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Thought Pie Progress | Ben | Thought Pie
After some productive and painful discussions with Parkhouse of Rubber fame I think we're a little closer to finalising the research question of the Happy Packages project. From the off our proposal made reference to all the successful yet 'old' media in Bristol (magazines, posters, stickers, SMS shortcodes etc) but there's quite a gap in uptake between these and the more advanced 'pervasive' WiFi / GPS enabled devices such as those that support the mscape software.
What we find interesting (read challenging!) is how to encourage Joe Blogs to start using funky connected pervasive technology & applications so we are producing three or four projects under the Happy Packages umbrella to explore where the drop off and loss of impulse occurs.
The first, and most simple (the 'control' in our experiment) is called Happy SMS and we have secured a partnership with Venue Magazine. We have developed an Artificial Intelligence back-end that will interpret a text message sent to our special happy short code 60300 and reply with the most relevant what's-on information. For example 'happy music jazz centre of town' will return 'Venue Mag and Happy SMS recommend the Tantric Jazz Cafe, 8pm, live jazz with Henry Humperdink, free'. It'll be up and running when the Mobile Pie boys get back from their gallavanting…
The second, slightly more advanced in terms of technology and engagement, is called Happy Fountains. What some might think amounts to spamming, others define as 'contextual information distribution'! We are setting up a network of Bluetooth zones, or fountains, where users can pick up Happy content. The ultimate goal of this area of the project is to allow the targeting of specific users (unique MAC address) with specific content that reflects the relationship between the sender and recipient. However, we are yet to find the perfect hardware - trials are ongoing…
The third, more advanced concept, is Happy Stamps - this is an application that is downloaded to the phone that represents your passport. We hope to encourage people to visit the happiest areas of Bristol (defined by you the ugly masses!) in order to collect all the stamps. Just like that annoying friend of yours that didn't forget to ask for stamps in their passport on their gap year and now has all those lovely colourful foreign marks of authority. The Happy Stamps application will reward users with discount vouchers at Happy Package selected places round Bristol.
To drive traffic to the Happy Packages projects, and to encourage UGC, we also have something called Secret Happiness which lets users anonymously submit a sentence and image describing a Bristol place / activity / idiosyncrasy that makes them happy. These will be distributed via happy Fountains, Happy Stamps and happypackages.com, Facebook, MySpace etc
Also, for your interest, below is some development work we did on the Happy Packages character…
Happy Valentine Darling | Clare | News
Media Sandbox participants Ben Templeton (Thought Den) and Simon Evans yesterday met Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling as he opened the Pervasive Media Studio.
The Studio is collaboration HP Labs and Watershed and will be managed by iShed, to bring together the computing, communications and creative industries to explore the growing pervasive media environment. The Studio itself offers project development space, a wide variety of events and seminars for businesses and a creative learning programme for education and community groups. Space in the studio was offered to all of the Media Sandbox participants as part of their commission, and it has now become home to four of the six projects.Also involved are BBC, International Futures Forum, the University of West England and the University of Bristol. The project is backed by the South West Regional Development Agency.
P.R. (Pervasive Relations) | Dan | Thought PieOne of the biggest challenges we've seen at Thought Den, (apart from having killer ideas, eyeing up potential ventures and knowing where to start…) is getting people to actually interact, turn on their Bluetooth or send an SMS with the system. In our every-day lives, we just don't have the reason to start mucking around with our devices for doing more than sending a text or listening to music.
So a question is raised,
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Cold fingers! | Dan | Thought PieA thought that just popped into our head during a Happy Packages brainstorm was, are we going to see a difference in Pervasive interaction during the summer months in comparison to the winter months?To be honest, if we asked a friend to pick up a Happy Package today out on college green, we severely doubt they'd wanna get the phone out and use the keypad in this weather. It's bloody freezing!
So should we look at pervasiness in a seasonal light? We are marrying real world with virtual here, there's going to be pushing and pulling from both sides of the coin.
"Gopping" people from anywhere | Dan | Thought Pie"Guerrilla Object Pushing" is pushing Bluetooth Objects to passers by in areas where they normally wouldn’t expect it.
It takes it's name from Guerrilla marketing and is already being used in cinemas and shopping centres. Its leveraging the use of people's mobile devices to allow them access to content, links or more details about an event.
This technique is obviously already being used, but we thought it required a name because during the Happy Packages project we intend to be 'gopping' people from anywhere and everywhere. In-fact we've sure we've devised a new method of content delivery an intend to make it pretty successful.
