The question over the last 12 months and beyond has been, how this slightly gimmicky Augmented Reality technology can be harnessed for mass consumption?

Well, it seems that the world is making progress on the application of Total Immersion technology. I was delighted to recently find out that Topps, a well known producer of American sports collector cards which I haven’t come across in nearly 15 years, has found a way of using augmented reality to revive.  Sure, gone are the days when die-hard sports fans memorize their favorite players stats from the back of a sport-card (now, we simply Google for real time player statistics), but this adds some new and unforeseen appeal to the humble sports card.

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Remember the days back when you were a kid, and spent hours upon hours building elaborate spaceships and ridiculous rally cars made from those colorful little building blocks  that we will also remember fondly as Lego.

C’mon…as if you don’t feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about how cool your best Lego creations were (and how distraught you were when your next door neighbour ‘accidently’ crashed his toy tank into that amazing Lego car you painstakingly took 3 days to assemble !).

Ok, enough of the reflection time, it’s time to bring Lego back.  And what better excuse than the Lego USB hub.

After all, everyone needs a USB hub, right? So you may as well get one that’s a bright colour, so you don’t lose it.

Actually, come to think of it, you may as well get a couple of USB hubs just in case….oh wow, look, they even fit together – look, I just made a cool little aeroplane.   And I guess you can’t fly an aeroplane without a driver, I’d better go grab the little lego man with the pilot’s goggles. And his friends, so they can join in…..weeeeeee! Oh @#$%, the boss just walked in. “What’s this silly lego contraption doing in my hand? Oh this thing….don’t worry, it’s just a USB key boss, as if I’d bring silly toys to work…..”

Release your inner child – and go grab yourself a Lego USB hub

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I mean, look at it…. it’s a chainsaw, that has to be plugged into a USB slot to run.  Awesome!  Who needs a USB-powered coffee cup cooler when you can have a chainsaw on your desk. And at only 3.7kg, suitable for home or office use, and the ability to cut through any type of wood – how can you go wrong?

Well, you haven’t even seen the most radical part yet!

The iSaw is actually a crafty website-based viral campaign. When you opt to pre-order the saw for a meagure $59.95 (plus shipping, of course),  you are presented with a little surprise.

The iSaw is in fact a spoof product, designed to remind you that each time you print a page in your home or office, that your PC is actually already a chainsaw, chopping down tree after tree.

It’s a well executed campaign don’t you think (however I must say, I was a little excited about the prospect of having a chainsaw sitting on my desk).

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Admittedly, being a real lover of the ocean, the name Google Wave immediately struck a chord with me.  That, coupled with the fact that I’m also a huge fan of  Google’s existing collaboration and communications applications including Google Talk, Google Video Talk, Gmail and Google Docs – and this break through in collaboration and online chat appears as though it will combine elements from all of these handy Google applications.

Google Wave is due out later this  year.  It could well be a great tool for both personal and business use, allowing mixed media communication to occur seamlessly through a single collaboration channel.

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To search Google Images by colour, visit the site below, and scroll down the page until you see the gray form (alternatively, if you’re feeling a little bit geeky, instead of using the form you can follow the instructions which involve appending a bit of text to the Google search URL – but this reeks of unnecessary effort to me!). Either way, click on the link below to find out more….

" target="_blank">Click here to check out the Google Image search form.

The form allows you to enter your search term, and select your desired colour/s.  Once you hit the “Search” button,  magically, only images of your selected colour will appear. Amazing!   That picture of a pink elephant you’ve been seeking for months can now be found in an instant….

Credit for this discovery goes to Blogscoped.

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Sure, we’ve seen a few campaigns in the past that have used webcams to do simple things – like insert the user’s face on a cartoon body, or something to that effect.

But technology has come forward in leaps and bounds since then, and Paper Motion of Australia has recently released a fantastic new piece of software that uses your PC’s webcam to create a fully interactive user experience – creating virtual characters, virtual objects, and movement in 3D.

It’s breathtaking, addictive, and will be the next big novelty item in interactive online marketing. Check out a few demos of the software in action below…..

