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Augmented Reality is the new black.

July 26, 2009 By View Comments

Found out I could play augmented reality games on my Nokia phone so I spent the whole afternoon playing an old (circa 2008) AR game called Tower of Defence. Graphics and gameplay is unsophisticated but the AR is very cool.

ar tower small

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg[/youtube]

Augmented Reality has been around for many years and is a technology that combines real-world and computer-generated data. The gaming industry was probably the first to exploit AR. Games have been developed using AR like the one above and many others. It’s a fascinating technology that is also useful in education and business. Brands like Ford and Topps have used AR in their marketing.  There are AR business cards too but the most impressive AR app I’ve seen so far is Layar for the Android phone:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08[/youtube]

These are all old news but worth looking at again because we will see AR used more and more. Coming to the Apple iPhone 3Gs soon is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6r2tIaRXU[/youtube]

The Layar and AcrossAir’s AR app are not first of it’s kind. A Japanese company called Tonchidot first came out with this for the Sekai camera and demo’d a concept at the 2008 TechCrunch50 Conference (2009 update). What I find really cool about the Sekai camera is the crowd-sourced content. This app will debut on the Apple iPhone 3Gs after the next OS update in September (AR only works on the iPhone 3Gs). Take a look.:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTwSXK_5dg[/youtube]

Apple does not have any AR apps at the moment and only just released the iPhone SDK 3.1 b3 with AR friendly API to developers.

For the latest updates on AR, follow @AugmentedAdvert on twitter.

More on AR:

Five Addictive Augmented Reality Gaming Apps Wired. July 28, 09

Filed Under: Apps, Tech Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

If it ain’t Poken, go fix it.

July 24, 2009 By

If you’ve ever been shy to ask a girl (or a guy) at a party for her phone number, you can now say ‘You’re hot, can I poken you.’ That’s one way the Poken can help you.  Wait, what the hey is a Poken?

poken

The Poken is a little usb device with a very low powered rf-based technology to transmit and receive data. When it “touches” or “high 5″ or rather “high 4″ another Poken, it will send and pick up personal details like a person’s name, contact details and social media profiles. The info can’t be seen of course until it’s uploaded to a website which means the Poken is totally dependent on a person having access to the web. If you can read this, no problem for you.

How much information is shared with someone can be easily managed through the website at doyoupoken.com. The discrete option will send limited details and the normal option will send everything in your Poken profile. By pressing the button on the Poken twice before touching another Poken will switch it to discrete mode and ensures private info won’t be exchanged.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwyxsyEXD70[/youtube]

Some call it a business card replacement and some call it the offline social media tool. Whatever it is, it’s basically a quick way to collect personal information. At first glance, it looks like a toy for a kid. It might even remind you a bit of the tamagotchi. The bright side of this is, the technology won’t intimidate technophobes which do make up a large segment of our population. There are huge opportunities in this little thing. Keep the usb and the rf transmitter/receiver and this thing can take on any shape. It can be customized into the shape of a brand’s logo for example and become a badge that identifies a brand’s fan or another fun way to expose a brand to the fan’s network of friends.

Beyond social networking and branding, businesses can use it to collect customer information to send promotional emails and hopefully  encourage the customer to buy more. Imagine this, say you run a cafe. Every time someone visits your cafe and taps his  Poken with your cafe’s Poken at the counter, you’ll be able to collect his details along with details of his purchases. Over time, you can find out what his favorite drinks are, how often and what time of day he likes his beverages. This information can help you customize more effective promotions. Like, if you have a frequent customer incentive, you could reward him with his favorite drink free on his next visit. If he hasn’t tried your muffins, how about sending him a free trial Poken coupon (“delivered to his Poken already”) that he can redeem by tapping on your Poken?

Similar to the concept of Touch and Go, the Poken also has the potential to store currency like Poken dollars. Tap it at a retailer’s Poken and the value will be deducted from the Poken account on purchases. No need for cash. Dollars could be bought with real money or earned as a form of reward, again for being a loyal customer.

The Poken can also come in handy in  medical emergencies making information like blood type, allergies, existing medical conditions and emergency contact information available to paramedics. Talking about healthcare uses, wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid wear this in the pediatrics ward rather than a wristband?

What I’ve described above are just ideas of what may be possible with the Poken. The challenge is getting more people to carry one. It’s not cheap at the moment (suggested retail price is US$25 each) which means initial demand might have to come from the corporate sector. Any brands up to bringing Poken in in a big way? I’ll be your fan.

