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Snacks, Aardvarks and ideas: media sandbox update event | Clare Reddington | News30 people gathered in the studio tonight to share ideas, progress, tapas and beer at a Media Sandbox event. Designed to update the community on how projects are getting on, the event also served as an opportunity to extract knowledge from the gathered crowd of innovation, web, TV, mobile and social media people.
"Mobile networks were actually built originally to carry voice. People forget this" Sam Machin, Orange
Nomos Media kicked off with an overview of how their AudioEnable mobile podcasting platform is progressing (so far easier than they expected). They are using the .NET compact framework for development, initially just for Windows Mobile as it is the schools' platform of choice. Having cracked basic functionality with a test device, the next phases will include file management, compression, upload and editing functionality (potentially the more difficult bits). Richard Hull from HP Labs and Sam Machin from Orange jumped in with some technical questions around encoding and Brian Condon asked the Audioboo in the corner question. Part of the discussion was around the user need to upload recordings 'made in the field'. Could they be uploaded later? Could the application instead use telephony to dial and record straight to a server (cue Sam's brilliantly dry comment). In the wider project, Radio in Schools is still being taken up rapidly across the UK, with schools using it to create audio newsletters to parents, communicate with twin schools in India and record school plays. "We created a platform and they are running with it".
"Stunningly we have made one sale already. And they jumped through many hoops to do it"
Next came Calum Lasham from Street Art Dealer who opened with an explanation of QR codes, lamenting the lack of UK uptake in both QR and mobile micro-payments. One of the aims of this project is to spread the gallery across the city; enabling artists to sell their work directly and cut out the middleman. As QR can encode a lot more information than a normal bar code and you can lose 70% of an image and still scan it, they are perfect electronic price tags for the street. Having sold one print already, they are planning a test installation with an unmanned gallery in Broadmead, but still have many challenges around the lack of parity in scanner quality across phones (I rate Optiscan for the iPhone), trust and payment mechanisms.
At this point we took a break and I conducted some 'special' research of my own, ripping and crumpling QR codes to see just how robust they are. My very scientific study says crumpling is fine, ripping and putting back together is sometimes not and you can lose rather less than 70% and not have a chance of reading anything. But I still think they are good.
"Big brother and Crimewatch are the most success interactive TV formats ever"
When Rik Lander started the Viral Spiral Sandbox project, he proposed to investigate how the passive nature of watching TV could be combined with the many types of interaction made possible by computers and the internet. Rik discussed how many of the TV production people he had discussed his ideas with had expressed dismay at the idea of creating a live, interactive programme; outside of the rather crass output of Channel 5 quiz programmes, the two worlds rarely meet. Rather than starting from thinking about formats, Viral Spiral is looking at what may or may not work for audiences (both those who do and don't want to interact), testing studio-based games which utilise audience interaction through things like search and messaging, the project will then develop TV formats, depending on success. Rik gave an overview of their first test session (described in his blog here) and asked his Tricky interactive question of the week: is there an inverse relationship between audience participation and quality? Rik then employed the community brain with some technical questions around the search and ARG type audience tests he is planning next.
This seemed to be a good opportunity for me to try out Aardvark for the first time, a new social network which enables you to IM questions and get live answers from your network and beyond. So, I instant messaged out Rik's question "what is the standard delivery time for an SMS?" And this is the chat transcript of what came back:
17:47 Aardvark: Got it. I'll find someone in your network who knows about *consumer electronics* , and send them your question now. I'll send you an answer in a few minutes!
17:49 Jose L./25/M/Venezuela: 3 seconds, more or less.
17:50 clare reddington: Thank you. Does it depend on traffic?
17: 54 Jose: It depends on how far are you from the closest cell (antenna). the closest, the better transfer rate you'd get. Of course It is all theoretical, in practice there's more variables to consider.So there, not sure how useful Aardvark was, but a great event with lots of chatting, snacking and useful interjections. Thanks to all who attended.
