A Wider Net

Two gadgets launched this this week that are worth mentioning here. The first is very well-known - the iPhone 3G. The second launched the day after to considerably less fanfare, but has big potential: The new HP TouchSmart2.

The iPhone is the easiest to talk about. The stories of it’s runaway success are second only to the stories of how it has completely changed the cell phone industry in the United States. Now the iPhone 3G is poised for a worldwide distribution at a price point that may very well keep it sold out for the rest of the year. Adding a support for the high speed 3G networks, better battery life, true GPS, and a host of software improvements that will be shared with it’s older brother and the iTouch line of media players, the iPhone 3G is a significant evolutionary improvement to the iPhone. At $199 and $299 for the 8 Gigabyte and 16 Gigabyte versions it is now cheaper than the Motorola Razor (at launch) and more functional than any handheld gaming system, all mobile phones, and many, if not most, laptop computers currently in use today. Some of us were a little disappointed at the lack of Flash support, lack of streaming video from the onboard camera, and lack of a 32 Gigabyte version, but this is still the coolest smartphone on the planet right now.

The HP TouchSmart 2 greatly improves on the previous model in form factor, functionality, and price. At $1300, it’s a pretty easy way to add touch and gesture control to a trade show demonstration kiosk. Take a look at the video on this link, but make sure you have the sound OFF first. You have been warned.

Nintendo’s creative master wizard, Shigeru Miyamoto, has blessed the gaming and pop culture world with Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Nintendogs, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. He is often called the “father of modern gaming” and is largely responsible for the runaway success of the Wii console. It is safe to say that when Shiggy talks, people listen. And that point has been clarified, solidified, and immortalized by a recent Time readers poll that places Miyamoto clearly at the top of the list of “most influential people in the world”.

I don’t have a big idea around this announcement other than to offer some digital applause to an industry maverick and creative genius. But since we’re talking about him as a top “influencer”, we should really pay attention to his latest prophecy.

Wii Fit, Nintendo’s latest phenomenon, hits the United States this month after a rather stunning bit of success in Japan. I would have thought that a fitness game would have about as much chance of succeeding in the gaming world as George Bush does of properly pronouncing “Nuclear”. Apparently the “new” gaming world whole-heartedly disagrees. Wii Fit, which comes with a unique accessory called the Balance Board, compels gamers to get off the beanbags and participate in body-rocking aerobics, yoga, and sports games. It’s well-designed, fun, and addictive. It is also selling like crazy - there have been about 2 million copies of Wii Fit sold in Japan - nearly matching the sales of the Sony Playstation 3 - a console that is supposed to compete with the Wii itself, not one of it’s game/accessories. In the UK, stores have reported selling Wii Fit at a rate of one every 4 seconds. Will it catch fire in the US, especially so shortly after the release of the highest-rated, fastest-selling, highest-grossing media title of all time, the ultra-ridiculously-violent Grand Theft Auto IV? Almost certainly, since the Wii audience, which is the largest segment if the US gamer population, can’t buy GTA for their console.

But other than giving you a shopping tip (pre-order it), and wondering why it didn’t come out in time for Mothers Day or the critical New Year’s Resolution day, I mention Wii Fit so you can start planning it as an incentive gift, as an interactive audience attraction at trade shows and mobile exhibits, and as an investment in your employees work/life “balance”. “Wii Fit won’t make you fit”, says the most influential person in the world, but it will make you aware of your body. Let’s see how we can use it to make people aware of you.

EMS 2008 ended last Wednesday, but there is still much to share. The exhibit floor contained more than 60 exhibits covering a wide range of event technology and services. As you might expect at a marketing summit, there was pretty much every type of audience acquisition tactic deployed there - SMS text message contests, the ol’ bring-the-thing-in-the-swag-bag-to-our-booth-and-enter-to-win-a-thing…. thing, great big steaming heaps of swag, big lead-gen contest giveaways, bikini’s and “brand ambassadors” (the linguistically neutered version of “booth-babes”), a guy projecting logos on the wall using a video-projector-on-a-stick, digital versions of “spin the wheel to win a prize”, oxygen bars, massages, video games, and the old standby - chocolate. I did not, however, see any sweaty Buddha’s on unicycles. Someone was asleep on the job.

Here are three of my favorites:

KAON Interactive featured a unique kiosk solution, called the v-OSK (see example screen below), that allows exhibitors to showcase products that cannot be on the show floor due to size or other constraints. An entire library of products can be featured on the interactive touch screens and operators can easily get a feel for the product by rotating and zooming around a photo-accurate 3D model. Having produced many kiosks of this type of over the years, I think this is the slickest virtual product demo solution I have seen. It isn’t 3D stereo, but I imagine that is the next step in this product’s evolution. I was particularly impressed that the assets and most of the interactive experience can be replicated online as well as on the kiosk, making the solution immensely more valuable. KAON can produce these as a turnkey service but they also work with production and design agencies for content creation, including model building.

