Cracker country goes digital

My family and I have been on Sunday at the Florida State fair.
Besides ridiculous fancy food like
Chocolate covered bacon, krispy kreme doughnut fried hamburger, deep fried butter, deep fried oreo, deep fried candy bars and meatloaf Sunday
and a lot of attractions like double head princess, half man half mermaid and the smallest pig in the world, they had as a small cracker town.
The town had original houses from Florida crackers from the 19th century.
What are the Florida crackers?
Florida cracker refers to original colonial-era English and American pioneer settlers of what is now the U.S. state of Florida, and their descendants. The first Florida crackers arrived in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain. The British divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida, and began to aggressively recruit settlers to the area, offering free land and financial backing for export-oriented businesses. The territory passed back to the Spanish crown in 1783, and then to the US government in 1819. Spanish rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was only nominal and the territory was wild and lawless.

The town was awesome I felt like going back in time if there has not been something amazing modern.

In front of each house was a sign with two QR codes.




One code for English and one code for Spanish.

The visitor had to scan one of the codes which redirected to a website with an audio file.
The audio file was (for each house) about 5 minutes and explained the history of the house.
I have to say it worked perfect with my iPhone 4, however some Android users had problems because the phone could not find a program to run the mp3 files.

A complete list of the audio files can be found here.

It was a perfect use of QR code. I stopped and watched how many people actually tried to scan the codes. I counted in a time period of 20 minutes 250 people going into the church but only 4 people even trying to scan the QR code which two of them had problems to get the audio file to work.
At least 20 people were wondering for what and what the QR code is.

Giving two more years and much more will do it.

The idea is really great. I remember that in the past i had to rent an audio guide to go through a museum, which did cost money and did never work well.

Nowadays we can scan a QR code and in some cases even use it in combination with augmented reality not only to hear the explanation but to see some extra layer of info on top of the art.

Technology as education, i love it.

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Paris Hilton got makeover

For some Paris Hilton is the most beautiful woman and for some people not. But as we know every woman is beautiful and now there is a way which allows women to try jewelry on before buying it and without leaving the computer.

An E-commerce website in Australia is utilizing augmented reality (AR) for this.



See a übergizmo video about the this website.




Does it not look great? But unfortunately, even if the idea is great, the execution is poor.

First of all it is done in flash which limits the usage. Non of my mobile Apple devices can handle flash. My fault, should have a Dell Streak.



Lucky I have an iMac. Which makes anyway more fun because the screen is 27 inch and the iSight camera has a much higher resolution than the iPhone 4 or iPad2 front camera.

But neither i had luck on the iMac. My iMac has flash, and the flash did load, however the flash piece is only developed against windows computers. As described on their website it a small window pop up which asks me to allow the app to use my video camera. And this little popup does just not react on my clicks.
Next i started Parallels with Windows 7, but i did not get my iSight camera to run because I forgot to install from MacOSX DVD the bootcamp drivers, no idea where the DVD is (must be in one of my CD boxes i have in the attic). I could not get it run on any Mac neither in MacOSX or Windows. My last chance is my only Windows computer i have, which is my office notebook.

The idea of the AR is great but really poor executed. Not only does it not work with all OS and devices (70% user reach is still good enough) but the jewelry looks too unrealistic and cheap. It is already hard to show the elegance of gold and diamonds on website photo, it is harder to render it as vector.
The movement of the pieces don't follow perfect with your body movement, and even with a fast dual processor and big graphic chip it still does not go fluently.

This application has same issues like most of the AR i saw so far. It seems there are some designers and IT people developing this stuff without consulting or hiring a CGI expert from the movie industry.
They know how to do these things and they know all little tricks to make this looking great. Of course they have better equipment and the rendering is not realtime, but even with technology good enough to work via Internet, they would do a better job.

AR is the future but the future comes faster if we take more time and money to do a better job.

I am seriously thinking to start an AR company and would hire a few professional CGi guys, an doctor, a physics professor, a stylist, some designers and some good developers. This combination is required to understand and create good AR.

Let us see what comes next.

Did anybody of you see a really good execution so far?

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America invented the iPhone but Germany is already a step ahead

Everybody is talking about social and Mobile and guess what, this is old news. Both should be normal and common like Internet. There is no need to call any both out, just have it as a part of your marketing.

What we should call out is augmented reality, the ability to combine reality with animated images like green screen in movies. The mobile devices are getting faster and better. AR is here and in 12 months as usual as Social, mobile or Internet. But at least it will be in everybody mouth like Social today.