Iteration 1 - Secret Happiness | Dan Course | Thought PieIn the Pervasive media Studio, we've listened to what HP told us about releases in Iterations. So the Secret Happiness mobile page is up there and looking skinny.
We're encouraging you to leave a picture of somewhere that makes you happy and a secret about why you're happy there.
Your secret form
http://www.thoughtden.co.uk/secrethappiness/The Gallery
http://www.thoughtden.co.uk/secrethappiness/gallery.phpWe'll be working on it today according to feedback already so be prepared to start seeing some lovely Bristol secrets.
What's the big idea? | Tom Dowding | Thought PieAs we presented this at the midway event I thought we better get it up on the blog! The whole idea of Happy Packages was to enable the people of Bristol to leave digital gifts around the city for their friends. The application we are working on which looks like fulfilling that most literally is the latest evolution of the Happy Stamps concept. We are calling it Happy Packages for that very reason.
The idea is that the user creates a trail where they choose the locations, the clues, and the rewards for a friend.
The process starts by visiting a website. Using an interactive Google map they can easily make the trail in minutes. Choosing the location is done by clicking on the map and dragging the markers to the desired places. The rewards can be images or text chosen by the user, so in-jokes and personal photos are encouraged to make it a really personal experience for the recipient.
This all gets bundled up and send to the friend's mobile, so they can start the trail straight away! It could be designed to be done in an afternoon or a month. Using GPS the application knows when the user is within range of one of the designated locations and supplies the appropriate reward. Only when they find the first location are they given the clue for the second, so they have to follow the trail in the order intended by the creator.
One neat use of this we have thought of is that the last location is the friend's favourite bar or coffee house and the reward is a voucher for a free drink. The application could make web requests for rewards so the content provided can be dynamic.
As not many handsets currently support GPS we are using a separate device called BlueNext (cost about £25) which gets GPS information and transmits it to a mobile via Bluetooth. Of course in the future lots more phones will have GPS!
We will look to be demoing this in the next week or so in (and out!) the studio. Although Happy Packages is all about Bristol there isn't actually anything to constrain the application to this city!
Have you seen QR?? | Tom Dowding | Thought PieWhen Thought Pie first came together (what a day), Mobile Pie talked a lot about these things called QR Codes and Thought Den thought that we were a bit obsessed with them. It was true that we desperately wanted to use them, but we heeded the warning of Film Producer Lord Puttnam, who said "Kill your darlings first", by which he meant, if there's something that you are really keen on doing, or are really proud of having made, drop it, because you probably want it in the project for the wrong reasons. We took his advice (though he clearly ignored it himself when using the squirty cream guns in Bugsy Malone).
However today the light switched on for Dan when I showed him how to send a text message via QR, and now it's wormed its way back into the plan. For those that don't know what I'm talking about (which happens alarmingly often), QR stands for Quick Response, and a QR Code is a 'Physical World Hyperlink' - a barcode with 2 dimensions of information designed to be captured on a phone's camera. It looks like this:
They can be used to encode text, phone numbers, URLs, and SMS messages! The only barrier is that you have to download a QR Reader onto your phone. We have found that the best one can be found here (it's free).
If you want to try it out, get the reader and snap the image above and it should create an SMS automatically that is preloaded with my phone number and a message! So come on try it out!!! It's said that 90% of all WAP usage in Japan is made via a QR code, which is staggering, so one thing that we want to achieve as part of Happy Packages is promote the use of QR to the general public in Bristol. We will be using it in at least one of our mini-projects. So stay alert!
QR codes | Ben Templeton | Thought PieThe ongoing debate about the relevance of QR codes takes an interesting turn it seems…an article on moconews details the results published by The Sun relating to The Sun's campaign to promote the use of QR codes among it's readership - interesting reading for all, in particular us at Thought Den and Mobile Pie who are contemplating using this technology in their MediaSandbox commission. Watch this space… READ FULL MOCO ARTICLE