Pixman, the army of ambassadors-for-hire schlepping 30-pound knapsacks connected to LCD-monitors-on-sticks that hover over the wearer’s head like a freakish square digital halo, were the ones with the video-projector-on-a-stick. They obviously like to stick stuff on sticks. But they also like being the center of attention, which is good because they usually are. They have upgraded the LCD monitor knapsack rig to include a qwerty keyboard built into the arm band of the wearer for data entry - sort of what Wonder Woman’s amazon bracelets would look like if Microsoft made them. The projector-on-a-stick was very clever as a way to sneak a video onto a surface and then turn and run when the fuzz get the call. All of their technology supports their “nomadic media” tagline - media that can wander and deliver a message to a large event from within the crowd.

Last, but not least, I liked the Immersa-Dome from Aardvark Applications - a rentable sensory thrill ride that bombards you with immersive video, programmable scents, wind, seat vibration, and wrap-around sound. They can even add interactivity and high definition video. Since throughput is an issue with this one-seater device, I think the price is a little steep, but if you have the space and budget, and if you need to get someone immersed in the sights, sounds, and smells of a brand - then this is the coolest way to wrap that all in one. They also make multi-sensory theaters for larger crowds, but they aren’t quite as immersive. Considering how dorky you look sitting in the chair with your head inside a dome that makes you look more than a little like the Martian from Bugs Bunny, the theater may be the way to go. Use your own judgement to gauge the dork-tolerance of the crowd.

Looks like AT&T will finally deploy 12 stores worth of Microsoft Surface interactive displays. For this, we cheer and do the cha-cha. All 12 stores are located in only 4 cities. For this we put our cha-chas back in the bag.

I’m jazzed to see this cool technology in use at last. While I wish they would move faster, as we have a line of interested clients that runs right out the back door into the street, but I appreciate their slow and methodical approach to releasing it only when it’s ready. After all, Vista, Zune, and the XBOX 360 could have all used more incubation time (although some would argue that Vista stayed in the egg too long and spoiled).

According to Engadget, this in-store kiosk will allow you to place two phones on the surface, the one you’re buying and the one you currently own, then transfer contacts and stuff from one phone to the other by simply dragging and dropping. Funny - I thought having the store clerk do that was simple enough. But I think the OTHER applications of surface will make more sense - comparing features of multiple phones, playing with demo assets, exploring coverage maps, etc. (things the store clerk generally can’t wrap his head around.) I can’t say I love the pictures of the in-store display, but I love the Surface itself. As they continue to refine the application, adding drag-and-drop support for ringtones and wallpapers, for example, this will only get better and better. When people actually try it, I predict they will talk about Surface more than they talk about their new phone. Since the iPhone won’t be part of the display, this is pretty much a guarantee.

Microsoft announcement here

Thank you Engadget.

Zero tech:

Place one in the center of your booth. Hire 2-4 drummers to sit there with laptops or iPhones, appearing to check email. Then, have them spontaneously start a beat together. Call it the “Rhythm of the (fill in your industry or segment here).” Then have them stop and return to email as if nothing happened. Reminds me of dinner at my house, except we call it “fidgeting.”

Found on Gizmodo.

Motion Computing, maker of the impressive C5 medical tablet computer, has released a new rugged mobile tablet PC, the F5, an impressive field sales device. We have been fans of tablet computers for field sales and exhibit applications for many years. We find them to be excellent for one-to-one or one-to-few presentations and they make great tools to put in the hands of customers for impromptu interactive experiences.

The F5 is even better than your typical tablet because it was designed with this application in mind. For starters, they ruggedized it and made it fairly light (actually, it weights the same as the MacBook Air.) They added a handle to make it easier to carry and to hold. And they added extra features such as wireless internet connectivity, a camera, RFID and barcode readers, speech recognition, and even theft prevention to make it an outstanding device for the field.

Some applications for this are somewhat obvious: field presentations, data gathering, site surveys, and real time estimates with access to full CRM data. But I also see this as a great exhibit gadget.

Let’s imagine that you have a large trade show exhibit with many product groups. You can hand one of these devices to everyone who registers at the reception desk. They bring it with them as they tour the booth. After filling out some basic information, the device plots a tour through the booth and guides the visitor along. As they tour the booth, the tablet senses RFID tags and displays information about nearby products and how they relate to the specific needs of the visitor, based on the information they provided. Interactive activities may include video demos, 3D pen-based walk-through experiences of products or solutions, games, scavenger hunts, and augmented reality visuals (more on that on one of my next posts). At any point the visitor can opt to have product information sent to their office email or downloaded to a memory stick on their way out. The custom guided tour would provide great value to the visitor by tailoring the presentations to meet their needs, while providing tremendous measurement data for the exhibitor. Also, exhibitors may gather feedback and even content from visitors such as comments, ratings, photos, and videos, then share them on the show floor and online.

I will be writing more about this device as soon as we put it through its paces. In the meantime, you can get a chuckle at Engadget, where they compare the handle-held device to that other bit of hardware brilliance, the infamous Speak N’ Spell.

This holoCube 3D display looks like it will be worth a first-hand look. 3D is precisely one better than 2D, after all.

I’m considering it a probable no-brainer for PoP and Exhibits.

And the retro styling brought back memories of Logan’s Run and the whole curvy 70’s. What’s “old futuristic” is “new futuristic” again.

In a recent issue of Lighting Dimensions magazine, Chauvet Lighting took out two consecutive full-page ads promoting their new campaign “Green Thinking” as a method of driving traffic to their exhibit at Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) 2007, the premiere lighting trade show in the United States. It resulted in a two-sided page with mostly images of green leaves and white space. In fact, one side featured no product shots at all - just green, white, and this sentence:
“Chauvet is a leader in eco-illumination for the entertainment industry with the wides range of innovative, earth-friendly LED luminaires.”
I’m sure the folks at Philips Solid State Lighting (formerly Color Kinetics) would have some issue with that claim, especially since some of the Chauvet technology is licensed from Philips, but that’s not what this article is about.

Surprisingly, there aren’t many LED-based lighting manufacturers jumping heaving onto the “green” marketing bandwagon. You certainly hear about big stage shows talking about their switch to LED as a way to save energy, but not the lighting makers themselves, at least not in the entertainment space. I was very pleased to see the ad and decided to take a look at Chauvet to see what else they were doing with their “Green Thinking” campaign.

Unfortunately, they have not done much with their new campaign on their website. I was expecting (hoping, actually) that they had integrated it thoroughly into their corporate marketing and even their strategy. “Green Thinking” was only exposed on the website as a small element of a graphic promoting their tiny LED-powered moving spotlight called the MiN Spot. Also, their corporate mission has nothing in it about green values whatsoever. I am close to calling this a greenwashing campaign, but the LED lighting is a very green technology and I will simply suggest that they should try harder to highlight that.

There was a nice article on their site about an outdoor holiday tree lighting project they did for St. Paul, Minnesota. In it, they claim that the switch to LED lights dropped the power bills from $1,300.00 to approximately $130.00, and carbon emissions from 18.7 tons to about 4 tons, according to an estimate from the Minnesota State Energy Office. Pretty impressive! LED Lighting has become a highly effective and technically viable solution for events and while it does cost a bit more to specify, is a reasonable way to reduce energy costs on your events and exhibits.

Chauvet, a company best known in the nightclub market, really made it’s presence known at LDI by winning Best Big Booth. They captured that booth experience on video and delivered it through their website. While the video was way too long at 45 minutes, I heartily applaud the use of video to extend the reach and value of their booth. The also have their own YouTube video channel but the LDI booth tour is not on there (length issue, maybe?).

In summary, I give high marks to Chauvet for playing the green card in their LDI booth promotions, but low marks for not integrating it onto their website and corporate mission. Also, I love their use of video and their channel on YouTube - they just need to package the booth tour better. If you’re considering the impact of lighting on your next event, talk to a good lighting designer. Most professional lighting designers are now well-versed in the ins-and-outs of LED and other low energy lighting solutions. If you have set goals to make your events or exhibits more green, then LED lighting should be part of your plan.

Gizmodo has a nice top 10 booths of CES roundup. I would bet this is the only gallery of its kind in which Peter Frampton is depicted as a “top booth”.

EDIT - And Engadget added something of a booth gallery, too.

Or you can just check out the rapidly growing Flickr pool tagged CES2008.

The bloggers from Gizmodo ran amok at CES with a tiny portable IR transmitter that shuts down almost any TV screen in sight. The fact that CES, with 1.85million square feet of TELEVISIONS wasn’t prepared for this even though the devices have been around for years, is fairly surprising.

This sort of prank isn’t unique to CES, so exhibitors at any show will want to heed this vivid warning and block their IR ports. In the meantime, I have to work on not laughing every time I see this video of the prank in action.

EDIT - The blogger has been officially banned from CES, and additional actions against Gizmodo may also be taken.