Background
Poken was born in Belgium and became a hit in Europe (re: TechCrunch’s interview with the Poken startup in July of 2008). Japan joined the craze in March this year and it is slowly spreading to the rest of Asia. The KL twitter community was introduced to it by Eric Yap at a tweetup yesterday. Eric, a Malaysian currently living in Japan is here looking for a business partner to launch the Poken. If you’re interested to know more or buy a Poken from Eric, he can be contacted on Twitter as @kenloo or by email beingyap@gmail.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BReCQOUnsYY[/youtube]

Related:
Poken apart and back again. See what’s under the hood as YK dismantles the Poken.

Filed Under: Feature, Tech Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Flight Attendant 2.0 1.0

April 13, 2009 By View Comments

I like to travel light, thanks to the heavy-as-a-sack-of-bricks camera. So I have my phone, MP3 player, portable game device, GPS, pseudo blackberry (I now get push mail through emoze), organizer, casual camera and video recorder all pack neatly into a Nokia N96.

Contrefaçon d'un Nokia N96
Creative Commons License photo credit: priceminister

It’s great until I get on a plane. My gizmo can’t help but look like a phone. Even though I set it to “flight mode” flight attendants would get into a frenzy at the sight of it and yells at me to switch it off. If you have an Apple iTouch, forget it also, flight attendants can’t tell the diff between that and an Apple iPhone. You’ll be inviting a lot of grief too.

Too many toys
Creative Commons License photo credit: The Ninja Monkey

Now I’m not talking about the plane taking off or landing which is an important time for everyone to pay attention. Data has shown that these times are when shit (like a bird) is most likely to hit the fan. Signals from your electrical devices might also interfere with the plane’s navigational systems. Please follow all in-flight instructions on take off and landing.

So I’ve had a few nasty experiences with flight attendants when I was plugged in to my mini jukebox. I tried to explain that it’s in flight mode only to hear them raise their voices as though I didn’t hear them the first time. I could raise my voice too but now there are laws that can get me restrained and arrested as a terrorist for screaming on a plane. Flight attendants can scream but not passengers.

A friend who’s an ex-flight attendant with the same airline I flew on told me that mobile phones in “flight mode” are allowed to operate in flights, it’s in the manual all attendants are given at flight attendant school. So why are they being such a pain to passengers like me?

Come my friends, let’s test out these airlines the next time we fly. But first, put your mobile phones in flight mode please then leave it out in the open with headphones plugged in. Share the reaction you get from your flight attendants. Please do not try this if your phone does not have flight mode.

Flight attendants these days should get with the program and understand that people are going to be reliant on little gadgets like a mobile phone that does more than make phone calls. They should familiarize themselves with mobile phones with flight mode. And if a passenger doesn’t know what’s flight mode, the flight attendant can offer to show him how to set it to flight mode. Unless the airline is a super low budget airline that charges for everything and you can’t bring on board your own entertainment like you can’t bring on board your own food and drinks.

Happy flying.

Filed Under: travel Tagged With: , , , , ,

Climate change affecting the workplace. Is intelligence sustainability at stake?

March 13, 2009 By View Comments

In the news today, another company lays off 20% of their workforce next to news of another road accident. Like what’s new, right? It seems almost trendy for companies to layoff people. Reason/s, take your pick – bad investment into a volatile market, cut-throat competition, declining market share, in anticipation of the coming recession, reorganizing for a more effective organization, etc. And the majority being laid off are women because it’s the Malaysian thing to do.

On the same page, the government tells everyone “Recession? What recession? We are not in a recession” but introduces the largest economic stimulus plan in history and calls it a mini stimulus plan. Maybe stimulus plans are also very trendy these days. Other countries in Asia have one so we must have one too. I don’t understand our government so let’s get back to “trendy” companies.

The legendary fail whale.
Life’s a beach and then you die.

I can’t help but draw parallels between what’s happening in corporations today to whales that have lost their sense of direction and found themselves beached, 500 miles off course. And in a state of panic, they swim even harder only to find themselves driven further inland until there is nothing left to do but hope for high tide soon…(so that they can swim further inland perhaps?). You can’t really blame the poor whale. It’s in a state of panic and driven by the need to survive, there’s just no room for common sense or intelligence.

Not unlike corporations who have to look at numbers first so that the chief can breathe easier at the next shareholder’s meeting, sometime in this financial year, which isn’t too far away. Think ‘short term’ QUICK! Reduce workforce by 20%! But wait, shouldn’t you be looking at reducing 20% of your payroll and 1% of your workforce might just solve that problem? My bad, I forgot, no room… Damn, having shareholders suck too. Well, you can borrow money (also very trendy) to buy back the company’s stock and get the shareholders off your back. If you’re government owned – nice, you can go back to your game of solitaire during office hours.