America seems not ready for this. Almost the same as for QR codes. They are around for years and just now we start to see them here. Europe and Germany are using them for marketing since years. Now Germany is again ahead and shows how AR can work for you.
Last week Germans or Americans with German satellite TV had a chance to watch and interact with the world’s first augmented-reality TV show.
Viewers of Galileo, a quiz show (ProSieben channel), were able to interact with the questions on the TV screen by viewing and interacting with augmented reality versions of the questions on their iPhone screens.
The viewer needed to have Junaio on their iPhone to see the AR and interact. The app is created by a German company called Metaio.





And there is Audi (German car maker) which created a beautiful calendar with no cars, but if the user downloads an iPhone app and holds the iPhone in front of the calendar, the user will see the latest Audi models on the calendar.
Watch the movie here






I think there are reasons why i kann stolz Deutscher zu sein. Prost.
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Augmented Reality T-shirt by Sebastian Merchel

We know Germans are crazy, because I am German. But now the crazy goes crazier.
A German Designer created an AR tee. It is a black shirt with an antique TV printed on. The TV has a barcode in the middle. Switch your webcam on and let the show begin.

AR-Tees first augmented reality tv-shirt from SebastianMerchel on Vimeo.

AR Tees is based on a simple concept and design frame. There is a black t-shirt (and it could be an ordinary one) on which is imprinted a specialized bar code. The bar code is framed by an old school television set with mechanical dials, antennae pointing in the opposite direction, and speaker grooves on the front.
So far it may look and function like a normal tee. Point a webcam at it though and the AR technology of the tee will blow you away. The TV set imprinted on the tee turns into a real, streaming television for the people watching the tee over the webcam. Old cartoons and Laurel and Hardy shows can be viewed by the person wearing the tee and anyone else watching the person over the webcam.

The AR tech on the tee works with Flash software embedded in your internet browser. The specialized bar code is read by the FLAR-ToolKit to track the content of the tee. Papervision3D has been used to give the content appearing on AR Tees a 3D effect.

The t-shirt costs around $30 and the set up is easy, if you have a Windows computer.



http://www.sebastianmerchel.de/artees.html

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Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Word lens - a good idea but still much to improve

Since the iPhone came on the market augmented reality got more traction. Which makes sense, the smart phones today have good cameras and fast processors.
Most of the augmented reality applications (in an earlier blog I explained that it is not really augmented what we call augmented) are for fun, cool, good looking but not with much benefits.
Last week for the iPhone and iPod touch came out the word lens app. The idea is very promising. You hold your device in front of a sign and it translates the text from English to Spanish and vice versa.
I had to get the app. It is a free app with in app purchase. You get two modes for free, which are just for demonstration. If you want to have English to Spanish you have to pay $4.99, you have to pay the same for the other way around. There are yet no other languages available, but the developers are promising that new languages will come.
I tested the app in the mall at an ATT stand.

Original picture:




Translated with word lens:




And how it should be:




I have to say, as long the letters are clear and big, the results are great, and it is really fun to see on live screen the text suddenly changed.

However there are still a lot of drawbacks.
If you are older like me and hungry, then your hand my shake a little and because of this, the app can't focus and the text changes back and for. Would be nice if they would have an image stabilizer. When you decide to take with the app a picture, the translated words are changing blue with underlined hyperlink. Which takes the whole coolness away, but i guess taking a picture and getting the hyperlinks is to find more explanation to the word.

When the text is too small or the camera can't focus, like holding it close to a letter size printout, the app zooms in but has so much problem to focus that it does not make fun to use it.

Trying during driving to translate a street sign is not possible at all (at least with the iPhone 4).

Overall the app is some fun and shows us what, in future, will be possible, but right now it is not useful at all and the $4.99 per language is too expensive.

The app got a lot press news and downloads but the ratings are poor. I hope the developers will listen to the crowd and work on some updates.

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Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

QR Code the last missing piece between mobile, brick and mortar store, social and web

History:
QR does are two dimensional codes which are usually black and white and in a form of a square. The pixel within the square have data encoded, most likely an URL.
Smart phones with cameras can scan this code and display the encoded content. If it is an URL it will open a website.
The user needs to use either a QR scanner software or can use google goggles to scan the code.

QR codes started in Japan in 1994 when Denso invented the system. Since then the QR code usage in Japan grew extremely and is almost a standard feature on Business cards. Mostly these codes link to a page with a virtual business card which then the user can download to the phone. Japan has much longer than the US phones with cameras which is most important part to scan barcodes.

