Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

Interesting vision and good to see an event is organized in an unconference style:

Taken from the AR DevCamp site, check de website for signing up and additional information:
The first Augmented Reality Development Camp (AR DevCamp) will be held in the SF Bay Area December 5, 2009.

After nearly 20 years in the research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as one of the next major waves of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information and experiences. We believe AR must be fundamentally open, interoperable, extensible, and accessible to all, so that it can create the kinds of opportunities for expressiveness, communication, business and social good that we enjoy on the web and Internet today. As one step toward this goal of an Open AR web, we are organizing AR DevCamp 1.0, a full day of technical sessions and hacking opportunities in an open format, unconference style.

AR DevCamp: a gathering of the mobile AR, 3D graphics and geospatial web tribes; an unconference.
Among other topics, we’ll discuss are implications of how the various layers of an open augmented reality stack will fit together to support the following straw man requirements:

• support for both fundamental kinds of AR requiring semantic frameworks be harmonized: 1. Image Triggered and 2. Location Based. support for many image trigger types, and many coordinate systems.
• a description of what happens on the focal plane of the view, including user interface conventions, and rendering rules.
• a description of the properties of a specific object or place, including data type, decoding and rendering requirements and resources
• support for local media types produced by many applications domains including 2D Web, 3D web, web maps, GIS, CAD, BIM, 3D game and virtual worlds
• support for local rendering rules and coordinate systems for specific places and objects e.g. html, CAD objects and spaces, video, rendered graphics game objects, etc.
• harmonization and interoperable semantic framework with adjacent semantic domains within overlapping computing and media domains, e.g. web, CAD, mapping, games, virtual worlds, etc.
• support for secure transactions and data exchange
• support for sensors and sensor networks
• social network interoperability, managing groups, permissions, and privacy
• messaging, communication, and collaboration

Too many standards is disastrous for the adaption and extensibility, an Open AR Web can be the solution so that indeed, creation of business opportunities and social good can be enjoyed and deployed.
What do you think of their vision, an open all accessible Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality 3.0 is a blog developed by Sean Lee, which created the conceptual framework AR3.0

Watch the video and read up the framework below:

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The service named Catch-up TV is made available by the NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster making news and sports available for the Playstation 3.

Playstation 3 owners in the Netherlands can download a free upgrade which enables the service for Catch-up TV.
In a statement, Roeland Stekelenburg, head of New Media at the NOS:

“The NOS Journaal is now available on a variety of mobile phones, internet, IPTV, cable networks, NetTV, a number of set-top boxes and now also on the PS3. We expect a lot from these new platforms and are anxious to learn how they will be received.”

Sony Computer Entertainment Belenux is researching if the opportunities with TV-on-demand can be expanded with new partnerships, the Playstation 3 slogan “The Game is just the start” will get a new interpretation. Besides BluRay and Vidzone, Catch up TV is a new way to make use of the PS3, pointing out that the system can be used for much more than gaming alone.

This is interesting -from the NOS and Sony’s point of perspective-  when relating to whatever screen works and making content available for any platform/display where content can be consumed when and what users want.

A good initiative to convergence.

The MMA has ‘significantly revised’ the definition of Mobile Marketing, as is written on their website, their new definition is:

Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.

They then continue elaborating on two points within the definition:

1.The “set of practices” includes “activities, institutions, processes, industry players, standards, advertising and media, direct response, promotions, relationship management, CRM, customer services, loyalty, social marketing, and all the many faces and facets of marketing.”
2.To “engage” means to “start relationships, acquire, generate activity, stimulate social interaction with organization and community members, [and] be present at time of consumers expressed need.” Furthermore, engagement can be initiated by the consumer (“Pull” in form of a click or response) or by the marketer (“Push”).

I do not understand why institutions and industry players can be practices, at the max we can say that institutions and industry players will make use of these practices as deployers.
The emphasis on engagement and interactivity is what’s the mobile device has indeed involved to.
Secondly, pointing out to relevancy (and interactivity) is according to the technological capabilities: Personalization, Customization and Collaboration, thus making clear that Mobile Marketing will transform and go towards these standards as well as the Internet and TV, this comes back in the second elaboration where it refers to “[and] be present at time of consumers expressed need.”, being present when consumers want, with the content they want where they want (Location Based Services).

Wasn’t Mobile Marketing -as term- a self-explenatory definition?

