MIT Project Oxygen: Overview
I've only watched the first video on the page below (Cricket), but this is, with minor exceptions, EXACTLY how I envisioned the future of computing facilitating daily life. Right down to finding the nearest location for media to play for you.

I don't know if I feel vindicated or robbed, but check it out anyway.

MIT Project Oxygen: Overview
- posted @ 1:39 PM 0 comments

 
Marketing: Using SMS to Capture Ad Response
Here's something that occurred to me the other day. There's nothing I can do with it at this point, so I thought I'd just throw it out there.

Capturing Your Advertising Audience
The Problem
You’ve paid good money to get your message in front of the right offline eyeballs. You’ve got your call to action, and you’ve been on the ball enough to include the address of a relevant web site where people exposed to your ads can go to continue their experience with your brand and, most importantly, opt in to an ongoing email campaign where you wow subscribers regularly with customer-focused, brand-appropriate content.

But something continues to nag you. You’re response rates are in line with what you’d expect. Maybe even a little better…but…you can’t help but wonder if there is a way to capture more of those people who see your ad.

And why shouldn’t you? The joy of the Internet age is that you can use your traditional media advertising to draw potential and actual customers into an ongoing dialog with you where you can increase their affinity to and recollection of your brand, deepen loyalty, and drive purchase and/or escalate consumption frequency. Yay!

The Solution
Ok, you’ll probably want to sit down for this. It’s a big one.

With all of these SMS-capable phones in the pockets of consumers pretty much all of the time these days, an acquisition method that can tap into SMS as a means of opening an ongoing dialog with a consumer could tap a very large market of individuals interested in extending their relationship with your brand beyond the ad they are being exposed to, but don’t have immediate access to a computer.

I know, you’re thinking “Welcome to the modern age. SMS was so American Idol-ago.” Yes, it’s true: American Idol made a big splash with their SMS-enabled voting process. Viewers were lured in large numbers to extend their commitment to the program by not just being a passive participant, but by voting in a manner that was even easier than the kind of phone-in voting that’s been popular since the 1980s, if not before. It captured the viewer’s imagination, made them feel they had more direct influence on the show, and gave them an excuse to use the gadgets on their fancy portable phones. No doubt about it, American Idol opened the door; but, to date, no one has walked through it.

Picture a world, if you will, where getting more information about something you are seeing or hearing about is as easy as sending an SMS message to a phone number. Want the information to appear in your email box instead? Include your email address in the body of the message and away you go. What could be easier?

Want to get the daily/weekly specials from your favorite restaurant when they’re released? Send a message to their subscription number.

Want to find out who the guests will be each week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? Send an SMS message to their subscription number (conveniently displayed during the show’s offer to get free tickets).

Want to get Circuit City’s monthly newsletter for home theater pro wannabe’s? Send your email address in an SMS message to their subscription number.

Get the idea? When your favorite brand is saying something you want to hear more about, you can just whip out your cell phone and subscribe to more information on the spot.

The idea could even be extended to things like newscasts. Want to find out more about a particular news story as the information breaks? Send the article ID and your email address (or not, if you want the news in SMS form) to the news program’s subscription number.

The Process
A person is exposed to a marketing message.

That message includes a call to action for SMS users (potentially among others, like phone or web).

The person, interested, sends an SMS message to the listed number, either with, or without their email address in the body of the message.

An SMS gateway accepts the message and routes it to the appropriate location for processing.

The message is parsed for an email address, and the number, with the email address if included, is added to the company’s list for the current campaign.

If an email address is specified, a verification email requiring a click to confirm is sent to the email address.

The next time an SMS update is sent as part of the company’s campaign, a message is sent to the person, unless they included their email address.

The next time an email update is sent as part of the company’s campaign, a message is sent to the person if the included their email address.

The Challenge
The biggest challenge to this approach will be educating the message recipient about what the SMS option means and how to use it. Some enterprising companies hoping to capitalize on the early adoption of this process will have to use a fair amount of their messaging space letting potential users know the benefits of the system, and just how easy it is to use.

Likely a standard way to present the SMS call to action will also have to be developed so that a message recipient will recognize it immediately for what it is.

- posted @ 12:14 PM 2 comments

 
Future Gear: What's Next: Fleeting Experience, Mirrored in Your Eyes
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > What's Next: Fleeting Experience, Mirrored in Your Eyes

Will this be the next major leap in human-computer interfaces? Maybe, but my bet is on infrared to server the same purpose. It seems much lower tech and therefore more likely to actually be usable any time soon. It seems to me that the same amount of gear is required infront of they eye, so there is no advantage there, and doing image processing on a reflected pupil has to be a lot easier than doing image processing and interpolation of an entire photo for each frame of video.

I should also point out that the developers of this technology state that they may be able to get information from old movies and photos to determine what the subject/actor was seeing and looking at.  This lends some credibility to my counter of Arthur C. Clarke's statement in "Profiles of the Future" that "No amplifier can recapture the words you spoke a minute ago...".  We're not there yet, but it does seem like we're getting a bit closer.

