Why yes, I do work in an augmented building

Don't you?

Tokyo is saturated with billboards and electronic outdoor advertising, but the N Building has taken the concept, married it to augmented reality and upped the bar for out-of-home display.

In essence, the entire facade of the building is a QR code. Users with a custom iPhone app will be able to scan the building's front and interact with the merchants, extract relevant data and generally know everything they need to know. Augmented reality and architecture, it's cool.

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

When Steve Jobs gives you lemons

You make fun of the total lack of Flash support on his company's portable devices. No Farmville, no Hulu.com, no CNN and no...Bang Brothers?

No, the other colour, no, the other one...

Ever see a colour you like? Ever had to describe it after? Yeah, almost impossible. Sure you could take a picture of it with the camera on your phone but odds are you'll wind up with something in a different shade. Until now...

The brain trust at Benjamin Moore has an app for that. The ben color capture app allows you to match the colour you see to a shade on the Benji Moore database. It's not quite a substitute for myPANTONE but it's a neat direction. Now if they'd come up with a font recognizer...

Silicon Snake Oil

(with apologies to Clifford Stoll)

Here's an interesting article from Businessweek that advocates exercising a bit of caution before you jump on the tweeting/blogging/facebooking/tag clouding/microsite/ bandwagon.

Everything comes at a cost, and so-called experts might not be as learned as they claim to be.

Caveat Emptor as they say.

Maybe if Newegg had been a bit more aware of consequences and paid attention to what they were doing, they wouldn't currently be known for this great tag cloud generated from their own in house customer support forum...

You're not as popular as you think

So you've gone and set up a Facebook page for your client. Good for you. Everyone else is, so you should get on that right away. But at the end of the day. How many people have you brought over to the brand? How many of them are going to be influenced by it?

Well, if you're part of the 77%, less than a thousand.

Sure you've got fans but how many and how often do they see you?

Take peoples money...

then scam them.

Great way to foster that consumer relationship.

From The Huffington Post.

Here's what's happening. Well known e-commerce companies have been sending post transaction marketing offers to consumers immediately after something is purchased. Consumers are offered cash back if they simply click a confirmation button. When they do, their credit card information is automatically passed on to a marketing company that signs them up for a credit card subscription for a package of useless services. The rebate is rarely paid. The U.S. Senate is not impressed.

Sounds dodgy doesn't it? Really unethical. The kind of thing only a really sleazy company would do, not a well known one like say...1800Flowers.com, Fandango, FTD, Orbitz, Priceline, Shutterfly, Buy.com, Barnes & Noble, Expedia, as well as many more.

It's kind of like the death of a thousand cuts. If so many well regarded and well known companies are out there finding underhanded ways to score a few more pennies from their customers, customers are going to migrate back to personal shopping where you see the person you're handing money to and have more control over your own data.

Google: not evil, has deep pockets

Google continued its march towards global domination this week. First they upped the PR stakes by allowing their potentially sentient AI software to seek and destroy ads on Google servers for tooth whitening and weight loss products. Given that both these products are, shall we say, less than legit, yellow-toothed overweight people everywhere will rejoice.

Then, just the other morning, the board at Google found some money under the couch in reception. So they went out and bought an advertising technology startup.

So, essentially, Google is slowly but inexorably moving into being more than a search site/email/collaboration/chat/image/voice/data/cloud/keyword/hosting company. Nope, they're moving into pretty much everything.

I for one welcome our new Menlo Park overlords.

User-unfriendly design

The curtain was recently drawn back at the U.S. Patent Office and one of the gems it was hiding was an application from Apple. Nothing new there right? Those guys must patent more stuff by breakfast than most people do all day...

But wait, there's more. And more.

The geniuses at Apple have applied to patent a some 'warez that force the user to comply with a preset set of demands. Like viewing an ad. None of this waiting for the ad to finish before you watch nonsense, oh no, this is much more interactive. You have to pay attention and then click a button or answer a question to continue.

Kind of like that whole answer three questions right or you can't cross the bridge scenario in a certain movie.

I guess 1984 won't be like 1984, it'll be a hell of a lot worse. If I don't want to watch an ad, I don't. Being forced to watch an ad will only serve to promote a rather visceral reaction. Companies don't endear themselves to consumers by effecting "enforcement routines" and making users jump through hoops to get to content.

Unfortunately this application is for more than just online usage. Mobile, TV, consumer electronics in general will soon be as petulant and demanding as a roomful of two year olds.

Great.

Website? That's so last year.

We've moved everything over to YouTube.

Get with the times there ya dinosaur. Boone Oakley did and look how cool they are now.

This is how the future looks

At least for outdoor, interactive digital advertising.

Waterloo Station in London is the site of a very cutting edge piece of outdoor media. When the landscape is saturated with media, only the best media will stand out. This is one of them.

It's your birthday.

If your name happens to be online advertising. Commonly know as 'Banner' to your friends and revenue-stealing piece of flash animation to those who work in the newspaper industry.

Either way, happy birthday digital advertising.

Information isn't just beautiful.

It's gorgeous.

Information is Beautiful is a site that presents data and information with some rather interesting and in some cases tasty design. From gender splits on social networking sites to disease rates around the world and from representations of the political spectrum to competing millennial prophesies, they've got some lovely graphics.

Definitely worth a look.

Electronic paper in the world of the Kindle

Great article from New Scientist on the present and future of e-paper or e-ink or whatever the hell it's called this month.

87 very, very, very cool things.

87 things that you'll want, use and wish you'd thought of.

Do yourself a favour, check it out.

It's the future all right. The future of cereal.

Brand identity is huge. So is brand confidence and integrity. In today's world of counterfeit everything (I have several Rolex watches for sale by the way), how to protect your product and your brand from imitators?

Lasers.

Not on sharks or anything, nope, instead just use lasers to etch your brand name onto your products. Like...oh I don't know...cornflakes...

Amaze your clients and be the envy of art directors everywhere

Have you ever been in a situation where you absolutely, positively must capture the colour the client likes, or else?

But how do you do that if the colour is on a wall, or someone's dog, or a subtle shade that has magically appeared on the craft table during a shoot?

Fear not friends, technology is here to make your lives even more awesome than they already are.

It's the Color Picker Pen - like having Photoshop tools, in your very own hands.

Is English no?

Bloody'ell! So, what do you do when you wan' some bees an 'oney but don't know what da machine is saying? Nuff said, yeah there Squire? I don't ken wot the geeza sorted.

A company in the UK has set up five ATM's that offer the option of English or Cockney to users who wish to compound a late night cash transaction with complete and total incomprehension.

Just gotta make sure no tea leaves get yer dosh and leave you looking a right muppet.

New directions and the future of augmented reality

It's been used to sell cars, movies and who knows what else, but augmented reality is much more than a marketing platform. As data devices become more prevalent, augmented reality will eventually become a transparent overlay to our daily lives.

Here's a very cool article from Wired.com about AR, how it's being used and its future applications.

How did they get the video in the print?

Well, its finally happened. On the heels of the Esquire Magazine e-ink issue, Entertainment Weekly will be producing an issue that contains...wait for it.

Video. Moving pictures. In a static medium.

Real moving video. Not prismatic, not black and white, not a two second loop.

Video. In a magazine.

It's all thanks to these geniuses.

Not sure if this is a sign of the apocalypse or the beginning of a new golden age.

We like it when it's creepy

Advertising a new device is never a straightforward task. The market needs to be convinced that this is what it needs, not what they already have. The team behind the Palm Pre have decided to accomplish this by using a model, greenscreen and robotic delivery. Its annoyed some, creeped out others, and Modernista, the agency brain trust behind it, is pleased.

Here's a link to the AdAge.com article