Gartner has created a list with ten technologies which will be strategic for most companies in 2010.
A strategic technology is one with potential for a significant impact in the three coming years on the enterprise. Factors which determine significant impact are:
* High potential for disruption to IT or business
* Need for major dollar investment
* Risk of being late to adopt

The 10 strategic technologies for 2010 are:
* Cloud Computing
* Advanced Analytics
* Client Computing
* IT for Green
* Reshaping the Data Center
* Social Computing
* Security – Activity Monitoring
* Flash Memory
* Virtualization for Availability
* Mobile Applications

Read here the notes which come along each technology.

As a consultancy and development company, for us it’s important to understand and keep up with technologies which will impact companies and how these technologies can complement or be intertwined in the enterprise. For us, especially Advanced Analytics, Social Computing and Mobile Applications are of importance.
What technology trends can impact your business?

Yesterday the news was announced that Mastercard is introducing a Mobile Payments Gateway that delivers end-to-end mobile payment solutions.
This is definately a milestone for mCommerce. It will be much easier to send and receive money through the mobile device than it’s occurs currently and it will boost initiatives due to technologies like these. Anyone within the payment cycle can build quick and cost-effective customized mobile solutions which all will serve to offer a convenient and secure -mobile- payment process.

Mastercard’s mobile innovation certainly responds to the market needs and our changing lifestyles, like mr. Peirez describes:

“The Mobile Payments Gateway will help to make mobile payments a way of life for mobile phone users around the world,” said Joshua Peirez, group executive of Innovative Platforms for MasterCard Worldwide. “Through our global, integrated payment network we are efficiently connecting financial institutions, merchants and consumers together to mobilize MasterCard payment solutions in a way that truly reflects today’s on-the-go lifestyles.”

Vivo, the largest mobile operator in Brazil along with Itaú Unibanco and Redecard will be the first ones to partner up with the gateway.
Mastercard will introduce its Mobile payments solutions in select markets around the world. Adoption, usage and diffusion are important for a further development of Mobile Commerce and Marketing.

Do you think this will prosper new Mobile initiatives?

A whopping 17 entries from the Asia Pacific region are included as finalists for the Fifth Annual Global Mobile Marketing Awards. It truely shows the potential of this region for Mobile Marketing and as frontrunners of its Innovation.

Secondly, the region is the fastest growing mobile market which will put Mobile companies in the spotlights, being the carriers of intelligence and experience and offering massive opportunities for marketers in reaching and engaging with their target groups.

Below you’ll find an introduction on some of the finalists and it’s taken from the press release by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA):
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It was a delight to read about PitchTV by Virgin Atlantic, it’s a great way for entrepreneurs to pitch their business amongst the many travellers which will be aired onboard and also be available on Richard Branson’s blog.

Taken from the PitchTV Introduction page:

We’re now inviting entrepreneurs in search of investment and exposure for their business ideas to upload short video pitches.

Budding entrepreneurs are given the unique opportunity of pitching their ideas directly to the hundreds of top business professionals who regularly fly with Virgin Atlantic. Who knows, you could be watching the next big idea right here! [...]
The community will vote for their favourite video pitches and each month, the winning videos will feature as part of our PitchTV show which will air on our inflight entertainment system – gaining exposure to the hundreds of business professionals who regularly fly Virgin Atlantic. Anyone interested in hearing more about the most popular entrepreneurs’ business ideas will then be able to get in contact and maybe help take their ideas further. If you’re a budding entrepreneur, we’re giving you the unique opportunity of getting your ideas by top business professionals from around the world onboard Virgin Atlantic planes as well online. Who knows – among the viewers might be someone with the power to bring your idea to life.

Read the webpage for further instructions to upload your pitch.

This is a good example of Social Convergence where there’s made intelligent use of the onboard TV in combination with the Web in a social way to create value both for the -relevant- business viewers and the businesses who will pitch.
As said by mr. Negroponte of MIT “Soon every surface will be a display” and Virgin Atlantic made great use of this, a cross-screen/media social business experience.

Next week the new Eligo platform by Seac02 will be released, and I definately am looking forward to it.

Eligo provides a painless Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technology in order to keep and stay focused on your vertical business instead of the underlying enabling technology. Eligo runs on Seac02′s own technology LinceoVR.
In a few clicks you’ll be able to develop custom Virtual and Augmented Reality vertical solutions: from web viral marketing, to stand-alone applications and from e-commerce to mobile applications.

Some of the interesting features of Eligo are the following:
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Morgan Stanley’s Economy + Internet Trends is full with information about key mobile trends, which is worth the read and realise that Mobile something to look out for.

The eight key themes which they foresee are:

Some of the slides I found most interesting are:
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