigger companies, but part of the search traffic for brands with limited online presence and for common words can be derailed to pages on MySpace, videos on YouTube (and stories on Digg, but that’s a different story). I don’t have a good “bad” example off the top of my head, but see how CBS YouTube channel ranks way above many of the network affiliates’ sites. And if you search for “tequila”, MySpace celeb Tila Tequila comes up above many businesses with the word in their names.
Is Apple prepping a 3D shopping interface? A Second Life resident thinks it might (via Brand Flakes) if the new patent is any indication. The patent was filed in September 2006 and published a couple of weeks ago. (Follow a lengthier discussion.)
There have been a couple of fan-made Apple stores in Second Life before: see this set of Flickr pictures of one such store and a video of another one below.
This is me in a bootleg Apple store in Second Life in early 2006. The store was selling iPod and iPod shuffle replicas but was eventually shut down. There, you could also pick-up a black outfit and a green “cardboard” background and walk around looking like an iPod commercial.
Architecture of query-specific search recommendation (source: pdf)
A collection of papers written by Googlers has a lot of stuff that points towards a possible direction of search. Since these are all papers published in academic journals, many of them are locked behind publications’ paid subscriptions, but a few are freely available. The one I’m reading now is titled “Retroactive Answering of Search Queries” (pdf); its about identifying queries that have lasting interest and proving answer to these queries at a later date when information becomes available (pictured above).
Patrick Petersen interviewt Touching Media op de SpinAwards from AtMosttv on Vimeo.
Video capture of a toy packaging is displayed on a computer and augmented with the animated 3D image of the toy inside. The video is in Dutch; via Erwin van Lun.
I can imagine these installations in the stores, working similarly to price scanners. Very cool. A simpler (and older) idea: scanning the barcode in the store displays reviews and suggested add-ons.
Image: Suck.com
Can’t believe I missed this great Brandweek piece about agencies bringing in hypnotists to focus groups; and it’s a practice with decades of history, too: “A former Grey exec, Solovay has been hosting such groups for a decade. Her clients include about dozen brands including blue-chip beer, soda and telecom companies as well as 20 different agencies.”
Has anyone tried administering thiopental sodium — the truth serum — on focus groups yet? Gotta be cheaper than running the groups (“Four sessions cost about the same as a typical round of focus groups ($50,000-75,000).”)
Salon.com, back in 1999: “It’s an intriguing thought — the fate of America’s consumer brands resting on the dubious musings of a bunch of soporific focus group respondents.”
Anyway, here’s everything you need to bring the magic to your office:
Brandvisioning, the company mentioned in the article. The pitch: “BrandVisioning Whole Mind Ideation brings focus groups to a whole new level. BrandVisioning focus groups use the power of hypnosis to allow consumers to better access and report their feelings about a product, a service, or a piece of communication. We uncover the core insights and truths that encourage deeper connections to your brand.”
Keith O’Neill, a hypnotherapist also mentioned in the article. From his website: “Hypnosis acts like a time machine. Through the process of “age regressionâ€, hypnosis enables us to take respondents back to their earliest product and brand memories and the emotions connected to them.”
Hal Goldberg (above) is a former Leo planner who’s been doing hypno-groups for 35 years. Call 800-646-4041 for a free DVD of a hypnotized group in action. He’s in both the Salon’s and Brandweek’s articles.
There’s a blog full of marketing tips for hypnotherapy professionals (doesn’t the idea that hypnotists need marketing tips feel kind of funny?)
F0r the DIYers among you, I went through Amazon looking for a few books that wouldn’t be a waste of money. Judging by their reviews, these two seem to stand out as both professionally and accessibly written:
Check out this one on a different but related subject:
Traders on MediaPredict give the Cavemen show on ABC a 6% chance of being renewed.
MediaPredict is a prediction market where traders bet play money on all sorts of media events that range from show renewals to season finales. (The Economist published a short write-up on the company a year ago.)
Earlier:
Advertising and Predictive Markets
IBM Virtual World Guidelines (does your company have one?): “In general, your digital persona’s appearance is up to you. When you are using your avatar or persona in association with IBM, however, your judgment in these matters should be shaped by the same general guidelines that apply to IBMers in physical environments – i.e., that your appearance be appropriate to the context of your activities. You need to be especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.”
— via a comment on Second Thoughts
It was written up in USA Today last year, too.
Click image to zoom in.
Today: what’s wrong with the word “analysis” that it had to be partially bleeped out by asterisks into “***ysis”? Or was it “paralysis”? Or “dialysis”? (Found on Webby’s site, People’s Choice voting section).
