Personalizemedia

Augmented Worlds Video Part 1 – Recognition

by Gary Hayes on June 30, 2010 · 22 comments

I am busy consulting, commercial projects and presentations (eg: SBTUG this eve) on Augmented Reality and the near future benefits for storytellers, a range of businesses and service industries. Key questions often crop up as to the relevance of AR to their ‘bottom line’ as well as usuability issues – beyond showing a range of videos from Layar, Junaio and the like it is difficult demonstrating how ‘consumer/users’ of AR devices may be interacting with them in the near, 1 to 2 year out, future. So based on a certain large tablet released recently I created a device that gave a much ‘bigger’ experience than current AR enabled mobiles, had a cleaner interface (as in less clutter POI dots on the screen – most of the time) and fitted into a series of AR future videos ‘AUGMENTED WORLDS’. Please find below Part One looking specifically at the Business Opportunities around type 3 of my AR types - Recognition (Outline) and more on how it was made and a description of the sketch interface below…

AUGMENTED WORLDS Pt.1 - Business Opportunities: RECOGNITION.

An ‘iPad 4.0 – like prototype’ stroll around an augmented Sydney. Video, music devised & created by GARY HAYES of MUVEDesign.com

Music – BTW if you like the music please subscribe via iTunes or other fav podcast tool to download over 250 of my euphoric/progressive trance, organic real harp/guitars or cinematic soundtracks via garyphayes.com or direct feed here.

ASSUMPTIONS WITH THIS CONCEPT

OK this tablet device with camera is running on a very fast connection, instant video and image so we are assuming city wide wifi or 4G type service connection. Also some elements pop up immediately so we can assume the user in the video (me) has setup some preferences or it has learned what type of service I like so it gives instant fulfilment vs dropping into endless menus (more on the interface next). Also the device is extremely aware of its location to a few inches, so we can assume that some of the ‘recognition’ elements are speeded up, being tied into precisely where the user is stood/orientated ‘combined’ with recognition – this will speed up the overall process vs using only Kooaba like Smart Visuals Recognition which puts a lot of pressure on server-side processing.

Notice on the bottom of the interface I have put the words “CONNECTED TO: Sydney CBD People and Places cached data” which is basically pointing out that the speed of recognition to data display is super accelerated when all information is pre-cached, and the way intelligent caching works means the more popular the ‘target’ the faster the response. Privacy – there are a few sequences here and in the longer video that show people being ‘recognised’. Obviously a real concern at the moment, so the concept video assumes the users being targeted have given their consent to outdoor recognition…I know this is a post in itself (see one of mine recently) but lets assume like TagWhat and FourSquare like services, users are allowing their ‘trusted’ friends and companies (for benefits) assess to being recognised – at least for the purposes of this concept!

THE INTERFACE

OK the UI it is a little nieve probably due to only a few hours development ‘while’ doing a zillion other things – but the principles here are worthy of some explanation.

Clear ‘Reality’ Window – A key concern for me was keeping the video or live/reality view as clear as possible and not have layers of dots or objects floating around. This enables much more of an immersive experience and the pop-over windows are in the control of the user. I would have popped in a little ‘radar’ element top right (as Layar do) if I had time – of course this raises the question of ‘what’ is actually AR tagged? See 2…
Targeted Search – The target/focus device bottom right is there to provide the user with selectivity, being able to choose something of interest and waiting for the system to respond. OK a BIG assumption here is that ‘most’ things are AR Recognisable (including peoples faces) but I have an 8 minute version of the video too which has a few ‘duds’, in other words what happens when the user targets things that have ‘no’ AR link…this was done purposefully to show those companies who may opt-out or are ignorant of a future of millions of smart, high quality mobile devices like this and a world where anything and everything is either purposefully geo-tagged or recognisable. Finally the target itself is movable to place where you feel most comfortable and defaults to this bottom right position to enable top left panes.
Service Access – Alongside the left side of the device are three categories – Store, Social and Media. The idea is once recognised the icons will pop up showing whats available for that ‘thing/person’ – I didn’t have time to show thumbs moving around but assume that I moved my left thumb to trigger an item and pull up the dynamic, resizable pane.
Help & Connection – A passing reference to likely updated strap at the bottom (possibly used also for targeted info eg: “point at our logo now to receive 30% discount, or go here and do x” sort of lines as well as help. On the bottom left a status box showing something of the data set or connection strength sort of info. But as I said these are placeholder areas only.
Types of services – There are endless amounts of possible linked data to an internet of things, but I choose here a selection to demonstrate a few concepts. The items in order on the left are shown in the diagram below and are MEDIA – YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, GAMES, Info, Video. SOCIAL – Twitter, FourSquare, Facebook, LinkedIn, Posterous and Blogspot. STORE – Amazon, eBay, PRICE, OnlineCart, Facebook Credits, Related. BTW – ‘GAMES’ is a catch-all that triggers overlayed game engines once in set zones.

