Citing a “very credible source,” Digg founder Kevin Rose tweeted that Google is readying “Google Me,” a social network intended to compete with Facebook … The Tweet was now deleted, but not before many sites including Gizmodo , and Louis Gray already wrote about it. TechCrunch confirmed today that it’s not a rumor, it’s real. D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s CTO for years, shared his thoughts as an answer to one of the questions on Quora.
read moreSony comes out with a new spin to 3d projection, now in Madrid. Instead of going all fancy with braking and shattering buildings, they went with a simple elegant experiences that is cool not only because it’s about 3d soccer experience just in time for the world cup, not only because it’s the first one with real 3d illustrations, but also because they make use of the building’s doors and windows to make it seem more real … it seems like the building is part of it, not just a massive projection area.
read moreI’ve always been wondered by how brands are not just using anything as media, like plazas, buildings, the sky … but it’s actually happening … within the past month, first Samsung and then BMW using 3d projection mapping to display a full HD3D display on top of buildings. I don’t know the laws and regulations for it, but I’m sure there are some, otherwise we would see add projected on every building - ad saturation.
Samsung introduced 3d projections in Amsterdam to promote their new to-be-launched 3d tv’s. I would love to get one for the world cup, but I could only hope.
read moreI presented “Real-Time Everything - the Era of Communication Ubiquity” at SXSWi 2010 last week and wanted to share my deck … I uploaded it to slideshare, not sure why I haven’t uploaded all my decks there, but will slowly start doing so. The abstract / summary described the session as: A focus universe research strategy; imagine using the entire internet as your focus group. Analyze every conversation, visualize trends, compare brands, learn insights, envisage it over time, and get real factual answers, not just amplified assumptions based on focus and control groups.
read moreI spoke to Omar L. Gallaga from austin360 blog right before my SXSW panel about emerging trends, including mobile, augmented reality, and social media, and he posted this interview on their blog; wanted to share a few PoV’s that I provided …
American-Statesman: As smartphones have gotten more popular, we’ve been hearing more and more about augmented reality. Can you explain to us what it actually is and how it’s being used?
Augmented Reality (AR) is the ability of combining digital and real-world aspects to provide a greater or enhanced experience. Traditionally, it’s layering a digital overlay on top of a video stream, think NFL first-down marker, or NASCAR car information. It is not new, but due to the recent penetration of web and mobile it has been getting greater buzz. It was originally coined in 1992, used in PCs in 1999, by Sony PS3 in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2009 when adopted by Flash and made available for the masses that it began to gain momentum.
NFL and NASCAR are basic examples of mainstream media using AR, but the true reach is when it’s more personal: enhance computer or phone video streams with digital layers triggered by either some market or symbol in the video, or GPS and compass information, or any data source that can be translated into personalized visualization that adds and provides value to the user. Traditional uses range from recognizing trading cards, to real-size mailing boxes, to visualizing how would your new TV look in your living room.
As smartphones have gotten more popular, mobile augmented reality still has not, but they’re setting the base bricks and platform to allow greater penetration in the future. Location awareness, compass, maps, user generated content, all contribute to greater and richer data sources that will allow for great digital and real world mashups. The best mobile apps right now are TwittARound, Layar, Nearest Tube, TAT Augmented ID, SREngine, and Wikitude AR Travel Guide.
read moreSo John Borthwick (former AOL exec) woke up bored yesterday and thought, you know what, let’s make some noise and see what happens if I predict that Twitter will kill Google … so props to Borthwick, he’s completely off, he knows it, but it got tons of people talking about micro-blogging, real time search, social media, and the future of search … so here’s my take.
Google is not going anywhere … People have been predicting that Google will go down for years, but they’re still the best company out there, in terms of financial stability, innovation, culture, and business strategy … Google has 81.5% of search engine market share:
