A Wider Net

Bag warfare. If you have ever exhibited at a trade show, you know what this is all about. Whoever gives out the biggest free bags at a trade show wins, because the attendees inevitably end up stowing everyone else’s bags inside the largest bags. The giver-outer of the biggest bag gets an army of brand ambassadors while the rest of the bag-donors get to have their brand, and their good will, literally trashed. Largest bag wins.

The gauntlet has been thrown down with the Show Cart. You can fit everyone’s bags in here, plus a generous daily helping of SWAG, product literature, and samples. Just think about how many fuzzy dice, inflatable hammers, and LED-illuminated USB shot glasses you can fit in these babies!

So - next time you’re running a tiny booth at a show for the first time, consider handing out these roll-around shippable weapons of bags disruption.

Gesturetek, makers of some of the coolest gesture-based interactive displays and software products, recently announced an interesting upgrade to their Screen Xtreme product. Screen Xtreme is a compelling digital signage product that allows the user to interact with the sign simply by passing in front of it. A camera picks up their motion and converts it to a variety of effects and controls. Users can point or wave to control the experience. Often times this experience involves “playing” with a sponsor brand. In one example for the Venus Razor, the screen is filled with colorful flowers, and when the user waves their arm, the flowers scatter as if the user created a virtual breeze. In other examples, the arm wave causes a page flip to additional content. Since the sign can react to someone who merely walks by, it can attract attention far more effectively than a simple video screen or static sign.

The announcement states that their Screen Xtreme system now supports a variety of standard Active X controls, which allows the software to run in coordination with standard digital signage software. Using this approach, retailers and exhibit marketers can produce an informational digital sign that features a highly interactive portion, rather than dedicating the entire sign to the interactive element. That way, the interactive eye-catching part can be the sponsor or big promotional area that pays for the sign, while the rest can be utility information that provides value to the viewer. Everybody wins that way.

In the picture above, which I grabbed from the video on their site, you can see a typical digital sign with a variety of content on the lef side and bottom. The large image shows the President of Gesturetek interacting with the Venus brand by moving his body and arm in front of the camera. Notice how the primary brand image in the lower right is in front of the rest of the interactive, so he can’t mess that part up. This layering effect is a nice bonus so you can be sure to have a sponsor’s logo present at all times.

In fact, the layering capability is core to most of their effects. In many cases, a wave of a hand pushes an array of virtual objects around on the screen, temporarily revealing an image behind them. Eventually the objects manage to flow back onto the screen to once again cover the image. It is that sense of interaction and discovery that makes these types of displays fun and engaging. Now that they can pair up with more traditional signage apps, they just got a whole lot more practical

For more information:
Gesturetek Press Release

Microsoft is bringing Surface to Boston for a public viewing at the Sheraton on Saturday. Details are available on this Microsoft Developer blog. This may be your best chance to see this exciting new technology firsthand as they roll it out through Sheraton hotels and a handful of other launch partners over the coming months.

Touch technology makes an incredibly intuitive user interface for a variety of applications. Touch kiosks and ATMs, when well-designed, have made our lives easier in many self-service solutions. The runaway success of the Nintendo DS handheld game system, which features touch control, has taught us a great deal about human/computer interaction and preferences. Sony has even introduced touch controls on the backs of their digital cameras. But those examples are nothing compared to Surface.

Surface features multi-touch capability, so you can interact with more than just one finger (think iPhone on steroids). It also features a ton of technology under the hood to recognize objects placed on it’s surface and interact with them digitally. It’s not a touch screen - it’s a whole new way of interacting with content.

For more information about Surface, check out Microsoft’s Surface page or my previous post.

Wovin makes a series of unique textured wall materials with surprising versatility. Using a proprietary set of frames and interwoven “tiles”, a Wovin Wall looks literally like a giant weave of stuff. In fact, a wall made of tiles using their wood laminate finishes looks surprisingly like a giant basket weave.

But that’s just the beginning: Wovin materials also include translucent polypropylene for a backlit colored wall, metal laminates for a wild industrial look, and printed materials for a 3D mosaic image tapestry.

They also have a linear “wave wall” which creates horizonal strips that dip in and out of the wall in a wave pattern. These can also be made of translucent backlit materials.

Wovin Wall

Look what popped up at Neiman Marcus: Jeff Han’s Interactive Touch Media Wall, from his company Perceptive Pixel. Prices start at $100,000.

This reminds me of the days when Sears used to sell cars in their catalog, along with underwear, blenders, shingles, and radios. Perhaps Neiman Marcus has identified a mass market for ultra-high-end interactive walls?

Regardless, I’m delighted to see it there, because it may mean we’re a little closer to being able to get one into our clients hands. Since Microsoft has declined to sell Surface (a product reported to be designed by Jeff Han’s group) to anyone but a select group of launch partners for now, this appears to be the best opportunity to sign up for one for your trade show exhibit, lobby, demo room, or museum.

While you’re shopping for six-figure interactive media walls, be sure to add slippers , sunglasses, and a fine carpet to stand on while you use it.

Oh, and the interactive media wall apparently qualifies for free shipping. Hold them to it.

Found (believe it or not) on UnCrate

In the latest Archi-Tech magazine, a small photo of some really cool bumpy plastic caught my attention. It turns out that Acrylex has been busy with several new products:

Acriglo, a new alabaster-like material for lighting panels, will continue to glow blue after the power is removed due to photoluminescent goo buried within the material.

Brushed Metallics create the look of brushed metal laminates in an easy-to-manipulate acrylic.

And Impressions, the bumpy plastic I mentioned, is a new line of textured acrylic sheets. Since everyone knows the best bumpy plastic can’t rival the visual quality and variety of the best bumpy glass, it will be interesting to see what they’ve come up with here. You can’t have enough varieties of bumpy see-through stuff. Shine your laser pointer through it and play some Pink Floyd.

They have more new products worth a look - frosted materials, glitters - all interesting looking stuff if you’re into materials.

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.

Moss Inc, the world’s largest tensioned fabric display maker, recently joined forces with Nichols Inc, to form what they call “the most comprehensive manufacturer of tensioned fabric structures, display hardware, and printed graphics in the world.”

To put it in visual terms:

The folks who make this stuff:

have merged with the folks who print on that stuff and also make this stuff:

What does this mean to us? Lower prices, for one. Also, we get greater variety from a single source and better worldwide support.

And in case you have put it completely out of your tensioned fabric memory, we have come very far since they days when every single event was using these things below as cheap scenery; what I call the “egg splatter” look, and others called the “I’ve run out of good ideas” look:

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

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.