- posted @ 9:21 AM 0 comments

 
Recreating the tribe: Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon
- posted @ 8:16 AM 0 comments

 
InformationWeek > Wearable Technology > New Jacket Contains Telephony And MP3 Player > July 26, 2004
InformationWeek > Wearable Technology > New Jacket Contains Telephony And MP3 Player > July 26, 2004
- posted @ 12:11 PM 0 comments

 
Technology Review: Messaging Tool Taps Social Nets
Technology Review: Messaging Tool Taps Social Nets
- posted @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

 
Thinking About the Future: The Transformation in Isolation Fallacy
Just thought I'd take a quick second to point out another fallacy that people fall into when they think about the future: Transformation in Isolation.

I'm reminded of it as I listen to Ray Kurzweil's discussion on NPR, linked to from an article below, where he states it outright: "A common that mistake people make when they consider the future is to envision a major change...as if nothing else was going to change in the world."

Part of the thing that makes predicting the future so very difficult is that so many things are changing at once that it makes it very difficult to divine what will affect what.  Radical technology, for example, doesn't spring upon us in a day or even a year to catch us unawares.  Typically we've lived with the technology in various forms for many years before it's even functional at the level it was predicted to be at when it was first released.

To me this casts a bit of doubt when I hear doom-sayers talking about how we will be destroyed by technology.  Not that I think that it can't happen, but just that it's unlikely to happen very quickly and, that being the case, we are likely to have some time to recognize and correct the problem.

Anyway, I was talking about Transformation in Isolation, which rears its head it the largest of breeding grounds for future-thinking fallacies: Hollywood.  Very often the theme of a future-set movie is oriented around a particular technology and how it sweeps the world for good or ill, almost never considering all of the other things that would also be advancing at the same time.

The single greatest aspect left out of this kind of thinking is social change; and most importantly, negative social change.  People are finiky, and get turned off by the darndest things.  Just because something looks like it is the best thing since sliced bread, never underestimate the power of sliced bread.

I need to spend a bit more time refining this idea, but hopefully you get the idea.

On a different note, I want to point out that Kurzweil is likely suffering from something I mentioned a while back, which is the estimation that we are just on the verge of solving some world-changing problem.  He believes we will be able to extend life dramatically, perhaps even indefinitely, in the next 20 years or so.  While I'm firmly hopeful about this, I'm guessing that it won't be as easy as he thinks.  As we get closer and closer to solving the various problems related to long life, I'm guessing they will become more and more complex.  So, while he says 20 years, I'm guessing more like 50-75.  (I'm thinking I'll call this the "Almost there" fallacy.)

Still, we've gained 40 years on to our lives since the 1800's if Kurzweil is to be believed, so it's not all that out of the question that we'll be able to keep pushing the age people can live to for a while longer, even if we may have to invest exponential energy in it for linear gains.

I wonder if the age of the oldest living person has improved over the last 200 years.  I wonder if the number of people that live to be what was the oldest age 100 years ago is significantly greater than it was 100 years ago.  I have a suspicion that curing cancer may just lead us up to the fact that there is a wall at about 100 years that is not related to any particular disease, but has to do with things that will only start being understood in the next 20-30 years.  Of course I have no evidence of this, just a feeling like we're "Almost there".

- posted @ 6:49 PM 0 comments

 
Living Long Enough to Live Forever
Living Long Enough to Live Forever
- posted @ 1:27 PM 0 comments

 
RFID chips on kids makes Legoland safer - silicon.com
RFID chips on kids makes Legoland safer - silicon.com
- posted @ 1:24 PM 0 comments

 
Schoolchildren to be RFID-chipped - silicon.com
Schoolchildren to be RFID-chipped - silicon.com
- posted @ 1:21 PM 0 comments

 
3D Coming into the Maintstream
Australian IT
- posted @ 1:17 PM 0 comments

 
Yahoo! News - CBS Head Says Would Fight Fines Over Janet Jackson
Yahoo! News - CBS Head Says Would Fight Fines Over Janet Jackson
- posted @ 7:52 AM 0 comments

 
The Lexus Minority Report Experience
The Lexus Minority Report Experience
- posted @ 9:44 AM 0 comments

 
Audi World Site > Experience > I, ROBOT
Audi World Site > Experience > I, ROBOT
- posted @ 8:47 AM 0 comments

 
InfoWorld: Should everyone always know where you are?: July 09, 2004: By Wayne Rash : NETWORKING : STANDARDS : WIRELESS
InfoWorld: Should everyone always know where you are?: July 09, 2004: By Wayne Rash : NETWORKING : STANDARDS : WIRELESS
- posted @ 9:24 AM 0 comments

 
Tivo Style Video in Police Cars
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1478&trk=nl
- posted @ 7:48 AM 0 comments

 
Technology Review: Mega Video Enables Virtual Window
Technology Review: Mega Video Enables Virtual Window
- posted @ 7:41 AM 0 comments

 
All your base are belong to us - Official Video Site
All your base are belong to us - Official Video Site
- posted @ 7:38 AM 0 comments

 
'Billboards' that walk, talk, and even flirt a little | csmonitor.com
'Billboards' that walk, talk, and even flirt a little | csmonitor.com
- posted @ 7:24 AM 0 comments