The Potential Of Beacon Technology

Basic but good insights to use and development of beacon technology.

As digital marketeers, we are monitoring and waiting for something more coherent that will bring better value for our clients. Current options are simply not scalable or cost effective.



Read more here.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/01/unlocking-the-potential-of-beacon-technology/ 

14 Emerging Digital Technologies that will Change the World

Can we predict the future?
Probably not.

What about the future of digital technologies?

Technologies are moving so fast that it seemed we are always trying to catchup. What would be the next big thing that would shake the digital world?

Here's an interesting article that looked at various categories of technology like electronics, networking and interfaces. Remember Minority Report?

Read more here.
http://vanspost.com/14-emerging-digital-technologies-that-will-change-the-world/ 

Apps that makes managing projects remotely a breeze

Companies in the digital and technology world are typically first movers in adopting new technology to improve productivity and collaboration.

The company I worked in (POSSIBLE), is no different. With our decentralised way of working and closely collaborative studios (aka offices) spread globally, any tools and processes that facilitate collaboration is welcomed.

This article is quite godsend when we recently had a reorg and i wanted to try something new in connecting the teams. Email as a channel is messy and difficult to track and hold accountability. I wanted a way to assign tasks, have followups and oversight without searching thru emails and holding inefficient catchup meetings. But i also wanted something simple to use. Used basecamp in the past, find it bloated.

Picked up Asana instead and gave it a test drive. Looked good so far.

Here's other apps that could be interesting to you.

Read more here.
http://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/10-apps-that-make-managing-projects-remotely-a-breeze.html 

Why we need Digital Wisdom?

This is an interesting article. But I would like to challenge it.

It conveys the idea that we need Digital Wisdom in addition to conventional wisdom.

Well, I suppose it make sense in this highly digital and fast pace world. I do not refute that. A whole generation of homo sapiens exist who do not know a world without smart phones, siri, laptops and Internet.

But take step back and hear me out. Do we control technology or does technology control us? Are we 'enhanced' by technology like what the article narrate or are we handicapped by it.

When was the last time you had a meal and did not checked your phone, for that email, that latest status update, that trivial message, that liked for the post you just made....or When was the last time you brushed aside a loved one because you were busy with your Mac, your phone, your game console....you get my drift here.

And did technology really enhanced us? How many of us followed blindly the directions given by the GPS, turn to a calculator to make a simple addition, rely on spellcheck for our proposal etc. Did we truly became smarter? The human brain is any amazing organ, a miracle of life. But like most parts of our body, it gets better the more you use it. Whether its judgement, memory or sense of direction.

I hope someone is studying this. Would the humans of the next generation be different from our parents? Where face to face conversations are replaced by digital interactions, where touch means cold smooth glass, where privacy is non existence, etc.

Maybe it should be titled "Why we need digital intelligence?"

Because we might be smarter, but maybe we are not wiser.

Read more here.
http://spark.qualcomm.com/salon/why-we-need-digital-wisdom

How interactive can a Print Ad be?

Wow. This is nice. Gimmicky for sure. But nice.
Lexus used a proprietary technology called CinePrint to create the effect that you see in the video. The Lexus 2013 ES would seemed to change colors, throb to music, turn on its headlights etc.

Nice multi-sensory experience that combines the sight, sound and touch. Next question would be. How interactive can your Next Print Ad be?




Read more and view the video here.
http://mashable.com/2012/10/09/most-interactive-print-ad-lexus/

The uncommon truth: Why can't we get taxis in Singapore when it rains

Ah. The uncommon truth. We try to use this alot in our work with clients. Find out beyond what they are saying. What is not the obvious?

Use of big data to the rescue.
A study was actually done on why can't we get cabs in Singapore when it rains. Now this is unusual because we have tons of cabs (or taxis as Singaporean like to call them) in our city state. We have like 5 cabs per 1,000 people. Compared that to 2.6 in Hong Kong, 3.3 in London and 1.5 in New York.

So why aren't we getting our cabs? Ask any Joe on the street, the answer would usually be more demand for cabs due to the rain. Cabs are really quite affordable in Singapore compared to other similar cities.

What the study uncovered was astonishing. GPS records of cabs was compared against weather satellite. The uncommon truth? The cabs were not zipping around like bugs due to high demand. In fact, they stopped moving.

Why? Because of cab company policies , the drivers are penalised in event of accidents (even if its not a fault of theirs). So most of them opt to just sit out the rain.

Read more here.
http://www.computerworld.com.sg/resource/applications/why-you-dont-get-taxis-in-singapore-when-it-rains/

Permanent data storage

How advanced do you think we are, in terms of being able to store information?

The most common medium that we have now would be paper, tapes, CDs, harddrives and memory cards.

