Posts tagged Layar
Taking an Augmented Reality check
Aug 19th
Bruce Townsend of ecommerce software specialist, Actinic.
While on holiday in Dorset recently, my family and I visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum and went round its ‘Aircraft Carrier Experience’. This uses tricks with sound, light, video and robotics to try to reproduce the feeling of being on an aircraft carrier, in what’s basically a large hangar. It was good fun and quite interesting – certainly worth the visit.
But was it actually anything like the real thing? I sincerely doubt it.
It reminded me somewhat of a sexy new medium that’s attracting a lot of attention at the moment – ‘Augmented Reality’. The term describes the use of technology to add digital information to a real-life experience. Perhaps the most familiar example is the heads-up display used in aircraft and some higher-end cars.
What’s more interesting is the recent introduction of more down-to-earth uses. When you see adverts overlaid on a pitch during a soccer match broadcast, for example, that’s Augmented Reality. Other uses are beginning to appear on mobile phones. For example, install the Layar app and point your phone camera at a location or venue, and the image will be overlaid with information about it. Or install Shazam and point your phone at any music broadcast, and the software will tell you what track is playing and who it’s by.
It all sounds very promising from a marketing point of view, but maybe we need an Augmented Reality Check here. The technology is still quite limited, and the user experience on everyday hardware is pretty poor. Do you really want to view the world through a 4” mobile screen?
The camera app is a clever gimmick, but it doesn’t really offer any advantage over Google Maps in terms of the information it provides. The level of adoption is dramatically lower, and likely to remain so.
Five years ago, the prediction was that every business would be able to advertise on the red button within five years. That great hope hasn’t materialised yet. So we probably shouldn’t get too excited about this new one, either. Marketing efforts are best targeted towards widely used media, without being distracted into new avenues that may turn out to be blind alleys.
Location, location, location based services are all the rage
Feb 25th
Charley Hayes, a public relations practitioner and social media strategist at Onlinefire, says that Location Based Services are set to take off in 2010.
In 2009 we saw the rise of user-friendly location-based services (LBS), but in 2010 location-sharing is set to come into its own.
This year, PRs who are in the know will be actively exploring the opportunities that GPS-aware services can offer, devising new and creative ways to capture consumer attention in a far more tailored and targeted way than ever before.
Last year saw the emergence of LBS and social community integration. South African social network The Grid launched Mobikasi, a 24-episode, location-based documentary about youth culture in Soweto. Content was geo-tagged to the location where it was shot, enabling viewers to explore Sowetan culture by travelling through a mobile street map and watching video clips. This marriage of LBS and crowd-sourcing was hailed as the next generation of mobile social media.
In fact, the recent explosion of mobile applications has brought the advent of location-based app integration. Layar is a great example of this new trend. Winner of the Vodafone Mobile Startup Challenge in September 2009, the Layar browsing application is a mix of location-based technology and augmented reality. Combining a handset’s camera and GPS functionality, the mobile application overlays information relevant to digitally tagged real-world locations or items – from coffee shops to museums.
The advancement of LBS can be seen with the growing popularity of companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable consumers to tag and share content quickly and easily within social communities. The technology not only enriches existing core services, but also creates a more dynamic and compelling consumer offering.
The delivery of highly personalised brand messages, in the most relevant and creative way possible is the keystone of social media PR and the development of LBS looks set to raise the bar in 2010.
Charley Hayes is a public relations practitioner and digital PR specialist with wide ranging client experience; from technology to travel and sports to drinks, in both business-to-business and consumer sectors. A social media strategist at Onlinefire, Charley has worked across online PR campaigns for Virgin Media, Panasonic and the Post Office.
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