Tag: android

Air Check-in

Now there is an app that lets parachutists “check in” on Facebook as they free fall through the sky. 😎

Parachuting specialists Sky Company, wanted to promote their Facebook fan page. So with ageisobar Brazil they developed the Air Check-in app [iTunes Link] that allowed users to take pictures during their jump while recording their height. Then based on their 3G reception at the altitude post the details on the users Facebook timeline or store the check-in for later.

The check-in posts made by the app had a link to Sky Company’s Facebook fan page. So this not only helped boost their fan count on Facebook, but also helped increase the number of jumps with their team by 26%.

The above app also brought back memories of another parachuting campaign that was done by hotels.com in September 2011. This time the campaign was centered around the company’s high-speed mobile booking application, which allowed users to book rooms at its network of almost 140,000 hotels worldwide.

To promote their smart phone app they teamed up with extreme athlete and stuntman, JT Holmes, for a wild and exciting digital demonstration to prove just how easy it was to book a room while “on the fly”. 🙂

How does it feel through Google Glass?

Google has recently released a new demo video of the highly-awaited Google Glass device. The video shows how the Google Glass UI would work in real world situations i.e. jumping from a plane and swinging on a trapeze. 😉

It is also said that Google is ready to hand out Google Glass units to non-developers. But one has to apply for them using the hashtag #ifihadglass on Twitter or Google+ and with 50 words or less, explaining how you would use Google Glass. Photos and videos can also be included. The deadline is February 27 and the competition is only open to US residents aged 18 or over.

Augmented Reality – Hyperlinking the real world

Is the end near for the QR code? It has been put to good use in countless innovative projects, but recently I am starting to see a drift towards technology that can produce similar results without the codes.

French company Capturio, lets users turn their t-shirts into a business card! Now Blippar in UK is creating augmented reality effects from printed images without any activation from a QR code. All the users needs to do is:

  1. download a custom app…in this case its from Blippar
  2. scan a Blippar enabled printed image (identifiable by a small Blippar logo) with their iPhone, iPad or Android device
  3. and begin interaction with the augmented reality 3D overlay seen on the screen…

In India I have seen Telibrahma using the same technology to increase the experiential engagements of brands via traditional mediums i.e. newspapers, posters etc.

Vodafone Buffer Busters

The Buffer Busters are the new Ghost Busters from Vodafone Germany. The telecom giant has launched an augmented reality mobile application that transforms German cities into a video game arena!

Starting from the brief “Vodafone is the fastest mobile network in Germany”, ad agency North Kingdom Stockholm has created a digital story revolving around so-called Buffer Monsters that represent everything slow in our everyday surroundings.

Users who play the game have to capture these monsters by using their iPhone or Android smart phones. When 50 monsters have been captured, the user needs to visit a near by Vodafone Store to dump them and continue playing. The best Buffer Busters will win a lifetime plan from Vodafone! 😎

The TVC supporting the initiative is also very well done…

Volkswagen virtual Golf Cabriolet app

The Golf Cabriolet is back after 9 years of absence, since production was stopped in 2002. Volkswagen together with Paris based agency ‘Agency.V.’ have come up with the worlds first augmented reality car showroom app for the iPad2, iPhone and Android.

The app lets you explore the vehicle and play with it’s features like opening the soft-top roof, rotating the car, checking the vehicle’s details, changing the body colour or the style of the rims. You can even take a picture of yourself with the virtual car and share each step of this experience through your social networks.

iPhone and iPad 2 users can download the app from the French iTunes Store. Android users can do the same at the Android market.

Now translate text in photos

The Google Goggles uses Google’s machine translation technology and image recognition capabilities to create an additional layer of useful context. So if the user takes a photo from his Android device, the application will translate the text in the photo in a fraction of a second! Currently it only supports German-to-English translations.

I can’t wait to the see the day when Google comes up with a realtime voice translation device. We will never need to learn another language. 🙂

Google Goggles

The iPhone has already had an app which allowed visual searches to be made for price and store details based on user photographed CD covers and books.

Now google has taken that to a whole new level. With the Google Goggles app (for Android phones only) you can take a photo, click a button and Google will analyze imagery and text in the photo for your search query.

Currently there are 1 billion images included in the index today. Here’s a demo video of this new visual search…