Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage


Mar 15

Touching Mobile Screens with All Ten Fingers

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Just got done with updating the case study on mobile advertising for the Newspaper Association of America — I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that market conditions had changed so very much since mid-2008.  You always hear that “Internet years are like dog years,” but man, did that ever hold true.

Just a few examples:

  1. One of the big segments I wrote lumped Alternate Reality and Apps into the same category. This was obviously before Apple’s App store completely blew up. 
  2. QR codes were this crazy technology that strange Japanese advertisers were using. Seemed like Sea-urchin sushi. Something that would never really catch on here. Guess again, eh?

  • 3.And the biggest one of all – mobile is now an actual line-item in marketing and advertising budgets, not just a throw-in with “digital media.”

So here’s something that I just couldn’t figure out what to do with – the touchscreen guys just pinged me last week and showed me some stuff about multitouch displays that allow you to use all ten fingers to manipulate & add things.

Now, I’m not sure – yet – if this really represents some kind of massive leap forward in getting the damn central processors to recognize input from the user … or if it’s like the ridiculous razor-blade wars, where Schick & Gillette seem locked in a strange battle to cram more blades onto a razor than you see in The Bride’s big samurai-sword fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Anyway – 3M has a 22-inch monitor that can recognize all ten of your grubby digits, and a whole gallery of videos showing how the Microsoft Surface-type tech is making its way into your pocket.  Wish I could show them to you here directly, but 3M has not provided any sort of embedding functionality. I’ve played with this kind of cool stuff at Flash conventions, where artists have custom-wired motion-sensitive controllers to track all kinds of kinetic input (i.e. dancers painting via moving their feet, swaying their hips, arching their backs, etc.). 

I’m not sure how much of an impact it’ll have on the cellphone market, but I can certainly see a day when having enhanced touch for iPad-like devices really makes working with photos, video or database navigation that much more intuitive.  Get me my mirrorshades!

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Mar 15

Mobile 2D Barcode Explanation from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Thanks to Eric Schwartzel at the Post-Gazette for sending me this great, funny video.  The P-G has rolled out 2D barcodes (aka QR codes) in their print product that are designed to be used by smartphones.

I’m all in favor of videos like this, that guide our readers/users through the process of learning what 2D barcodes are all about, and how to use them.  I’d like to see a little more of an explanation of what these codes do, to make the case to the readers as to why they should use them.  One of the real interesting possibilities is using these codes alongside of reviews of concerts or movies to take the readers to m-commerce sites, where the paper will get a slice of the ticket sales.

Of course, that’s going to take some time/development money, but for an industry looking for a viable business model to replace the dwindling dead-tree advertising revenues, shifting towards a more PPC-like biz model makes a lot of sense.

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