THE SHOOT/EDIT

The video was shot on a Canon 5DII in a half day wander around Sydney using the new 24fps full HD 1920/1080 setting. I shot it with the specific knowledge that the ‘focus’ of the tracker would be towards the bottom right and that the device would be layered on in my fav bit of software, Adobe AfterEffects. The final clips are pieced together in Final Cut of course – it was nice to do this so speedily on my new i7 iMac with 8 effective cores – amazed at how fast the workflow is with this prosumer desktop!

OUTRO

Anyhow enjoy the video and share it around. Interested in feedback especially as parts 2 and 3 are in process. Will also update this rather rushed post tomorrow and get the longer video up before the weekend when I get a moment! The purpose of this post and video I think is to look at a nearer term future vs some of the rather out there concept vids but also at the other end of the spectrum current marker and recog AR is rather clunky and may be off-putting to a great deal of users? Also can we imagine a wild west world of ‘place inserted ads’, can it really be regulated – and here it comes… What do you think

UPDATE

A presentation deck given at Theatre 2 at Microsoft campus, Sydney on 30 June 2010. More details here from Craig Bailey. The presentation as an introduction covers definitions, types of AR, recent issues and trends as well as the 16 key biz models and over 40 examples.

Recognising Augmented Reality Business Opportunities

View more presentations from Gary Hayes.

and finally, finally I will leave you with…I mentioned the recent Amsterdam large screen AR venture in my presentation as well as a few other forms of public/performance AR including the recent New York Times Sq fun piece. Very advertorial in nature, but these sorts of installations alongside Sony & Microsofts efforts are going to bring AR into the collective consciousness sooner rather than later. The Times Square Forever21 (Fashion retailer/designer) experience…

Times Square Billboard by Space150 from Cliff Kuang on Vimeo.

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What makes the perfect Transmedia Producer?…

by Gary Hayes on May 25, 2010 · 49 comments

…and the truth about ARGs.

Now that transmedia is everywhere and the Producers Guild of America have turned the ‘transmedia producer’ into a bona fide (or at least recognised) professional role one thing that rears it’s cross-media head is, who and where are the best transmedia producers going to come from? I have spent a good part of the last 15 years mentoring & training traditional & non-traditional media types in multiple platform content and now question where the best producers of this multifaceted ‘new’ content will come from – academia, film, book authors, social media consultants, game designers, TV, web developers, radio, advertisers, young, old, not yet born? Read on, a ‘hypothetical’ interview follows and this is an opinion piece I cannot put in my book or lecture about!

TRANSMEDIA – AMBIGUOUS CONCEPT?

Firstly what is it and does it actually mean anything at all? It is fantastic that the term ‘transmedia’ is now so widespread across the industry and with the official credit (attached ironically to film primarily) but is it a bubble about to burst – is what we have come to know as ‘transmedia’ in danger of being blown out of all proportion.

Here are some of the problems:

