A Wider Net

I just learned about kameraflage, a company/technology/technique that creates images that can only be seen through digital cameras. This has some very interesting applications for marketing, communications, and exhibit design.

For starters, check out their applications page, which covers some great ideas right off the bat. In this section, they illustrate how to use the hidden messages as captioning for the hearing impaired. This way, no special devices need to be handed out. The drawback of having to watch through a camera may be acceptable for short presentations.

They also illustrate hidden billboards - an idea I once had using lasers and special filtering paper glasses. This one is far cooler since it relies on technology that almost everyone carries with them. You can use this to create hidden messages that act as billboards, as shown in the illustration below, or are used as part of a scavenger hunt for kids at a theme park or grown-up-kids at a corporate outing.

And finally, they illustrate garments with hidden images or messages that only appear when shot through a camera.

Not shown is a sort of copy protection, which would prevent people from videotaping or photographing a movie, exhibitor or concert.

I also wonder if someone will use this for some dirty fun by projecting images on a stage at, say, a political rally that can only be seen by the thousands of digital cameras in the crowd.

I’m not sure how available this technology is or, for that matter, how proprietary it is. Regardless, the idea of projecting images that can only be detected with a camera phone sounds pretty cool to me.

Sunrise Systems of Pembroke, MA, a leading manufacturer of custom and semi-custom LED signs, recently launched their semi-transparent LED curtain product shown below. Unlike the LED curtains of their competitors, this product is very transparent and looks great at shorter distances. Also, because it’s optimized for permanent installations, it has the right set of hardware to look nice up close - it’s a great architectural product.

I would consider this a nice piece in a large atrium, museum, or in a large trade show exhibit. This is an attractive, elegant LED product.

You can see more on their website, which is a little frustrating to navigate in Firefox - IE recommended.

Vizoo, a Danish A/V Production company specializing in 3D illusions, created tremendous buzz for their trendy fashion client Diesel. Models would walk the runway, surrounded by eerie blue floating images, mostly underwater elements such as jellyfish and turtles. The effect was stunning, creating an environment aptly titled “liquid space”.

The illusion was created by projecting onto transparent screens they called “foils”, which are probably either partially reflective acyrilic sheets or holoscreens. Technically, neither of these are truly “holograms” but that doesn’t change the fact that they achieved something stunningly beautiful. Sometimes it’s the elegant, creative use of simple technology on a grand scale that creates the most impact. Consider the Bellagio fountains as proof - an array of water jets that, by themselves, are not very impressive, but collectively choreographed by the artists at Wet Design, they create a world-class destination attraction.

That’s what we’re looking at - an effect that is usually smaller and decades-old - the “Peppers Ghost” effect. We’re seeing this simple and classic effect used on a scale so massive and in a manner so compelling, it is now totally new, and totally wicked. This sort of approach can work in many ways for creating impact at an event. Arrays of simple elements, painstakingly choreographed, can create a versatile environment and an unforgettable experience. For example, recently one company found a tiny remote-controlled water valve, bundled dozens of them together, and created a waterfall that can spell messages in mid-air out of water drops.

Wiffiti, the offspring of Somerville, MA based LocaModa creates digital signs and website objects to which anyone can send text messages for public viewing. It’s a way of creating a comment stream, a shout out board, or a stream of requests for a band or DJ to play. Seems like events can use this as a way to capture the pulse of the show, as a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming exercise, or countless other fun activities.

LocaModa has a powerful offering for mobile-phone-controlled digital signs. Rather than deploy a touch screen, which is fragile, not-very-hygienic, and typically limited to one user, signs that use mobile phones as their control mechanism open up all sorts of interesting possibilities, including two-way communications, group activities, after-hours secure applications through windows, and so on.

Microsoft officially unveiled Surface, an exciting new way of interacting with a computer. Think of it as a coffee-table computer screen that you can touch to manipulate files and media. But that basic description barely does this technology justice. For starters, the screen is “multi-touch” sensitive, like the iPhone (reportedly) will be - which allows you to use multiple fingers to manipulate media - zooming, stretching, moving, etc. Next, it wirelessly connects to devices you place on the surface like phones and cameras. Then you can drag images and movies in and out of those wireless devices as if they were part of the virtual surface. You have to see it in the video - it’s super cool.

This device is similar to MERL Diamond Touch and the Gesturetek Gestpoint table models, in that you view the content on a horizontal surface and manipulate it with your hands. But it appears to use the multi-touch control system shown at a recent TED conference, and the interface is simply amazing.

This will surely affect us in the media production and marketing industries. Here are some initial ideas:

• As a collaboration and visualization tool, this will be a powerful tool to sit around and view materials.
• In a trade show environment, it will make a great demonstration station. Not only can you give guided tours of your products but you can hand over control to anyone at the table and allow them to access media and fill out forms.
• Attendees can plunk their mobile device on the surface and drag some product shots and PDF’s onto their device for an ultra-slick self-service literature fulfillment kiosk.
• An auto dealership can use it to display digital brochures, then work through financing options and fill out a loan request.

I can’t wait to get one to play with. Dang! We just bought a new coffee table for our lobby… I guess this will just have to go in my office.