Today in Japan everybody from Mickey & Co. to Nike are getting in the act, and revolutionizing outdoor advertising in the process.








The Japanese standard for QR-Codes devised by Denso Wave is JIS X 0510 which was released in January of 1999. The corresponding ISO International Standard, ISO/IEC 18004, was then approved in June of 2000. The standard was then updated back in 2006. (ISO/IEC 18004:2006).

QR codes in Europe for advertising are since 2004 very common when camera phones started to be popular.
A Portuguese wineyard (Cortes de Cima) is printing QR codes on all their wine labels. Consumers can scan them in the store to get more detailed information about the wine.






In the US QR codes just now coming for commercial use and advertising. However companies like Philip Morris are using them since years on their cigarette packages for inventory counts and shipping. We don't have in America yet a standard for these codes like in Europe or Japan. Even Microsoft has their own code method.
The consumers here in the US get more and more interests as we can see in the search statistic at google for qr code search.





The future of QR codes
We are right now in a QR code hype and three years behind Europe and Japan. But finally we are understanding that QR code is the missing piece between on the road (mobile), brick and mortar store and Internet.
These little codes don't take a lot of space an can be scanned in any direction. But the underlying URL can bring a consumer to web pages with much more information than a store could display for each product.

Would it not be great to go to Target and find a toy for our son. But we are not sure if there are enough accessories for this toy available. We scan the code and on our smart phone opens a webpage with all accessories we could buy for this toy.

Or we scan the code, because we like the product so much, and automatically we are fans with this product Facebook page.

ItWowed.Me, a new smartphone technology platform developed by Majestic Media Ltd., allows businesses and brands to drive audiences to Facebook fan pages and convert them into fans.
"Like" something in real life? By placing a Quick Response (QR) code on real world objects, smartphone users can now scan these codes with their iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or any smartphone device and instantly "Like" the real world product or business on Facebook, thus sharing it with their friends on the social media site.

Verizon teamed with scanlife to promote a campaign to show how many apps are available for droid devices. It was an integrated campaign with print ads, banner ads and even ads on iPad. Within only three months they counted 150,000 scans. See the results here. This is a great success.

We read almost everyday about QR codes printed on walls in subways or QR codes in magazines. Polo Ralph Lauren was one of the first companies in US in 2008 who did a nation wide QR code campaign. All their print ads had codes which a consumer could scan to get directly to the product page of the advertised product to buy.

QR codes are as well perfect to combine augmented reality with real life and Internet.
Imagine you are at Walmart looking for a game and want to know the ratings and want to know what your friends are thinking about the game? Just scan the code and you instantly see the main character of the game in the screen in front of you telling you the average rating and who of your friends talked about it on facebook. The background of the screen is the store image live from your camera and the character is following your movements.
Or you want to buy a new bed, you take at home a picture of your bedroom. At the store you scan the code of a bed you like and it will instantly show up on the photo of your room. You move the bed a little around till you like the position. You save the image and send it as multi media message to your spouse who is 3000 miles away. Would this not be great?

Bottom line, the technology is easy to understand. Open the bar code scanner software and make a picture of the code and then everything else works like magic.
Brands can advertise and educate consumers without the need for more space than 2 inches of the product packaging.
This is all needed to connect the consumer with social, to offer the consumer more important information to make the buying decision or just to wake interests for the consumer to do something.

QR codes are so new and still rare in the US that even having QR codes on Internet ads will increase clicks on banners because the user wants to know what is behind this weird looking square.
The ad below got an average CTR of 1.34% which is 400% higher than industry standard and a scan rate of 0.47% which totals the interaction to 1.81%



In two years we don't talk anymore about QR codes they are just a part of our life.

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Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Total connect

Internet, wifi, augmented reality and social network is changing our life.
Computers, processors and memory get faster and cheaper. Combining all these things together with everyday electronic items like toaster, fitness tools or microwave gives us a new way of life.
Soon we will be able to decide which item should be connect to the world and which not.
Today we have already scales with wifi to collect and save our weight to our phones or computers and can send updates to Facebook or Twitter. This helps to get controlled through friends or trainers, In countries like US where friends can live hundreds of miles away.

Microwaves will soon have wifi with a scale and camera build in.
We put our food into the microwave. It will measure the weight send an image of the product to a DB and second later the microwave will set temperature and time to the perfect amount.

Toasters will burn funny images on our toasts, which we chose from an online image library.

Our cars will be connected to our smart phone not that we only can find the car on a big parking lot but as well to start and open the car and to see the car health. The car will post to our Facebook page when an oil change is needed and set an appointment with the car dealer knowing when we have time by looking in our calendar and social behavior.

