DaxThink: Digital life

Totally blown away by something called Augmented Reality. Put simply, it allows you to see a real world environment supplemented by 3-dimensional video objects; a significant advancement on the blue screen concept that has been used in the movies for years.

To get a feel for what I am talking about, first watch this video of Radio 1's Big Weekend email. Those people who didn't get tickets to their free festival were given a link to experience one of the bands in their own home. "Band in Your Hand" allows you to watch The Fratellis in 3-D in the palm of your hand, and as you move it around, it follows you.



Then some research led me to a company called Total Immersion who have been playing with this technology successfully for a number of years. Their presentation of the possibilities at Demo 07 conference is mind blowing.



The possibilities are endless. As I did some more digging I found sites that talk about everything from a real-world talking guide, advanced children's books and surgeons being able to see ultrasounds of organs on top of the real organ they are operating on.

I have blogged a lot lately about the consumers shift to demanding a visually interactive experience, with everything from Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Photosynth and the beta of SearchMe, and this is another example of how technology will facilitate this shift.

As head of display for iCrossing I am looking for the ways in which this transition in user behaviour will open up new ways to do advertising, and the ideas are only limited by our imaginations.

eg1. Imagine being stood on the platform waiting for your train and you see a poster promoting a band you like - simply turn on the camera on your phone, point it at the poster and see a full 3D audio-visual clip of their headline track on the screen.

eg2. Newspaper advertising will come to life in front of you.

eg3. Walk into a travel agents and pick up a brochure; watch consumer videos of the hotels you are considering on your phone in your own home, event triggered by the images in the brochure.

Do you remember when microphones and headsets first appeared for mobile phones? I remember thinking it very strange watching someone walk down the street seemingly talking to themselves but actually holding a conversation through the joys of mobile and bluetooth. And now it has become accepted as normal (although I still refuse to use one!).

Well take that a step on. Place this technology in glasses and people will be walking down the street experiencing an augmented reality of their very own full of visual stimulus. A world of their own that is invisible to the rest of us.

These changes will impact search and advertising, as well as have wide ranging implications for the travel and entertainment industries.

I would have thought that most people who read this blog are probably members of LinkedIn - the business networking site. I found the site interesting at first but then struggled to really understand the long term value for me as a member.

I was able to run some searches to generate some new contacts, and it was certainly helpful for the recruitment process, but overall limiting.

So in the interests of being open and sharing, I found a great service called TopLinked.com. It shows the people on LinkedIn with the most contacts and facilitates a rapid process for you to add them to your list of contacts. It is true that you don't know these people from Adam, which is arguably against the ethos of LinkedIn, but they do have their uses.

By adding several of the Top 100 networked people to my own network I expanded my direct network to 266, but far more importantly, my overall network on that site now stands at over 5.6m business contacts.

Now LinkedIn becomes useful.

If I need a contact at a particular company I can search for it and am likely to find it, and can either go direct or use the network as a method of introduction. I have found candidates for staffing, direct contacts at publishers for ad deals and been able to map the org structure around a given contact at a client.

Highly recommended, and its quick and easy to do to.

I was shown a new search engine today called SearchMe.com, which is currently showing a beta version of a visual engine.

When you perform a search it produces SERPs in the style of Cover Flow that appears in iTunes.

I find this particularly interesting as I strongly believe that search will become a more visual and richer experience than it is today. For instance, I wrote recently about how Microsoft PhotoSynth is adding a new element to visual interaction by making use of the content stored in social networks such as Flickr.

There are multiple reports that show users' typical behaviour on search engines is often a multiple click strategy. This means that if the first result is not what they were looking for they click back and choose a second option.

What SearchMe does is to overcome some of these problems - you may not be able to read all the text but you get a very good idea as to whether that site will be able to serve your needs.

Would this change 'site optimisation' or NSO? Yes, I think it would. Suddenly pages would have to be designed to be concise and clear and the most important information shown more prominently so it could be scan read quickly by the user in a visual search listing. And isn't that better for the user?

I like to challenge the team to consider possible outcomes that may seem radical and unbelievable. To consider that something like SearchMe could overthrow Google by offering better results is hard to imagine because of the behemoth that Google is, but then again, wasn't Yahoo! in a similar position some years back?

We are in a media revolution that is being led by the consumer. The consumer doesn't care about the commercial power of Google Inc, they only care about getting the best possible experience.