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Iteration 1 - Secret Happiness | Dan | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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