Everyone is a transmedia producer - yes you’ve made a website that is attached to a TV show, your a TP. Created a mobile game that has a line or two from the comic, you’re a TP. No one will police this – is it a truly integrated story environment, does it have clever plot links or consistent characters?. A TP is a decathlete (multi-skilled, hard to get a one word answer about what they do in a bar!), gone is nice and simple mono media, a TV producer makes TV shows, film director directs films. You can be a TP if you merge your story across two or more media areas? But more on this later in the post.
Transmedia as a concept is not focused. OK I know Henry Jenkin’s original definition has been spread around the web but it is a definition that is too broad. Perhaps I should exercise my floccinaucinihilipilification and suggest that something that tries to describe everything is actually worthless? Transmedia like a black hole in the universe it tries to describe sucks in everything that has come before (cross media, 360, social media, augmented reality, pervasive gaming and so on). At the other end of this spectrum citing Matrix or Blair Witch or other brand to justify the ‘field’ as mainstream it becomes apparent that the quoted definition itself is rather vacuuous. To quote Jenkins again from an LA Times article, transmedia - “means telling a story across different platforms, each element of which may or may not stand on its own but contributes to an enriched, dynamic, more participatory and “lifelike” experience.”
We are still in the hype phase. Basically anything cool and different those transmedia types (and I point the finger at myself too btw) will take ownership of. I even heard the other day someone say Transmedia is the new Social media and augmented reality even gets a look in. I am not surprised those still getting their head around the ‘story’ potential of social networks or a cute mobile game find it all rather, dis-jointed. Also the increase in experimental and experiential ‘event’ based marketing suddenly meant transmedia is now inextricably linked with brand extensions (TV, film, product) – anything that is not a linear, branded film or TV show. I think for those who live in the transmedia echo chamber this has been the case for many years.
It feels rather academic. Trans-media used to be an alternative semi-academic term to ‘cross-media’ (trans, from the latin ‘crossing’) but is now used to describe everything, non-linear, interactive, extension, participatory, social, brand, play, multi-platform, pervasive and so on. The idea that stories would be told in different places goes back thousands of years but in a modern media context a rich target for study and theorizing. Along came Henry Jenkins who coined the term transmedia almost a decade after the first basic cross-media incarnation. Henry admirably self confesses as being ‘too busy lecturing and presenting about transmedia, to partake’ of the industrial flavour of transmedia “some of it is not well done yet”.
It is still a teenager. It has grown up before it’s time and become a troublesome big headed teenager without any true home and turned into a dysfunctional orphan at once protectively nurtured by over possessive academics, hijacked by experimental ad agencies and hardly understood by flailing stuck-in-time broadcasters. Originally cross-media was an intellectually stimulating concept – memories of mid 90s, pioneering BBC days also my old friend Brian Seth-Hurst who is “Referred to as “the father of cross platform” Hurst coined the term in 1998 as MD of Convergent Media at Pittard Sullivan”. Earlier definitions just talked about story based ‘crossing platforms’ element but since the exponential increase in social media as a place for millions to dwell it has suddenly had the participatory/social part added and also a suggestion that it is now a more integrated form of storytelling, I suppose I should have added a level 5 to my 5 year old (but about to be removed!) wikipedia cross media definition!
Danger of being hijacked - Alongside all of this we have a ‘clique’ of so-called experts who try to describe something which is so simple on one hand (stuff on multiple platforms) yet so ambiguous on the other (fragmented narrative effervescence) - time will expose the Transmedia echo chamber I suppose.

Of course I have nothing against the term per-say in the absence of alternatives having created transmedia entities/sites like Transmediadesign.org or lamp.edu.au or muvedesign.com – all transmedia in focus – but lets start thinking about the emperors clothes. Indeed the Producers Guild definition of the TP, however bold in its intention, is still a little ambiguous about the precise elements of the role to say the least

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.

A Transmedia Producer credit is given to the person(s) responsible for a significant portion of a project’s long-term planning, development, production, and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and creation of original storylines for new platforms. Transmedia producers also create and implement interactive endeavors to unite the audience of the property with the canonical narrative and this element should be considered as valid qualification for credit as long as they are related directly to the narrative presentation of a project.

Transmedia Producers may originate with a project or be brought in at any time during the long-term rollout of a project in order to analyze, create or facilitate the life of that project and may be responsible for all or only part of the content of the project. Transmedia Producers may also be hired by or partner with companies or entities, which develop software and other technologies and who wish to showcase these inventions with compelling, immersive, multi-platform content.

TRANSMEDIA – CONTENT (THE TRUTH ABOUT ARGs?)

But this post is not just about the word – there are hundreds of blog posts even now still trying to really get under the surface of what transmedia means and it is too easy to fall down the semantic rabbit hole of terminology and the endless subjective splits between academics, industry and wannabes. Perhaps something more concrete can be found in the ‘transmedia stuff’ itself. What is this stuff and who is making it?

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Descending Clouds – Society and Augmented Reality 101

by Gary Hayes on April 8, 2010 · 37 comments

What happens when the content cloud descends? Rocket science or people science?

Here is a really simple metaphor to illustrate the pervasiveness and societal significance of Augmented Reality. For the past 20 years humanity has been ‘floating’ its content (its personas, its information, life data, economy and social media) creating a distant, electronic cloud drifting, conceptually, way up above us. A cloud that is only reachable when we area able to connect to it via a variety of fixed and mobile ‘information’ screens, themselves connected to a veritable wormhole aka the global internet. (In reality hundreds of thousands of servers murmuring around the world with billions connected via hard wiring to receive richer media & experiences).