And another, used for Earth Hour, here…

If you’re interested to see how some existing websites have already used this technology, it is also worth checking out the following websites:

Jack Links

General Electric

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So the hardware itself is not revolutionary – it’s the capabilities of this device, and the impact it will have on our lives, that is absolutely breathtaking!

Essentially, this device allows the wearer to examine anything in front of them – be it a book, a person, an item off the shelf in a super market, whatever – and instantly receive meta-data relating to that item so that the wearer can make a more informed choice about their next action.  

Think of it as a device that automatically Googles everything in sight for you, without any effort on your part and allows you to interact with your environment in a way that you probably never thought would be possible!

Confused? Watch the video below…and be prepared to be blown away.

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We’ve heard the claims many times before of tools and online schemes proclaiming that you can effortlessly “make money online while surfing the net“.

Well this appears to be another one of those.  However for some reason this one makes me curious.  

The way The Bar works, is that firstly you are required to download and install a plug-in in your web browser – the Firefox plug-in seems to be the most reliable from my experience so far.

Once the plug-in is installed, a little button with the initials “E.R” will appear below the address bar of your browser.  Whenever you are on a website – any website – and click the ER button, a small unobtrusive set of advertisements will appear on the left of the screen.  All you need to do is click on one or two of the advertisements in the left-hand sidebar, and you will make money.  Sounds pretty easy huh!

Where the potential to make money increases exponentially, is the referral program for The Bar.

Invite your friends, and you will receive a share of their earnings, as well as your own. So it’s the old story – the more people you bring to the party, the more cake you get to eat.

I’m interested to know if this is just another ‘online network marketing scheme’ where no one except the owner of The Bar profits significantly, or if this is a genuine tool that can benefit any dedicated user.

I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have a few spare moments, and are keen on making a bit of extra pocket money, download  The Bar and let me know how you go.

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It’s a simple piece of hardware (based on an Arduino platform) that allows bakeries to select what has just come out of the oven, and send a Twitter message to local customers who have subscribed to the bakerie’s Twitter profile. What does this mean for the customers? They’re guaranteed the freshest and hottest bread and bakery treats. And for the bakery, it’s a new way of keeping their customers happy, and part of an engaged and almost exclusive local community – of course with a little bit of novelty factor sprinkled on top (alongside the sugar and cinnamon).

Why has this concept of pushing short & relevant digital messages to willing recipients taken so long to hit the market?

At first I wondered why it had taken so long for products such Baker Tweet as to be ‘invented’, because to be completely honest, ‘pushing’ digital messages in real-time to an audience is nothing new. Heck, well before the pre-Twitter days, we had SMS technology with it’s ability to ‘push’ messages to willing recipients!

It then dawned on me that Twitter has two very unique, and previously unavailable, attributes which contribute to its success as a viable digital marketing tool:

1. Twitter is (almost) free to push data to, and

2. Twitter currently receives over 10 million unique visitors per month, and continues to increase in visitation each month

Ok, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that this concept could readily be applied to other retail markets. If you own a busines that could adapt a similar technology, my advice is to strike while the bread is hot (and the novelty factor is still there) and create a similar Twitter based product. If you’re in an environment that is not full of flour, icing sugar dust and whipped cream, you can even simply use the web-based on mobile-based Twitter application, rather than rely on a dedicated piece of hardware, as is the case with Baker Tweet. Using Twitter in a way that benefits your customers, could see your sales soar through the roof, and your could well see your customers grinning their biggest of jam-donut-covered grins!

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If you’re interested in automatically embedding actual thumbnails (that is, automatically generated images of website pages which appear as images)  into your WordPress blog using a simple plugin, now you have not one, but two choices.

Read the below excerpt from an email from ShrinkTheWeb, who have created the latest addition to the WordPress Thumbnail Auto-Generator plugin pile.

Hello,

If you are a WordPress user, this might interest you…

You may already be aware that we offer a WordPress plugin that
will allow you to easily show mouseover preview bubbles for
links in your posts. Now, we have enhanced that plugin with a
long awaited update.

Many people have been asking for us to make it easier to embed
screenshots in posts without having to copy/paste code. So, we
are releasing v1-1-0 of our plugin:
http://www.shrinktheweb.com/uploads/stw-wp-thumbnails.zip

With this new version, we introduce the ability to embed a
screenshot of any website by simply using a tag set. Example:

We also support all six(6) default sizes for embedded previews.