More information here and here

The brilliant inventor of the Hyposurface proudly reported that the Hyposurface was successfully exhibited last week at Bio Boston to tremendous acclaim. The Hyposurface is a wall of triangular “pixels”, each about the size of a Dorito, that can move in and out of the wall independently, swiftly, and deeply. As the wall moves, it creates stunning 3D patterns and simple phrases. It’s even interactive - responding to sound, voice, and touch.

If you’re familiar with those little pin matrix toys that allow you to press your hand into the pins on one side and see your hand on the other, then you have an image of what this is like - just imagine it 10 feet tall and 40 feet wide, and you’re getting there.

This is no simple beast to set up, and the budget is not for everyone. But it is irresistible to watch. The inventor proposed that there must be some physiological aspect to our vision that remains since the days of our hunter ancestors, because there is something uniquely compelling about a wall that moves. It is absolutely not the same as a moving image on a screen. Physical movement is simply different than shifting pixels.

We had the good fortune to host the product at our production facility a little over a year ago, and the potential was obvious. I’m delighted to see that someone had the wisdom to incorporate it into such a dramatic public display.

I’m sure you can imagine where they can take this technology down the road, as it finds more money and time. Smaller traingles, and ever-increasing resolution, followed by colored video pixels on the end of each triangle, and you have a three-dimensional jumbotron.

In the meantime, this is a centerpiece attraction for an event, a stage backdrop, or a trade show exhibit.

*update* - ok, I stand corrected - this entire installation was set up in one day by four people, all local labor. Very reasonable.

This LEGO sculptor built our logo (out of LEGO’s, obviously) for our trade show booth last year. We loved it. It tied beautifully into our “connected” theme which included a nice print mailer, and a lego-themed premium.

I’m mentioning him here because we finally noticed his hilarious case study about our logo on his web site. Now, if we had written something like that for our clients and posted it without approval, we probably would have gotten into a bit of trouble. But I love it, and I wish we could be as creative with our client case studies. This is typically tragically dull web content that he has made as fresh and fun as a logo made out of LEGOs.

Hooray for Widgets! You just have to love these cute tinkertoys of usefulness.

Yahoo has released Yahoo Widgets 4.0 (you may recall when Yahoo bought the widget system called Konfabulator). New improvements include superior performance and a Vista-like docking system that works on XP computers.

Widgets, a staple of the Macintosh OS and the new Windows Vista, are little applications that can users can select and sprinkle around their desktop or join together into a little tool conglomerate. They perform all kinds of functions ranging from the silly (cartoons-of-the-day, vote for best buns) to the useful (news feeds, alerts, information displays, calculators, sharing tools). Why am I getting this feeling of Deja Vu?
Recently we’ve seen a surge in branded widgets made to promote a service, like Priceline, or a product, like an upcoming movie or album. They provide useful functionality in return for a consistent place on your desktop. These are the electronic equivalents of a stapler branded “Remember to drink Coke at lunch” sitting your real world desk.

Some branded applications go beyond the mere “widget” and are called BDA’s or Branded Desktop Applications - but that’s another post for another day.

Yahoo Widgets - who says OS X and Vista should have all the fun?

Thanks again to Techcrunch for highlighting this release for us.

At the recent Asian Games, Element Labs provided a massive video screen built out of their Versa Ray product. Versa Ray is a weather-proof curtain material with bright LED pixels spaced three inches apart. When you use enough of it, you can produce stunning images of an immense scale - and the cost is surprisingly low. Curtains like this are routinely used for background scenery at rock concerts and large corporate meetings.

This example represents one of the largest LED video displays ever at over 120 feet tall and over 500 feet wide!

I find it tricky to write a post about a marketing campaign that resulted in the gridlock of the city of Boston, nearly a million dollars in emergency response expenses, and countless cases of irrational panic. Writing about it raises questions like “Am I giving undue attention to an inappropriate publicity stunt, thereby encouraging others to do the same?” and also “wait - was the problem the stunt, or the city’s reaction to the stunt”. I also find it tricky because it has already been covered by hundreds of other blogs.

As an attention-getter, the stunt worked. See ABC, CNN, WBZ Radio, Boston, (full coverage from Boston.com is here but may not be for long), and for a more insightful read, check out Making Light’s roundup.

This has truly received an undue amount of attention, especially in the city of Boston. These same devices were in place in 10 cities for weeks without gathering any attention. In fact, homeland security wasn’t even aware of them in the 10 other cities - think on that a bit… Perhaps I should feel safer living in the one city that took it seriously. Or perhaps I should add it to the same mental scrap book next to The Big Dig, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, and the Celtics, who have made it embarassing to admit to the rest of the country that I’m from Massachusetts.

Thinking back to the marketing aspects of this stunt - was it worth the $1 million in damages being sought by Boston Mayor Menino from Turner and their agency, Interference, Inc? Was it worth the legal fees and the costs to build them and execute across 10 major cities? Of course it was. Who but the lonliest of hermits isn’t now aware of the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force and their irreverent Mooninite’s?

But this campaign HAD to cause some kind of stir to succeed. Otherwise, as in the other 9 cities, it would have been casually dismissed by the masses and picked up by the same niche that already watches the show.

The book of “Bad PR is Good PR” will need a new chapter when this blows over.