Up until now this ‘content cloud’ (different to cloud computing) has been abstractly disconnected from our physical lives – we read news about California earthquakes sitting in Australia, we view videos on the train of a concert three weeks ago at a local venue, we have personal social networks fragmented across time and space, play a game set in Hong Kong on a screen in London, Facebook groups comprised of half friended, remote avatars (the extended self ). 99% of the content in the cloud is not relevant to here and now (although a philosophical moot point if the now ‘is’ the participation and consumption itself?!)

In a near AR future, non geo-sensitive content will be perceived as incomplete

But that cloud, has reached saturation, it no longer can keep afloat, there is just too much or rather just enough content to be temporally and geographically relevant. In other words there is so much ‘stuff’ up there that it now makes sense to access it, in a true Web 3.0 way, in real time, the present moment from anywhere you are. It will at its simplest level be Google Earth, slowly morphing out of your PC screen, growing to global scale and locking into place over the real world or Facebook mapping itself onto the billion users faces out in the street, advertisers reaching out to where ever you are, personalizing your everyday life with relevancy vs noise.

The always on cloud has now become very useful to a range of stakeholders. Marketeers, storytellers & users alike. Mists of information, media and experiences will engulf onto our cities and physical infrastructure, it will become a persistent fog that will coat everything in its path with layers of time and place stamped content. It will create a web of layers, of parallel narratives and realities and enhance our experiences.

OK fluffy intro over and this leads to some high level areas of a ‘consultancy’ whitepaper I did mid last year (which annoyingly I still can’t publish) but some key themes are explored below.

What does this mean on the ground, a ground covered in this fog of information. The transformative effect of our physical world being invaded by ‘cyberspace’ will make the current discussions about social network privacy seem like a children’s party. When the ‘web’ spreads into and permeates our real world will their be any hiding places. As portable screens become practical (think iPad with camera), pervasive wearable computing becomes commonplace and surveillance technology evolves to being ubiquitous and transparent – society will evolve way ahead of government and law, who powerless to stop the flow of information on connected screens will be even more powerless to stop this flow moving into real space?

“Augmented reality allows people to visualize cyberspace as an integral part of the physical world that surrounds them, effectively making the real world clickable and linked,” says Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm.

The videos below might give them ‘digital’ food for thought.

Beware: I would like to point out everything below has already happened or about to launch in the next few months.

FIRSTLY – RECENT VISIONS OF THE DESCENDING CLOUD

From Eyetap.org (a wearable computing lab in Toronto) – “Stewart Morgan discusses Architecture of Information on the show Daily Planet. It is a visionary short film showing augmented reality, and the implications of it’s applications.” From 2007

THE PERSONAL CLOUD

What kind of society will it be when our personal profiles, details and content are available to anyone in the street simply by scanning our face. That person across the train carriage, are they really playing an iPhone game or finding out ‘everything’ about you, well at least that which you have placed on the open web? A short video that will shock forward thinkers…

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Heritage vs Online vs Life Media Survey – Film Colleagues & Family

by Gary Hayes on April 4, 2010 · 4 comments

Blogstipation. Apologies to those who subscribe and have been expecting a post for a while, been heads down writing, commercial development, life & course dev. I am now lecturing on (and running one of) two Multi Platform courses in Sydney, plus just out the other side of a big personal move to a new part of Sydney. All this combined with other blogs I am group posting on (eg: transmediadesign.org) and lil old twitter becoming a good micro-blogging, link alternative means this blog is starting to be devoted to article, resources or richer content – when I get the time. But I have a back-log of 15 drafts that will be pushed out (excuse the pun) in the next few weeks! Also busy putting a book together called ‘Networked Media Design – Multi Platform Production’ – so some of the good stuff trickling out there, more distilled rather than the temporary stream of consciousness here – but that will all change very soon.

1. ANECDOTAL CHANGING MEDIA FAMILY – HEAVY RAIN ON EASTER SUNDAY

How much time do we spend with different media forms? I am with my partner’s family down in Adelaide, Australia for the hols and on Easter Sunday have just been part of a bizarre ‘new’ ritual. I say new because in the past Easter sunday may have constituted a quick morning choco egg hunt, followed by lunch, a film or two, some topical TV and even radio later in the day during meal times. How far we have come?