I’d like to know where the smart companies are. I’m sure they exist but are they in Malaysia? Umair Hague wrote a great piece in the Harvard Business Review called the Smart Growth Manifesto. If poor whale could read, it might have reached fertile sea by now.

In summary:

Yesterday’s incumbents are beginning to fail en masse, while these revolutionaries remain resilient. Why? As our research at the Lab suggests, getting smart is a better choice than staying dumb: smart growth results in more creativity, innovation, effectiveness, and power than dumb growth.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Bubble Killer

August 12, 2008 By View Comments

I’m sick today after a trip up north for our quarterly business meeting. Was it the stress from a turbulent flight or the powerpoint charts I’ve been subjected to?

We had work to do at the meeting this time – ideas to present, problems to solve and opportunities to seize. The chief thought it would be great to gather us into teams and make us compete on ideas. Two teams won and I’m told were mostly popularity votes or fear votes (vote your boss’s team first if you know what’s good for you). Funny but not wasted, they weren’t bad.

A lot of ideas came out that afternoon but every team’s presentation troubled me and this isn’t just from my peers alone. I see this 9.8 out of 10 times from contractors, consultants and ad agencies.

I wish people would stop the cut-and-paste of data from statistical reports into a powerpoint. A statistics report does not a slide make. Every chart on a slide should have a story.  One story. Then simplify the damn chart and spare everyone the details. Distribute handouts if that .65% means so much. Don’t kill an idea with numbers for crying out loud.

And I wish i could tell them that quality of their idea isn’t filling up an entire slide with a wall of text. I can see their working hard but not working smart to deliver their ideas clearly. We win deals by selling ideas not word count or those multi-colored, bars + lines.

Bubble charts oh how I hate thee. Of all the charts in the world, bubble charts make me cringe. So I spent my sick day today studying charts, hoping to find a bubble chart killer. I found a few really interesting ways to present data graphically and compellingly. They may not all be powerpoint ideals but are interesting to study for their ability to tell a story with vivid images. Take a look from my Vi.sual.us widget below.

Bubble concept minus the bubble:

I about really useful bubbles:

Update (April 14, 2009)

Found Hans Rosling’s presentation on Ted Talks. Very impressive work with bubble charts. I see some good in bubble charts now, just wish the other people who loves presenting with bubble charts can make it as funky as Hans’.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , , ,

Carsonified

August 1, 2008 By View Comments

I don’t know how I stumbled upon this site. Might have been one of those Twitter links. I normally scan feeds on TweetDeck, clicking on all the links I find interesting then get into Firefox and start going through each tab.

So I came across an ad from Carsonified.com. I found it so inspiring, I wanted to write in and say I’ll work for free.

I guess the 4-day work week, no one breathing down your neck, the Aeron Chair, the country hopping and the Mac Book Pro did it for me. The 4-day week gets the biggest “WOW, really? No way!” from me though! I was like what company in their right minds  wouldn’t want to milk their employees dry? If there’s an 8th day and 25th hour, the company wants it. Then I thought, “You know, if they find someone passionate enough about what the company does, he or she might just give 25/8 of their time. Some would even work for free.”

After a cold shower, I realized I was just being foolish. I have a broadband habit to feed and Bath is all the way there. Good ad though and based on that, I’d rank Carsonified.com along side Google, as possibly the best companies to work for.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , ,

Limited Fadditions

July 26, 2008 By View Comments

Serving the all-about-me customers has inspired Apple to develop products that are sexy, colorful and makes a statement of who you are but deep down, we know it’s really who you want to be until you buy the product and become a bit more cooler than before. That is why brands like Swatch have become so popular. They take one product and offer it in different colors or material, the function of the product is essentially the same. Customers love choices. When a product seems to have lost it’s appeal just a little and the guys at R&D haven’t found a breakthrough, this is also a strategy you can pull out of the hat to keep the market excited.

For example. something as boring as the Ku band dishes you see stuck to roofs and walls of urban homes. It used to be cool when your roof was the only one on the street with a dish. Now it’s like bleh.

Dish Art

I’ll buy a dish painted by my favorite artist or cartoonist. It can be autographed and numbered. Wouldn’t you like to be part of an auction on the single masterpieces that would benefit a charity or medical research?

Feng Shui Art

Anything that will enhance wealth, health and happiness will enhance revenues. If you get a Feng Shui master to endorse it, “They will come.” No Chinese in their right minds will not want to tip the needle of fortune in their favor.

HahaArt

If you’re the regular joker, you might not want a bat pager. Then again, life won’t be fun without batman, so why so serious, get this glow-in-the-dark bat pager and have a good laugh.