Tomorrow: cell phone software that bleeps out naughty syllables from conversations in real time.
Considering how much the banner format has evolved over the past decade, it’s surprising how little innovation we see on the publishers’ side of the equation. For the most part, publishers treat their ad space as just that: a blank piece of real estate that they rent out. As in real estate, the neighborhood and the location is important, but a lot with extra features could command a higher price. To be fair, many publishers offer targeting capabilities that are much more advanced than in the past, although even with targeting the lowest common denominator is pretty low. And, to continue with the real estate metaphor, most of the lots for rent lack something as basic as a sewage hook-up.
The only two examples of ad spaces with extras I could think of are CNet and Facebook (but please drop a comment if I’m missing something).
Ad units throughout the CNet network (see this page, for example) come with “Ad Feedback” links to the unique feedback forms, although I don’t know if the feedback is for advertisers’ or CNet’s use.
The feedback link above an ad unit on a CNet site.
Ad feedback form on CNet.
[Update]: Adpinion and BrandJury are two start-ups pursuing the ad feedback idea (from the comments on Steve Rubel’s post on the subject a few weeks ago).
And Facebook aggregates all ads that share a common audience on Ad Board, a page you can reach by following the “More Ads” link under the ad.
Click the “More Ads” link on Facebook…
… to see more ads targeted at you.
Google has been offering a feature similar to Facebook’s Ad Board for a long time now: search for a popular product then click the More Sponsored Links link on the bottom of the AdWords column but it looks more like an afterthought than a feature intended to be actively used. I’d clean up the formatting and somehow display ads associated with similar queries: a search for “gaming laptop” produces a slightly different set of ads that could be combined with those for “laptop for games” on one classifieds-like page.
Google’s Sponsored Links pages even have a dedicated search feature.
A few other things on my wish list. None of them guarantee success, but then how are we going to know for sure if we don’t experiment?
1. Bookmarking. Jacob Nielsen wrote about it five years ago: “Why not make it possible for users to review ads after they rotate off the screen? If every site that featured rotating, dynamically generated ads simply offered a button at the ad location — “view last 10 ads here” — we predict that advertisement success rates would increase.”
2. Associate ad content with site content where possible. The CNet ad above for Sprint could come along with links to past tried it two year ago; I wonder how it went. [update: It died because advertisers didn’t want to take the risk, Engadget’s Peter Rojas explains.]
4. Sharing. Cutting out and sharing coupons is a well established behavior offline with barely any online analogs.
Earlier:
10 Tips for New Ad-Supported Ad Businesses
“Dr. LaPierre’s group [at McMaster University in Hamilton’s department of engineering] used a focus ion beam microscope (FIB) to shoot a beam of gallium ions at the surface of a human hair, carving atoms off the of the surface of the hair to etch these McMaster University logos.”
— BoingBoing
Earlier:
This year’s ad prank is Trust Banners that gain “consumer trust through high frequency (90fps) banner adverts which stimulate specific regions of the visual cortex (Visual area V5/MT) producing instant effects on consumers.”
Turning black and white TVs into color sets by wrapping them in nylon stockings must be the best media-related April 1 hoax ever (Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds was on Halloween so it doesn’t qualify). Above is the original broadcast on the Swedish TV back from April 1, 1962.
Among the pranks that would actually make sense to implement for real is last year’s announcement by XM radio that it is launching a new channel entirely powered by podcasts.
The always adorable Google added a new function to Docs this year that creates a blank document with an outline of a paper airplane.
Also:
Remote Control Jammer Chip Activated By Commercials
Doritos is running a make-an-ad-for-us contest in the UK. On June 12, 2008, one of the people-made ads for Doritos will be broadcast into the space from an ultra high frequency radar station in Norway. The ad “will be broadcast for 24 hours to a range of solar systems, some of which have planets that theoretically could support life.” And be a potential Doritos market, apparently.
More details and hand-wringing (their space program is being cut) in the British press: “The transmission will be invisible to earthlings and is being directed at a solar system 42 light years away from Earth with planets that orbit its star ’47 Ursae Majoris’ (UMa). 47 UMa is located in the ‘Ursa Major’ Constellation, also known as the Great Bear or Plough.”
Also: more space advertising.
— thanks to Armando for the tip
One of the most viewed and emailed stories on Newsweek.com this weekend thanks to the Digg effect is an opinion piece about that overhyped thing called the Internet by Clifford Stoll, the author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway:
“We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”
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