A family group of two pre 10s, three early 40s and two seniors have been gathered around the hot family PS3 playing Heavy Rain for 7 hours! Yes you heard right, from 10am to 5pm we played, talked about, watched, shouted, got emotional to a ‘video game’ – all the time discussing the next moves, ethical questions, plot points, social aspects and production value. The kids were doing most of the driving while the rest of us took the back seat giving them directions and choosing some more of the subtle ‘conversational’ or plot options. I tweeted this ‘social’ game event as Parallel Access Gaming – as in this new form of media consumption some of the family simultaneously experiencing the game as play, others as an emotional cinematic event (complete with film music & inciting narrative) with everyone cycling between, action and passive. Typical?

@garyphayes easter sunday revelation – Parallel Access game Heavy Rain – kids play/drive, moms/aunties strategize, grandparents discuss story arcs

2. SURVEY HERITAGE MEDIA CREATORS AND MANAGERS – DAILY MEDIA vs LIFE TIME

This reminded me to do a post on another special demographic group who are often (anecdotally) associated with spending more of their daily time with cinema, the arts, TV or radio (traditional / heritage media). At several seminars I have been running over the past couple of years for traditional media creators/managers I have asked over 105 of them to fill in a little survey I devised – imagine a typical week or month and construe from that an average day spent with media & life events. So over the past week if you averaged it out, how much TV per day would you watch, how much on social networks, how much playing games and so on.

Two sets of questions:

Heritage media and life time – Sleep, Eating, Travelling, Books, Live TV, Live Performance, Conversation, Sports, Live radio, Cooking, Newspapers, Family Stuff, Cinema, Education, Pubs & clubs

Social, online entertainment – Email, On-demand music, On-demand video, Console games, Social network, Online games, Online video, Shopping online, Mobile – SMS, Uploading, Twittering, Collaborative writing, Writing blogs, Research, Forums

The purpose of this was to see how closely their life/media time balance matched the stats I was presenting from the likes of Nielsen, Forester and other ‘notable’ research who were obviously taking larger samples than my 15 at a time and what I publish here – 120 anonymous respondents. The results were rather surprising and the age ranged from around 19 up to early 50s across heritage aspirants and established creators. I start with a couple of charts at the Gen Y end, film foundation students which shows some detailed online time followed by my special aggregation that compares key groupings.

On-demand and online entertainment

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Social Web Words Widget – 1000 Quotes of the Decade

by Gary Hayes on December 23, 2009 · 32 comments

(Embed code below!) 1000 randomised quotes, 2000-10 by 335+ key thinkers on Social Web, Transmedia, Games, Tech & Social Media Marketing.

I have been trying hard to think of an insightful retrospective post for the end of the decade but decided, that like the decade itself, it might be best to distill a broader perspective than my own blinkered viewpoint Also I thought it important to end the decade and try to use the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (who are slightly ‘otherwise engaged’ at this time of the year!) to aggregate over 1000 lines of wisdom from some of the top social media thinkers. (This is where you come in too…more later).

First though, as you can see above, in true widget style here is my ‘Social Web Words Widget – Quotes of the Decade’ viewer – a randomly generating display of growing selection of meaningful social media quotes from the past ten years (a few a little earlier!) written or spoken by over 250+ key people in the area (and even a few from me!). After the fold an embed code for you to add this to your own posts/sidebars and more about the viewer and selection.

If you want to embed this on your page just use the code in the box below. Drag select it all then copy/paste into any site. Use this code as I will be regularly updating it with more quotes as I collect them and drop in the ones in your comment stream.

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Social TV Reloaded – 20 Best Solutions

by Gary Hayes on November 12, 2009 · 30 comments

Will the integration of Social Media into TV give the tottering Broadcast giant a well needed injection in the arm, or is it another doomed hybrid?

Sky Social TV on XBox Platform

This pretty detailed post below looks at twenty or so of the best offerings that glue TV and Social Media together – whether its live chat on the TV screen or playing a game on your laptop/mobile/games console in sync with the TV show here are most of the already existing services in this space. We have seen two key audience behaviours happen in the past 3-4 years that change the status quo – TV on one screen, social media on the other.

UPDATE: The Guardian UK did an follow-up interview with me in reference to this post. The article by Mercedes Bunz is called The X Factor marks the start of TV becoming social – “Emerging media producer Gary Hayes discusses the Twitter buzz around shows such as The X Factor and its implications for TV’s future”

Firstly the increased use of social media real time, communication tools (such as Twitter, SMS and Skype IM etc) means there is now a growing roar off in the distance. The viewer back channel, real time social chatter, “did you just see that”, “I don’t agree with what he just said” and most worrying for broadcasters “I’m not going to watch this again. Agree?”.