You might say that we have progressed well in terms of technology. The memory cards we used now sure beats the floppy disks that I used back in the 1980/90s in terms of speed and capacity. But reality is, these medium of storage dun last very long. Worst, due to the technology advancement, we find it difficult to access old mediums. Try finding a disk drive to read your vintage 5 1/4in floppy disks. In another few more years, you probably will not be able to access your old CDs. Heck, most laptops nowadays do not even come with CD drives anymore. Go further, a decade into the future, I doubt anyone has USB connections.

But access aside, how long can our current means of information storage last? Paper can last several hundred years without significant deterioration under storage conditions in libraries and archives. Digital storage like your CD and HDD could probably last a hundred year at most. Magnetic tapes will last max of 50 years.

Compared to what the Egyptians did. They carved in stone. Those last for a few thousand years. Until now, we could not outdo them.

Someone invented quartz glass storage. These babies technically could last forever.
Wedding photos storage, anyone?

Read more here.
http://gizmodo.com/5946110/this-piece-of-glass-can-store-data-forever

Having our own labs.

Innovation is key in my industry.

Yet in most of the companies I worked in, research and development is managed haphazardly at best. During good times,a single piece of equipment or technology might catch the eyes & ears of management and kickstart a fury of activities to purchase/learn, trial and implement. Most of the time, it is a series of disconnected activities carried out by individuals out of their interest.

R&D projects compete for the same resources that works on paid client projects. There are often multiple start-stop cycles as different resource hops in and out of the R&D projects. Its tricky to manage such projects as internal requirements can change over time and there are usually tension between business (that wants to see business value) and IT (who are just excited to try anything new and innovative).

The current company that I'm with right now concluded on the same as well. Global HQ created a labs toolkit which contains the necessary information required to setup R&D labs  across all regional offices. This includes list of hardware and software to purchase, the type of packaged demos, possible areas to R&D into etc.

For once, we have budget set aside yearly to run these, would be really interesting to see how far we can bring the labs concept to in POSSIBLE Singapore. On plan we are looking at being able to showcases prototypes around:

• Augmented Reality 
• Proximity 
• Kinect 
• RFID
• NFC
• Scentbot
• Leapmotion 

Interesting times ahead. Let's see if I can manage to take a couple of videos of the demos in the near future.

Leap Motion gesture based interface

Ever since it was made popular by films like Minority Report (which I'm extremely proud to mention that Possible Worldwide's Chief Interaction Officer, Dale Herigstad was behind some of the UI concepts used in the film), using gesture to manipulate devices have been somewhat of a holy grail from a user experience standpoint.

Had the chance to work with Dale in the past, its almost next to impossible try to keep up with his ideas in UI with current available technology. He is always pushing technical dudes like me to the limit of what is feasible.

This gadget however looks really promising. Gesture based interaction with your computer to replace your keyboard and mouse. The ipod sized device allows you to control a computer as an I/O device with natural hand and fingers movements. 

The intro video on the site looks really good.

Only catch? Its not on sale yet. Expect delivery of the device in Dec 2012/Jan 2013.

Read more here.
http://www.leapmotion.com/

Image credits: Screen cap of leap motion video on http://www.leapmotion.com/

Where IT is going? Impacts on digital marketing.

CNET.com posted an interesting article recently on Where IT is going in the coming future. They reckon that the new IT buzz will be around Cloud, Mobile and Data.

I kinda agree to the 3 main points. Being seeing it moving towards that in the projects that we are increasingly handling. So what's the impact on digital marketing?

Here’s my take on the 3 main points in relation to Digital Marketing

Mobile

• Mobile devices would be more prevalent in both consumer and businesses.
• Everything we develop will have to consider mobile. Be it, websites, CRM campaigns (mobile optimised emails etc), touch friendly interfaces, display ads etc.
• Mobile Apps will be a big thing. Thin apps that will sit in the phone, use of cloud computing to make complicated processing.
• Mobile devices will capture a magnitude of data. (photos, videos, social media, web browsing, use of apps etc). These data would be stored on the cloud.
• Mobile devices are ubiquitous, they are always on and always by your side. Real time marketing based on proximity, location, time of day etc.
• Well-connected devices. Sharing of information and data between devices.

Cloud

• Due to limited processing power of mobile devices, complicated processing would be done on the cloud to improve performance.
• Moving away from actual physical server hosting. More and more, we are using cloud hosting to allow for flexibility and scalability to adapt to spikes in load due to marketing campaigns.
• Websites and applications are becoming more global and regional in reach. Depending on content delivery networks (CDN) like Akamai and AWS cloudfront to serve content.
• Able to quickly scale up for data storage.

Data

• Analytics would be a big thing for marketing. How to make sense of different sources of data and make recommendations for marketing?
• Change in the way data is stored or structured. E.g. NoSQL, Hadoop.
• Change in the way marketers understand data, increased use of data dashboarding tools.
• Use of cloud to store data that can quickly scale up when required. 

Read more here.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13556_3-57419230-61/where-it-is-going-cloud-mobile-and-data/

First steps..

I've been working in the web and digital marketing industry since 2003 and in the military since 1998. And I've always wanted a place to store all of the interesting reads I come across in my daily work and life.