Doesn’t this computer trickery viral feel a bit played now? You’ll get people arguing it out in the YouTube comments section for weeks saying stuff like “Dat iz real, my cousin did it on a Vespa last year you idiot…lolz” but it’s not really showing us anything new.

I wanna see more stuff like the Volkswagon piano stairs viral (click here)

A small selection of similar video that came before it:

Kobe Bryant Jumps Aston Martin viral:

Nike Ronaldinho viral:

Adidas Gerrard viral:

[Via Adverblog]

For a long time it’s been clear in my mind where mobile advertising is heading – firmly in the hands of handset manufacturers. Google and Apple now have their own ad networks meaning the two user experience juggernauts will own where the ads come from as well as where they appear.

I keep banging on about the opportunity they have to ‘redefine’ mobile advertising and ’start from scratch’. What I mean by this is that the limitations of many current methods such as SMS, MMS, Bluetooth and banner ads can be erased because the manufacturers can make up completely new ad channels that utilise features of the phone. And because this will be achieved by using data rather than messaging, it allows for better value for advertisers using CPC, CPA and CPM.  All this has influenced the following concept..

The Concept

On device semantic SMS advertising would turn every SMS the user ever sends or receives into an advertising opportunity for the manufacturer. At first that might sound massively intrusive but it’s all about the execution.

The thought that spawned this concept was making advertising so useful that it could change its perception in the eyes of the user so they wouldn’t even question its placement on the phone. I wanted to blur the lines so the user would see it as a tool rather than a direct ad channel.

It works by recognising keywords  or the meaning of the sentence/conversation within an SMS and adding dynamic functionality to those words. For example, your friend asks you if you want to go to the cinema, the word ‘cinema’ would be highlighted and clicking it would reveal cinemas in the area.

Within a few clicks you can find out film times and buy a ticket, all within the device interface. This purchase can be tracked and the manufacturer gets a cut of the profits.

Other monetization methods include ’sponsored’ placements.

If you look at this from a user perspective, it feels more like a service than advertising. The key element here is that this is ‘pull’ advertising, the user doesn’t get interrupted or slowed down with what they are doing. They see the highlighted word and make the decision to find out more.

There can be hundreds, even thousands of words/sentences that can trigger dynamic content. Although not every word can be monetised, there should still be an effort to act like a service and provide useful information for certain words/conversations when possible to increase usage.

For example:

Provides weather based on a conversation between two people:

Context Vs Semantic

Although this idea could work using either technology, I wanted to explain the reasons why each has it’s advantages and disadvantages for the end user.

Contextual advertising has been core of online advertising for many years with companies such as Google and Yahoo integrating it within their search engines and other products. It is readily available and generally easy to implement.

The technology looks for a number of keywords within the SMS such as ‘cinema’, ‘food’ or ‘restaurant’ and returns ads or menu options accordingly. For example the message “Let’s go get some food” would show a list of restaurants or food outlets if the word ‘food’ is clicked. However if the message said “That food didn’t make me feel very good at all”, it would still show the same results as the previous message as it has no way to understand what the user meant.

These differences could potentially waste advertisers money (if they have sponsored results, CPM etc) but also affect the usefulness of the feature for the end user.

This is where semantics comes in. Semantic advertising looks at the meaning of the entire message, not just certain words. In the example above it would recognise the user wasn’t actually interested in eating food at all and felt ill, therefore it could suggest nearby pharmacies instead. The ability to understand the persons needs more accurately will benefit the both them and the advertiser immensely. Another example is distinguishing the difference ‘Jaguar’ the animal or the car manufacturer when scanning the entire sentence.

Semantic advertising is still in it’s infancy right now and has arguably yet to be perfected. As we move toward a more ad-funded digital future, it will play a key part in analysing status updates, tweets and any other ‘lifestreaming’ data from users (with their consent of course) to create an advertising utopia.

The Future

Thinking further into the future, this sort of technology would be able to analyse your needs in real time which could influence the advertising you get when you browse the mobile web or watch a video on YouTube.

The only company I can see pulling off this sort of thing is Google, they’re already working on semantic search and currently provide some of the most useful free services on the web. But I expect Apple to be on the case too.

I’ve no doubt they are heading towards more integrated advertising models within the handset user interface.

Comments? Suggestions?

Caught this in The Sydney Morning Herald today, no information on who makes it, I’ve tried Google without any joy.

Luckily the picture speaks a thousand words, the technology “allows visitors to look at a display, connected with a computer and a camera which detects their gender, age group and mood”

This is pretty amazing, I wonder if it will make it’s way onto mobile via Augmented Reality apps or picture recognition solutions?

We really are moving closer to those Augmented Hyper Reality Terminator/Robocop style concepts that I wrote about here and here.

Seems like the on-road extension of the Augmented Hyper-Reality video.