Our fridge will have a touchscreen in the door which shows us an image from inside with information which item will soon be bad and what we should order because we run out of it. We can order everything through the internet using the touchscreen.

The ability is unlimited and in a few years, it will be not anymore the question what a smart phone can do but which utility we should replace because it can't connect with the world or our life.

The only negative part could be that companies would start to think how to monetize every day items.

I believe it will self regulate and not too much advertising but new ways to monetize which we don't know yet how.

The total connect future is big and interesting. It is right now a good time to follow these new waves and to be a part of it.

Companies which will help to make this total connect future secure and build on top of all a perfect privacy setting toll will be the biggest winners.

The technology is changing too fast that many companies can't keep up with proper rules and settings for privacy. It is normal that we first develop a product and then work on the privacy after first complains are coming in.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

What is augmented reality and why is it hot

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery.

We hear and see more and more companies offering augmented applications for smart phones. But to be honest most of the time it is not augmented reality, it is Mediated Reality.
Mediated Reality refers to the ability to add to, subtract information from, or otherwise manipulate one's perception of reality through the use of a wearable computer or hand-held device[1] such as a smart phone (wikipedia.org).

Nevertheless if we call it augmented reality or mediated reality, it is not new but gets it's hype with the smart phones.

I used to have in 2003 the Siemens SX1, which we could compare with smart phones.



It had a touch screen, a camera, extendable memory and a web browser.
The phone was awesome and i think I had it 2 years.
It did run on Symbian OS, but the really cool part was an installed game called Mozzies. In Mozzies, the Camera is used to detect the motion. So you have to position the gun on the flying mosquitoes which are superimposed on the video feed from the camera. The objective is to shoot down the mosquitoes by moving the phone around and clicking when you are aiming correctly.
I believe this game won some prices as best mobile game back in time. But I don't know who did build it.

Even the military is using such technology sine many years to project information on windshields of fighters for the pilots. Mercedes presented on a trade-show a few years ago a concept car with a projected navigation system on the drivers windshield. Meditated reality goes even back till the 60es ( 1966: Ivan Sutherland invents the head-mounted display suggesting it was a window into a virtual world.
1975: Myron Krueger creates Videoplace that allows users to interact with virtual objects for the first time.).

Today augmented or let us say for now mediated reality goes a step further and does incorporate more information from the Internet.
Many times it not only uses the camera picture, but as well position data either over GPS or Wifi or sound speakers.

Imagine you go shopping in a big mall and instead searching for a mall map, you look on the screen of your smart phone and hold it in the direction you want to go and you would not only see the real image of the mall but as well arrows and text indicating where which store is and if if they have specials. Clicking on one of the stores will bring their e-commerce site or let you set an appointment to avoid waiting times.

Or if you are in a store and you are seeing a nice dress, you just hold your phone to the dress and you could see yourself in the screen wearing the dress without the hassle to go to the changing room. If you like the dress you order it direct on the phone. When you are done with shopping a friendly employee will hand out to you a bag with your orders before you leave the store.

Or you are in a book store (if they are still around) and look at a book. You instantly would see on the book cover information from the internet through your smart phone )The rating, a short overview and alternative sales prices etc.).

This is mediated reality combined with e-commerce and social.

I believe this is just the beginning and like me a lot of investors. In the last 12 months a handful of companies specialized in mediated realty got big funding.
All of them uses as their object of choice a smart phone.
But I think this type of technology will go away from smart phones and will find it's way into devices we don't need to hold, maybe into eye glasses. It just does make more sense if you don't need to hold something to get this information. It will as well make it's way into windshields of cars.

Mediated realty is the normal progress. That we use computer screens is only because we do things and want to see things which we can't do in our brain and therefore not able to visualize as real images.
If we would have an organic computer build in which we could connect to all other people in the world (if they want) and if we would be able to visualize all we hear and think in front of our eyes we would not need computers. We can't and this the reason why we still have computer boxes and screens. But at least technology gets faster, cheaper and smaller that we are now able to have such mediated realty in our smart phones.

The software for mediated realty is not expensive, everybody can download a SDK as an example at eye tap.org for free.

Because it is a new hype the developing costs are artificial high but will constantly get cheaper till everybody can have it on their computer (like MS World) to build their own mediated realty application.

The tricky part is to find out what would make sense as mediated realty application and how to monetize it.

At end we will have 2 or 3 global players and a few niche players, because they could differentiate themselves from other with applications which are useful.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States