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Traditional Media – Time to Become Relevant again?

by Gary Hayes on October 29, 2009 · 24 comments

col·labo·rate (kə lab′ə rāt′)
1. to work together, esp. in some literary, artistic, or scientific undertaking

Almost 13 years ago I recall evangelising to various groups of top BBC exec producers, writers & creatives that the internet is an important new medium. “Lets be clear” I would say “audiences will have unlimited choice not only to watch what they want, when they want but to create content themselves for each other. You will need to change your relationship with them and find ‘time’ for this new relationship, to make any kind of impact in their lives in the future”. Time is the operative word. Is there time to win audiences back? Do you have time to spend collaborating with them and creating meaningful vs flash-in the-pan viral, transmedia content? Is there time before you become mostly irrelevant? I am still saying the same things to today’s generation of producers.

Traditional providers – it’s very simple. You no longer control distribution or dictate what gets consumed. Apart from a few mass produced, live, appointment to view episodics, reality shows & hyped box office the rest is in competition with people-produced, personally relevant media & conversation.

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Garys Social Media Count

by Gary Hayes on September 29, 2009 · 485 comments

Living statistics – Many of us who have been following social media since the early 90s are very sensitive to today’s exponential growth in usage of the sharing web. Inspired by other cool real time counters, Social Media Industry Head, Laurel Papworth, my own Rise & Rise of Social Media presentations and various ‘cool’ videos (you know the ones) I decided to put together this little Flash app (which is in constant development) showing how active & dynamic the Social Web, Mobile Industry and Game Business is. More after the embed.

If you want to embed this on your page just use the code in the box below. Drag select it all then copy/paste into any site. Use this code as I will be regularly updating it with latest stats.

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Thumbs Up for Aussie Innovation – Live Action Film In-Game

by Gary Hayes September 22, 2009

I have been lucky to know Jim Shomos for nearly five years over here in Oz. The first time I met him I was actually mentoring him at a two day networking event in Melbourne and he had a new project called ‘Forget the Rules‘. Like most ‘pushing-the-envelope’ project discussions at these emergent media development labs [...]

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Top 175 (non US) Media and Marketing Blogs by Country

by Gary Hayes September 21, 2009

OK in a ‘top list’ mode at moment and browsing the definitive AdAge media and marketing top 1000 I noticed even more than usual, the dominance of the most communicative country on the planet, the US. In fact of the top 500, the US counts for 327 – so I crunched the numbers and using [...]

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16 Top Augmented Reality Business Models

by Gary Hayes September 14, 2009

As promised a more specific ‘commercial’ follow up to my previous post on this topic which was more ‘story’ centric. I am developing and producing a range of Augmented Reality (or if you prefer AR, ‘blended or layered media’) applications at the moment. I have also been asked to present at a few conferences and create [...]

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Garys Mobile Industry Count

by Gary Hayes September 13, 2009

Yes another one – but to quote from John Hurt’s ‘Hadden’ character in the film Contact “First rule in Government spending, why build one when you can have two at twice the price?” so, based on my recent Social Media counter, here’s part two. This time from a mobile industry perspective and as is the [...]

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New Playgrounds: Augmented Reality Story Worlds

by Gary Hayes August 28, 2009

Was going to call this Augmented Reality Story Environments but…:) It is fascinating to see how quickly Augmented Reality (AR) is permeating our lives and the blogosphere. But what will the mass adoption of mobile devices that allow you to layer ‘virtual story worlds’ over the real world mean for new forms of entertainment & [...]

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Gary 7 Vodcasts: Social TV, Serious Games, Machinima, Social Media & MultiPlatform

by Gary Hayes July 30, 2009

Running the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media production I often have to provide a broad contextual background (as well as detailed insights!) to many of our seminars and labs. Over the past few months I have presented across a range of topics suggested in the blog title and lucky for some these have been captured [...]

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Are You Authentic Online?

by Gary Hayes June 29, 2009

au·then·tic (ô-thĕn’tĭk) adj. worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact – paints an authentic picture of our society conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features made or done the same way as an original not false or imitation : real, actual true to one’s own personality, spirit, [...]

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Talk: The Fragments of Play – Transocialmedia Entertainment

by Gary Hayes June 22, 2009

I was invited to keynote at the IADIS multi conference in the really tough summer environment that is Carvoeiro (a quaint Portugese coastal town & limestone cliff’d seascape on the Algarve). The conference (at the Tivoli Hotel image below) has many strands overlapping probably due to over 1300 submitted papers looking at a massive range [...]