Installing the plugin is simple and quick. Simply upload to your
WP plugin directory, activate, and adjust the settings to your
liking. It\’s that simple!

Best wishes in 2009!

-ShrinkTheWeb

http://www.shrinktheweb.com

Looks like we now have another contender for WordPress plugin of the year! It looks like these guys are really honing in on WordPress as its use across the world continues to flourish.

So take your pic (sic). Will it be ShrinkTheWeb, or PicDonkey, that gets your vote?

My next tip to both ShrinkTheWeb and PicDonkey, and whoever else out there is developing these nifty little applications is, when can we get rid of those pesky “Thumbnail currently queued for processing” message. Only then will we achieve website thumbnail bliss!

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Interactive outdoor advertising in a bus shelter

Across the world bus shelters and phone booths have been adorned with these e-graffiti billboards, however the manufacturer is still yet to be identified (it was rumoured that Sharpie – a reknowned manufacturer of Sharpie pens were behind this but this rumour has since been silenced by a Sharpie spokeperson). Nevertheless, if the image an e-graffiti billboard portrays aligns with your company’s branding or campaigns, I’m sure with a little research you will be able to source a manufacturer of this innovative outdoor marketing medium.

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So what does this little script (and I mean little, it’s just one line of code) do? Well, you know those tiny little pictures of a website’s homepage, that take heaps of mucking about to create (especially when your graphics editing skills are sub-standard, to say the least!).  An online application called Websnapr inserts a little bubble next to every hyperlink you create, allowing your users to preview websites before actually visiting,  just by hovering over the little speech bubble icon beside each link.

This means you, as the website administrator or blogger no longer have to muck about creating those thumbnails yourself! S-weeet, you know have more time to waste on Facebook! And it also means your visitors are less inclined to click on links and leave your site unless they really really want to, thanks to Websnapr’s nifty ability to allow visitors to preview other websites without actually leaving YOUR site!

Websnapr and its various thumbnail apps have been around for some time, to make your life a whole lot easier. If you want to reap the rewards of the Websnapr suite of apps (and yes, they are FREE), sign up for Websnapr, and you will be able to create thumbnail images of any website or URL in mere seconds.

If only everything on the web was this easy!

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All you have to do is copy and paste your list of links into a box on the home page, click ‘Shrink now’, and you will be presented with a short and sweet web address.  Send this ‘shrinked’ address to your intended recipients, and they are presented with a concise single HTML page containing a thumbnail image of each individual web site as well as the full URL to each page.

It’s useful if you want to send someone a list of multiple web addresses but are confined for space, for example, when using instant messenger or sending an SMS.

Here’s an example I just created http://Shrink2One.com/cc4 – the password is ‘shrunken‘

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Flock is the latest free product making an impact on the web browser marketplace. Flock was built on the existing Mozilla Firefox browser platform (a browser becoming increasing popular with high end users, the web savvy, and web developers due to its array of plugins and user-centric features).

What separates Flock from the rest of the browser pack, is the integration of a variety of social networking and social bookmarking applications. De.licio.us, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Flickr and a robust RSS feed reader are just a few of the applications incorporated thoughtfully into the browser interface and menus. Additional plugins to support other Web 2.0 applications in Flock are being developed as we speak.

Flock is very much a browser targeting users who are heavily into Web 2.0 applications, customizable content and instantaneous updates via XML feeds. Despite the average internet user not yet being part of this crowd, this is, in my opinion, the future of web browsing. It brings content relevant to you, straight to you, without the need to go searching…..

(….ah yes, while on the topic of searching, it seems that this somewhat fundamental function of web browsers is currently Flock’s major downfall. At the time of writing, Flock has a Yahoo search bar incorporated into the top browser bar, but not the slightest hint of anything Googly. Interesting, don’t you think….almost like the developers are making some sort of, gasp, statement!)

To further backup the notion of customized web browsers being the way of the future, check out Flock’s recent ‘limited edition’ offering, Flock Gloss. This is the first limited edition browser I’ve come across that is more than just a short-term gimmick.

Sure, you can download a skin for Internet Explorer with your favorite brand plastered across the header that will be replaced with your new favorite brand in two weeks, but a browser built with the functionality rather than just the design to support your interests and desires has far more long term potential. Perhaps you could apply this concept to your next online campaign, instead of building a short-term banner campaign that expires in 5 days time. A bit like this innovative and highly successful Doritos campaign we saw a few months ago.

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You can’t go past the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin.  I’ve installed it on a few of my sites (tshirtalert.com, and this very blog that you are reading, breadmilkdigital.com) and can vouch that plugin is one of my most important WordPress tools, as well as being quite addictive and entertaining, as I watch my stats climb and fall according to how much coffee I have consumed (and consequently, the quality of my blog posts!)

If you need a little bit of help with the whole installation process and setting up a Google Analytics account, this article might also assist.

Happy wordpress-google-analytic-ing!

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Well fear not, My Cool Button is an online web 2.0-style button generator. Just choose your colours, text, size and shape of the button, click “Generate” and you instantly have a web 2.0 button which you can download immediately for use.

Here’s an example of MyCoolButton.com’s capabilities, used on one of my own websites:

The search Australian surfbreaks button from www.shackn.com, created by MyCoolButton.com

If this trend continues, local software on PCs will be a thing of the past.  Already Google has it’s suite of online office application, with various other software providers also following the trend.   Maybe the continual investments in increasing hard-drive capacity will one day be futile, as it seems that we are trending towards an online world that will soon negate the need for us to store software locally!

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Check out the full, updated article here.

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Amazing technology….amazingly dated that is.

Now comes the 2008 version. Esquire magazine has taken on the technology supplied by E Ink (purveyors of low power ‘electronic paper displays’), to create the world’s first animated magazine cover (or second, depends if you count my slam dunking Michael Jordan magazine!)

Though the whole cover is not animated in this instance, surely this type of technology is paving the way for the future. If a magazine priced at $5.99 can afford this technology, just imagine the potential this low cost, eye-catching communications medium has as a gimmicky and disposable marketing tool as the technology becomes more widely available and is developed further.

The only catch currently is battery life.  In the Esquire magazine instance, panel is powered by a battery with a limited lifespan.  Depending on the temperature (the life of a battery depletes faster in warm weather, than in a cool environment),  this panel would last somewhere in the vicinity of 3 months.

As I am currently based in the Middle East (average temps in the mid 30′s), this could actually be a problem.  My proposed solution - is the incorporation of a paper thin solar-panel in this device, and then it will be desert proof!

Sorry Michael Jordan, I think I’ve found a new favourite magazine cover.

Pricing and Implementation

If you’re keen on getting in on the E-Ink action, I have conducted some further research into the manufacturing of ‘animated magazine covers’ similar to the technology recently adopted by Esquire magazine.

The technology is referred to as “Ink-in-Motion” (or IIM).  For a similar design to the Esquire magazine (i.e. similar sized panel) and assuming a print run of over 20,000 units, the following manufacturing costs and timeframes would apply for the hardware itself:

1. The production per panel would be approximately $14-$18, depending on the specific size chosen
2. The manufacturing time would be 2-4 months

The panels run on six coin cell batteries (you would have probably seen these batteries in a household electronic device at some stage, they are the size of a small coin)

In addition to the above timeframes, you would need to create a conceptual design of the animation (this could be created using a full animation tool such as Flash, or through a static ‘story-boarding’ technique using a flat image to illustrate each individual frame.

I would also ecommend that the creation of a conceptual design for the IIM animation was not commenced until the rest of the cover was designed, so that the IIM panel could be seamlessly integrated into the overall design and page layout.

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Real Fiction’s latest offering is this crazy thing they call the Dreamoc 3D display system.   Through the use of an off-centre glass pyramid,  these guys have managed to create a housing for free floating 3D objects which could suddenly make 3D models quite ‘consumable’ to the general market.

Imagine the possibilities. Retail stores could advertise their new products before they’re even manufactured, at home you could have a fireplace or a fishbowl without the need for mess or maintenance.

In a world of great haste, minimal maintenance and a love of shiny things, this concept could go far.

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