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Ikea Marketing Strategy: Mobile, Social, Brilliant.

Posted on 28. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

You might not love Ikea’s furniture, but you can’t deny that Ikea’s marketing strategy is nothing but brilliant: a cutting-edge blend of mobile, emerging technologies and social media.

Mobile Augmented Reality App
You see something, you like it. You don’t buy it! Why? The most common reason is that you can’t picture it in your own house. Visual memory is not a common talent, planning by the sheer power of imagination is even rarer.

The Ikea mobile application, dubbed Portable Interior Planner, is your new bionic eye. With a very clean and easy-to-use interface, it gives customers the ability to see exactly how the new designs will look in their home. And to do this, it uses mobile augmented reality features.

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Music Videos New Frontier: Augmented Reality

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Music and Innovation hardly get together and, when they do, the War of the Roses is a more likely scenario than Star Trek. Not always though.

Augmented Reality might be a peaceful exception. A new wave of music videos is indeed emerging, with the promise to enable new creative ways for artists to interact with their fans.

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Mobile Game Changers

Posted on 18. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

It’s been a week dense of potentially game-changing facts for the mobile industry.

MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY BECOMES MORE REAL

Until now, the development of mobile augmented reality apps for the Iphone has been hindered by Apple’s decision to keep the API for the analysis of live-streaming private.

The Game Changers: Visual Media Lab at Ben Gurion University and HIT Lab NZ.

The scientists from the two computer teams have released a software  that lets anyone perform on-the-fly analysis of live streaming video on the iPhone and they have made it public through AR specialist GamesAlFresco.

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In Between Virtual And Real- A Mobile Augmented Reality Demo

Posted on 14. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Augmented Reality  technologies spilled sci-fi fantasies into real life. Mobile Augmented Reality is pushing the envelope, by allowing virtual worlds to creep into the physical environment that surrounds us and “alter” it.

Hand from Above provides an artistic example of what is to come. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, it shows pedestrians at the mercy of a giant deity who in real-time tickles, stretches or removes them. Hands from Above is a joint project, between the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, FACT, and Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network.

Hand from Above from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

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Mobile Augmented Reality- Week In Review.

Posted on 27. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Mobile Augmented Reality is still in its infancy, but it is clear that it is creating a radically new way to organize and interact with information. ”In the future, we see augmented reality as a component of any kind of digital media interaction,” said Mobilizy’s co-CEO, Alexander Igelsboeck, at the EmTech@MIT session.

New AR apps have been released this week. Here’s a selection.

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Two Possible Augmented Realities Coming To You

Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Is AR going to set the foundations for a world full of possibilites or is it an ambiguous technology that is going to feed the next Big Brother?

Take a look….

-Facebook and Augmented Reality: Heaven or Hell?  by Mikiane.

Mobile Mixed Reality by the Nokia Research Center- via IntoMobile.  Research paper available in PDF.

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Are We There Yet?

Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Mobile services without location are similar to a car without the engine. You end-up with web-like clones: dating, games, news, etc. No offense to any of the players in the space. But it just tastes as a surrogate. Not surprisingly eMarketer labels m-commerce as a business in its infancy.

Unlocking the potential of location-based services means cracking the nut of mobile as a revenue machine. Like AdSense, it’s a mixing of what’s potentially useful for a consumer with a way to make money for advertisers.

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You’re Not a Sci-Fi Nerd Anymore…

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

There’s a fascinating new trend in the mobile application space: Augmented Reality.

The technology, which superimposes graphics and information on live camera feeds, is not new, but the newest generation of smartphones are about to make it mainstream.

So what is Augmented Reality and what’s the big deal? AR is a graphics-oriented technology that blends sounds, haptics, and even smell to the natural world. So for example picture yourself using your cell phone to view the real world through its camera lens and while doing so, being able to interact with it. How? You could get twitts of the people all around you or the playlists and music streams of your neighborhood or see who built that statue that you’re staring at…

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