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When a Virtual World Glitch Rocks Real World Parliament: The Power of Ripples

by Gary Hayes May 29, 2009

While lecturing to AFTRS students last week about multi platform, social media & new forms I got on to games and social virtual worlds. When I asked who knew about Second Life one student chirped up “oh isn’t that the place where ABC TV got bombed”. Now a few things immediately sprung to mind when [...]

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Machinima Rivals Animation

by Gary Hayes May 22, 2009

As is my curse I gave another overview introduction presentation last week on films made with games engines aka machinima. I then ran a workshop on the production process and techniques particularly looking at dedicated machinima tools through to games engines – now my YouTube machinimas have gone past 300 000 must be doing something [...]

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TranSocialMedia Play, Experience & Alternate Reality Design

by Gary Hayes May 19, 2009

Tran-social-media-play [tran-soc-shuh-mee-dee-uh-pley] noun, verb 1 noun – a new form, a means of collaborative communication through play in constructed shared ‘media-rich’ environments 2 verb – taking part in game-like activity across and within online and offline social networks and media portals. Can we truly create meaningful immersive media ‘experiences’ for others? Ones that last, are [...]

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The Phone – New Form Social Media Entertainment?

by Gary Hayes April 30, 2009

Clip above from the earlier Australian version of The Phone in Feb 09 & interview with its producer Chris Berry here Interesting timing to receive a prod from the publicist of this show as I am in the middle of mentoring groups of AFTRS directing students who are developing ARG/Social Media drama. The tendency is [...]

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Tribalization, Socialized TV & Games: Seriously

by Gary Hayes April 7, 2009

With my Director of the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media Production hat on I often front our workshops and seminars with a kind of ‘trawl’ across the area being presented by specialist speakers. This means a rather high level view of services, key examples and robust case studies that provide a foundation for the other [...]

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Aussie Social Media Drama Wins International Interactive Emmy

by Gary Hayes March 31, 2009

A cross-post from the LAMP blog I also run: LAMP mentored ‘Social Media, Multi-Platform’ Drama Scorched won the coveted International Interactive Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences last night at MIP TV. The first time Australia has won this award. A big congratulations particularly to producers Marcus Gillezeau and Ellenor Cox [...]

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Letting Audiences Play with your Pieces – Participatory Film & Music

by Gary Hayes March 21, 2009

There are a multitude of sites out there asking the ‘audience’ (grrr) to submit films, music, scripts, stories, bits of their personal life and anything the brand or property feel will draw them into their branded world. Many go about it in a really poor way, providing virtually no incentive, a pretty small audience (as [...]

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Twitter Long Tail – Broadcastization & Pre-Twitter Reputation

by Gary Hayes March 19, 2009

Ever since I joined Twitter (GaryPHayes) I have been fascinated by the subtle ‘etiquette’ of being followed, following and timely updates (as well as the enormous growth and creative potential twitter now affords). It is also interesting watching those traditional media brands and celebrities with a non-twitter and web 2.0 online reputation enter into the [...]

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Games & Virtual Worlds are Dying? So What’s The ROI?

by Gary Hayes March 12, 2009

Dying? More in the middle of this post – Thought I would share my lil’ introduction slides from ad:tech 2009 earlier this week. It is such a short time (each panel is given 50 minutes) to cover such a vast area and myself, Jeff (habbo.com.au) and Mitch (SmallWorlds.com) were all struggling to impart tons of [...]

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Multi Platform Social Media – diagram-by-diagram

by Gary Hayes March 9, 2009

Over the years I have been creating lots of confusing, busy yet at the same time, meaningful and insightful emergent media diagrams. These attempt to help the uninitiated heritage media folk, get to grips with a multiplatform, shifting-social-media-sands, transmogodified entertainment landscape…breathe. So I have been uploading a bunch of these diagrams onto my flickr account [...]

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Presentations – Adtech, LAMP, Banff, Portugal, Spaa and…

by Gary Hayes March 9, 2009

It’s that time of year where things really start to kick-in. So on top of all my AFTRS lecturing, MA Supervision and LAMP R&D work plus commercial work via MUVEDesign and many consultancy sessions here are some nice breaks – seminars and conferences I am speaking at or running. (BTW most of the LAMP ones [...]

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Good, Bad & Ugly of Artistes Moving into Social Media

by Gary Hayes February 28, 2009

“so please don’t forget to support artists like myself who have never had a fair chance in the record industry” guess who… I have talked endlessly of the best ways for corporations or brands to engage with communities inside social media and it is always fascinating to watch the first baby steps of ‘old school’ [...]