Loving all these ultra-AR concepts at the moment.

[Via @ChrisGrayson & Bhgoo]

If  you’ve got a Google Android phone you’ll no doubt be familiar with the way you password lock/unlock the phone. It’s done by swiping a pattern rather than the tradional numerical pin code entry.

The article at Unpressable Buttons raises some intetresting points. As we progressively make experiences quicker and more usable are we forgetting some common sense stuff?

Just remember to wipe your phone down after eating a Big Mac.

Caught this on Techcrunch today and it’s simply badass. Quite a nice follow up from the NFC-enabled iPhone news and shows the sort of creativity you can have with this technology.

The following is a product of the famous Facebook ‘24hr Hackathons‘ where everyone does an all-nighter to come up with new and wonderful things like Facebook Chat, webcam uploads and now….Keg Presence.

Keg Presence is an application especially for the staff at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, CA which is hooked up to the office beer tap .

It notifies employees when the keg is empty or what type of beer is currently available.

But the really cool part is that employees swipe their RFID badge when they get there, triggering the camera on the iMac, which takes a photo of them pouring beer and updates their Facebook status (below).

Simple. Fun. Creative.

Mobile solutions company Incentivated power the new SMS flight info service for British Airways. Fantastic, SMS is easy peasy, so let’s hear more about it:

According to Mobile Marketing Watch:

The service, available for UK- and US-registered mobile phones, enables users to get up-to-the-minute flight information for yesterday, today and the next five days. Users text D for Departures or A for Arrivals followed by a space, the departure date of the flight (in the form DDMMYY or MMDDYY for the US) and the British Airways flight number (eg BAXXXX) to 60747 in the UK, 70615 in the US.

OOohh laawwd – how the hell is anyone meant to use this service again if they have to remember all that?

So I decided to give it a try and deliberately entered false details to see if I would get a error message back saying explaining how to do it correctly. I.e “Sorry that was wrong, please try again by entering D or A….”

Nope! If you get it wrong, well you better just remember the format and get it right.

How could this be improved:

• A good error text-back notifying the user that there has been a problem with their intial SMS due to typing incorrectly and tell them how to do it properly.

• Something this complicated would benefit from changing the user journey from one single message to three. Here’s how:

1. User texts in either D or A (or departures/arrivals) to shortcode
2. BA sends back message asking for departure date
3. User sends back departure date
4. BA sends back message asking for flight number
5. User sends back flight number
6. BA sends flight info. JOB DONE.

That way the user doesn’t need to remember how to correctly format the message because they get reminded at every stage. Yes it would cost BA more in SMS costs but repeat usage would increase.

Let’s face it, there is only one manufacturer that can create mass adoption of NFC services and devices, they are called Apple.

The NFC market today is in its infancy, a few shops are installing terminals BUT I guarantee you that if the following patents filed by Apple are due to appear in the next iPhone, then we’ll see the rapid uptake of contactless technology by retailers, appliance manufacturers and rivals. This is going to be BIG.

We are talking about handset manufacturers redefining mobile advertising here.  What kind of things could happen?

• NFC enabled TVs – TV shows and adverts will become interactive. See a product you like? Just move your phone over the TV or remote and get more info/coupons/store directions right on your handset
• Apple enable mobile banners in Safari to have ‘Click to coupon’ functionality – meaning that offers and coupons from what you see online can go directly into your phones ‘wallet’ which can be redeemed at shops.

But forget payments for a moment, NFC allows you to do some incredible creative interactions with interfaces. Check out the patent diagrams that Apple have filed which show some cool executions:

• Using the accelerometer on the handset to change the orientation of what’s on the Macbook screen.
• Lock and unlock your Macbook using your iPhone.
• Unlock doors using iPhone as a keycard

And this is just tip of the iceberg stuff, can you imagine the ways developers and brands will use this? I previously thought this would feature in the iPhone in 2011, but if this happens in the summer it’s bloody exciting.

[Via ElectricPig] (Great blog)

I’m a little bit jealous of how nice and simple this app is.

Here’s the explanation:

It’s a Clock humanises the measurement of time to provide us with a scale more suited to the realities of life.

Basically if the time is 8.28 the display say’s “nearly eight thirty”. Lovely.

Download from app store or click here.

[Via @JeniRoger]

Imagine life online without clicking, how would you navigate? Would you miss it? Or would you love it?

Check out dontclick.it, the site that gives you a taste of a world where clicks are banished. It raises some interesting questions and is actually more related to mobile than you’d think.

As contactless technology like NFC develops, we’ll be able to wave our phones around to interact with on-screen menus and digital screens – without clicking.

It feels weird at first, but after a while it’s kinda refreshing. The results from the on-site survey show that most people don’t miss the clicks.

Head on over:

http://www.dontclick.it/

[Via @lbearpark]