What would you put on your dish
if you have a choice.

Inspired by: The Dark Knight.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

HokkienStation.tv

July 23, 2008 By View Comments

One fine day, when I open my online music store (reading “The Secret” for the 101 time) I will offer Hokkien Karaoke videos people can download for a small price. HD quality don’t play play. If there’s any song we don’t have a video for, my production crew (part time dangdut porn production house) will go to Lake Gardens in KL or Penang Hill with a Hokkien couple from Klang or Pulau Tikus and shoot a Karaoke video of your favorite song. If you want us to shoot you, also can. We have an arrangement with JonLow Bridal Palace and they have the loveliest gowns in colors that will bring out the color of your, err, eye shadow.

We also have other services. We can translate Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” into Hokkien for you. “O Solo Mio” also got (search under Eh, Siao Ah Mai).  Unlimited karaoke music video on demand (Premium “Kah Liew” Package) or streaming video (Unlimited Access Monthly Pass – our most popular package).

If you have the Pasar Malam decoder mentioned in the post below titled “The IPTV Race”, you just register for an account here. Then plug and play lor.

We also carry an extensive collection of cordless Karaoke microphones. Made in China but German engineered and Amercian designed. No assembly required. 1 month guarantee. This is a very special product. It has near surround sound quality speakers and comes with 1G internal memory (expandable to 4G).  You can download your favorite Hokkien tune from my website straight into the microphone with a USB plug that is also built into the mic, just push a button and the USB plug will pop out. There’s also an LCD screen on the side to display your lyrics. With this mic, you can take your favorite Hokkien Top 20s on the road. At home, you can connect it to your set top box or your PC with a bluetooth receiver (sold separately). Guarantee, your whole family will like.

Coming soon: Waterproof cordless mic.

Day 80
Creative Commons License photo credit: SuperFantastic

Inspired by: Sky to take on iTunes with download service
Brand Republic 22-Jul-08, 15:05

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The IPTV Race.

July 8, 2008 By View Comments

Who will win this fight? In the arena we have the TV stations, the ISPs, telcos, content providers and hardware manufacturers.

My bet is on the hardware manufacturers. I can take a popular game console today, plug in a broadband line and I’m in business. No broadband infrastructure in your neighborhood? WiMAX will be right there. Content? From the WORLD wide web. What can be aggregated can be streamed.

Set top box manufacturing is where you should be. You can make high performance boxes that includes a really cool remote control with an iPod-ish click wheel, a built in 100GB memory to house your TV guide and video trailers that you can watch on a 2.5″ screen that also takes voice commands to pause streaming, change channels etc (price it high for the rich early adopters).

You can also make the cheapest disposable box (priced low for the mass market). Take that box to anyone with content to sell like a video store and go “Can I call you buddy?”. Sell your decoders directly to consumers. Work with retail chains, hypermarkets, Amway, temples and churches.

I can also see how this will develop in the Asian market. The illegal DVD cartel will finally band together and go broadband. Host all the latest blockbusters on a server in Tuvalo. Flick a switch whenever there’s trouble and stream from Iceland or Mongolia. No worries, the long arms of the law will get tired eventually. Their time is better spent investigating high-profiled sodomy cases.

Consumers will celebrate because they can now order dirt cheap movies as well as dirty movies without having to pay for it at a cashier and suffer the stares of other customers. Never mind that the visual may occasionally include a human head moving across the screen, audio interrupted by hacking cough in the background or abrupt endings because the cinema lights came on. The best thing is, there is no subscription fee.

Knock-off decoders will be widely available. Often sold from the back of a car at busy night markets and wet markets across the country or wherever there is a street lamp. The distribution network can put Starbucks to shame.

For consumers with finer tastes, the high-end boxes can be found at Harvey Nomans. After getting one, just get online and register for an account at Boreders.com (The Curve branch). They are now streaming movies and music from the DVDs and music CDs that once collected dust on the shelves. Huge selection. HD or Blue-Ray quality they are all ready to stream the instant your online payment is received.

But people don’t buy hardware, they buy content. Yes but to produce a show you need huge investments and a team of people to manage a team of people. If you buy content, you compete with the local TV stations. All these eat into profits.

What about videos streamed to a broadband portal? Seriously, I have a 52″ Plasma TV and a 22″ LCD monitor. Which one, do think I’ll have more fun watching a 2-hour movie on?

Can you see the future now? The people who will make all this happen are the hardware folks. So what are you waiting for?

Inspired by: The Roku

Roku


Also read: UNCLE HO WANTS YOU! from an old friend and fellow blogger TV Smith

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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