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ROI 101 & Stickiness of Second Life?

by Gary Hayes February 16, 2009

I have blogged long and hard about the future of the metaverse and particularly how key sectors can make use of them as a functional tool. Education are already motoring, social activity is still the key driver, artists use it for music, video and performance and buying/selling ‘user to user’ businesses are still strong. One [...]

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RocketOn & On & On – Twitter 2.0?

by Gary Hayes February 3, 2009

If RocketOn grows at its current rate it may be the follow-up to Twitter as a real time, web 3.0, animated avatar, 2D web integrated social application. It will of course need much more sophisticated friend and group management and the following/followers paradigm would work wonders here. But no doubt the company have lots on [...]

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Virtual Worlds rescue TV?! or v.v.?!

by Gary Hayes February 1, 2009

What may save TV may also truly grow Social Virtual Worlds. As online audiences continue to ignore TV and vanilla/social virtual worlds suffer from a lack of direction, perhaps the marriage of the two will save both from irrelevancy? A report by Gary Hazlitt in various TV branded virtual world spaces. There have been several [...]

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15 great myth-busting, women vs men stat articles about Games

by Gary Hayes January 27, 2009

Seem to be in list/research mode at the moment and was looking for one place on the web that had a list of stats about the mix of male and females across the ‘game/virtual world’ space. I have actually found it useful to highlight many of the type of stats to clients who still believe [...]

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A Top 25 List of Social Media, Web 2.0 & Marketing ‘Best-Of-Lists!’

by Gary Hayes January 18, 2009

I don’t know what is in the blogosphere water at the moment but every day for the last 6 months or so we seem to get a new list or top 10/20/25/50. They seem to fall into 1 of 4 categories. The best of’s – Ordered lists based on some open or secret formula of [...]

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Review “Life III: Escape from Reality” game

by Gary Hayes January 11, 2009

So been having a nice break here in Bondi, doing all sorts of cool commercial and/or creative non-LAMP projects plus playing some great new games (Fallout 3, Mirror’s Edge, Elder Scrolls/Oblivion etc:) mostly on the PS3 and PC/Mac. Hunting around the non-mall games stores in Bondi Junction I came across a dusty old cross-platform game [...]

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Some of my 2008 reflections on Virtual Worlds, reflected elsewhere

by Gary Hayes January 7, 2009

Reflections by me? Been a bit slow off the mark blog wise this year as endless layers of projects overlap and blogging has fallen off the list. But there are some goodies about to be blogged here, just simmering, almost ready for serving. Smell that goodness. For the moment though two of my ‘thinks’ that [...]

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TV from cradle to the grave – what we can learn at it’s birth

by Gary Hayes December 21, 2008

“It’s tempting to shout – Stop It! The truth is that television in Britain is commissioned by middle-aged people who rarely watch the box, attempting to reach young people who look at it even less, when it’s actually watched by old people. Twenty to twenty five year olds aren’t sitting goggle-eyed for one very good [...]

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Playstation 3 Home First Use In Videos

by Gary Hayes December 14, 2008

I haven’t been able to log into Sony’s PS3 home yet but have been fascinated in the trickle of videos onto YouTube showing first usage in the past two days. There are many posts over the last 2 years about PS3Home on this blog and it is great to finally see it come out of [...]

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When the Economy Gets Rough, Virtual Worlds Get Growing

by Gary Hayes December 11, 2008

…and a little end of 2008 Virtual Worlds, State of Play… Just back from a short break in the lovely town of Broome in NW Australia (my pics). It was interesting being disconnected from ‘the cloud’ but in the process having a few ‘virtual experiential’ moments. One of these was watching the controversial film ‘Australia’ [...]

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Football Superstars, iPhone Ocarina, NBC WebTV and Lost in SL

by Gary Hayes November 17, 2008

Another selection of my items cross-posted from another of my original blogs, lamp watercooler. The Ulitmate Mashup Launches – Sport, MMOG & Social Virtual World – 16 Oct 08 Football Superstars is the world’s first Virtual Football World. An entire online virtual world designed by football fans exclusively for football fans, where you can enjoy [...]

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The Dawn of Mixed Reality and it’s Participatory Audience

by Gary Hayes November 12, 2008

What is Mixed Reality, why is it relevant and has TV become it’s background medium of choice for larger numbers of media consumers who around the world are spending more time in online pursuits than glued to the content breaks in-between the advertising slots of commercial TV. How will TV survive in a world where [...]

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