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Jul 202011

I was surprised to hear recently from a few friends (who should know better) that Augmented Reality is already finished?! – killed off by marketing superficiality over the past 6 years?! Of course I beg to differ and actually think we have not even started down a ‘real’ AR road. Augmented Reality is still emerging out of the woods from a technological, editorial and awareness perspective and already rising from a ‘hype-haze’ are the first of some really synergistic applications – ‘historical & futuristic’ factual stories ‘experienced’ in contextual location – Situated Documentary.

Londinium - Street Museum Enhanced AR App

From a present day perspective, the world is becoming saturated by millions of our location stamped ‘social’ stories inside services such as Google Earth, Maps, TagWhat, HistoryPin (more below), Facebook Places, CheckIn+, Foursquare etc: As these stories recede into past events we will start to see some very interesting social and anthropological forms popping up – ARDs (augmented reality documentaries) will be aggregates of the best of those stories and I can see simple parallels – SocialAR extending Reality TV, DramaticAR drawing on Cinema and HistoricalAR evolving alongside Documentary, which is the focus of this post.

May 312011

I promised quite a few folk to provide a walk-through of my short 35 minute presentation at the Augmented Reality Event in California last week. The intention of the presentation was to take my AR Scenario & Business Model thinking to the next level, to go beyond marketing eye candy, clunky ‘questionable’ games and really dig down and think hard about the value proposition for users. In creating the presentation I had to look at a deeper level at the nature of experience, as in that we can start to really find true value in Augmenting our Reality. To begin though a little compilation video I threw together for this post and some future talks looking specifically at a range of locative augmented and alternate reality services (entertainment, promotion and advertorial) to set the landscape.

Music track is called Zemith from my ‘Calm After the Storm’ album in progress – subscribe free

The only way the Augmented Reality industry is going to emerge from its current commercial birthing period is for the brands, corporates & creatives to make sure that AR is delivering a unique, immersive experience and to start to consider the value of experiential (a marketing definition here). This nature of experience, which I believe is inextricably linked to the future of AR, and the value users place on immersive services also leads at the end into a ‘experiential’ panel I am leading at Creative Sydney at the Opera House this week and I cover some of my thoughts in that space first.

May 112011

As AR starts to take root in some key aspects of our lives I thought it would be useful to collect below some of the best talks (yes physical presentations vs overt demos) in the Gamified / Augmented Life space. These are thought leader presentations asking the key questions about why, how, should we, who for and so on. Some talks are a couple of years old (with many from TED) but they need to be seen by upcoming AR & Experience Creators as these passionate presentations look backwards but mostly forwards to our soon-to-be-enhanced lives – through this inevitable, always-with-us, digital overlay.

The speakers are writers, inventors, company owners, commentators and all go that one important step beyond where we are now which is an AR oil rush where no one has quite found the oil (yet) but there is certainly lots of planting flags in the ground where they reckon the best oil deposits are…I could go on with that tangent but might save it for my own lil talk next week at the Augmented Reality Event but for now lets get to it, on with the proper talks (in no particular order!)…of course I probably missed the most important ones – thats what the comment box is for 🙂

1 Opening & Keynoting the Augmented Reality Event in 2010 we have AR visionary & guru Bruce Sterling – consider yourself as Experience Designers

The Augmented Reality Event: Bruce Sterling’s keynote from Ori Inbar on Vimeo

9 more to follow Continue reading »

A Picture Worth a Billion ‘Digital’ eWords

Posted by Gary Hayes on March 22, 2011 at 3:11 pm Advertising, Brands, Business, Devices, Distribution, Innovation, iPad, Press Release, Revolution, Short Posts 15 Responses »

Mar 222011

Angus & Robertson, Borders and Whitcoulls In Administration – Covered nicely by Teleread‘s “Go Bust!’

An “In Administration” notice spotted at our local Bondi Junction Borders by laurelpapworth.com – I decided to make it a ‘Picture word a billion digital words’ and show it in context with the culprit in the same shot. RIP ”many” big book chains 🙁 (Ironically the picture taken on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet – a nice eReader in itself!) – The book store industry unable to adapt to a hybrid model of in-store paper and electronic purchases? I for one would love to browse the paper book/mag version and then buy the eBook equivalent, selected titles only of course…

Need some statistical evidence of the reason for the decline?

$805 mill made from physical books in the US in Jan 11, 30% drop from same month last year Source AAP Mar 2011
$69.9 mill made from eBooks in Jan 11 in US a 115% increase from same month last year Source AAP Mar 2011

These stats now reflected on the ‘heritage’ tab on my Social Media Counter – ht – Serge for the heads-up on the January 2011 Association of American Publishers Report

Note: I will from now on, be posting short, game changing mini-items that provide a little more context and commentary than my tweet stream – while also avoiding just reposting cool, YouTube Eye-candy 🙂 Of course still doing the long, resource style tomes!

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