BootB– the official online marketplace for creative services, is hosting a party in Milan next Wednesday, November 11th at the Hangar Bicocca in via Chiese, 2.

The Unlimited Creative Night– An event not to be missed!

Whether you’re a marketing guru, work in the advertising world or consider yourself a creative specialist– Register to this event ASAP!

Open bar starts @ 9:20pm. Music by DJ Isa Iaquinta, followed by the live acrobatic performance of the famous Elena Burani!

Register to this event at www.bootb.com or visit BootB’s event page on Facebook for more information.

Good news for tourists in Paris who don’t speak French, who don’t have a map and need to find the nearest subway station to go back to the hotel. Just point the iPhone’s camera in front of you and digital information will start popping up on the street view, displaying directions to metro stations, information about historical buildings, restaurant logos with reviews and menu information, hotel rates and more and more layers of information about your surroundings.

Now imagine you are attending a conference and you want to know more about the speaker, his articles, books and professional work. Just point your Android phone at the speaker and superimpose information in real time about social network profiles, blogs and websites relevant to the subject.

Augmented Reality enriches a real time view of a physical space through a device by superimposing contextually relevant data and information to it.

You could think of technologically advanced solutions like head-up displays integrated in airplane and car windshields, but in fact we are already used to experiencing more trivial applications like scores displayed in sport events on tv, or quiz show questions and answers written on screens.

Augmented Reality applications on handheld devices

GPS and compass data on smartphones allow real time interaction with geotagged content depending on the direction to which the handheld device is pointing. Some applications are already integrating these data sources with geo tagging interfaces:

• Wikitude is an example of a service that allows AR integration on a world browser;
• Recommendation website Yelp included an Augmented Reality feature called Monocle on its iPhone 3G application, that overlays user generated content to the image captured from the camera;
• Layar is an application for the Android phone that offers third-party layers with real estate data, tourist guides, local directory services, social communities.

While smart phones have already invaded the mass market, research in AR field is aiming more at portable screens that would display Augmented Reality information without forcing the user to look at a handheld device. Cumbersome head mounted displays are a thing of the past: glasses and even special contact lenses are being developed to provide a convenient way to experience Augmented Reality.

New opportunities for advertising arise with the spread of AR technology on mobile internet devices. Producing advertisements that blend harmoniously in real experiences by overlaying meaningful and useful information is the challenge for brands willing to pioneer the Augmented Reality technology.

ta-daaa….

Congratulations Luca! Looking forward to reading your book and your insights on the king of all social media, Facebook.

For those interested, the newly released book is available in all bookstores across Italy.

Also, if you go on to Luca’s Facebook Marketing blog, you’ll find there’s a 20% discount only if you buy it through hoepli.it. Offer lasts till August 16th…so be quick!

Imagine you are reading your favorite magazine on the web, and as you are about to turn the page with a lazy hand gesture, a big, annoying, full page advertisement featuring a famous movie star is smiling at you and whispering your name to get your attention.

The magazine is intelligent, and knows who your favorite actor/actress is. Yes, you are signed in with Facebook Connect. You can’t help staring at her/him in admiration. Ok, for the post’s sake, let’s say it’s a she. And it’s Scarlett Johansson.

Scarlett is showing you a new cellphone model, and when you least expect it, she’s already gotten your undivided attention (pretty soon). How could she have known that seconds ago you were doing some comparison shopping for that exact cellphone? That’s the power of retargeting.

All you need to do is stretch your hand to take it, follow the link to the landing page and you’re ready to complete the transaction.

Project Natal: full-body motion user interface

What may sound like a prophetic vision of a distant future by science-fiction novelist Philip K. Dick, could become our near future reality if Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal will succeed in revolutionizing user interface in day-by-day computer usage. Project Natal is full body motion control: hands-free, no remotes, no controllers, no joypads!

Xbox Project Natal could be Microsoft’s final blow to Nintendo Wii’s domination in console wars. Now it’s not only Nintendo’s turn, because, as every gamer knows, why go for a single hit when you can score a combo? Project Natal is a menace also to Sony’s vision of Playstation 3 as the only center of home entertainment in our living rooms.

Project Natal from the Xbox to the PC

From casual gaming to every day PC usage, ensuring a higher degree of interactivity and optimal user experience could be the next step on the road to mass informatization. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told CNET that Project Natal’s camera was not just intended for games, “but for media consumption as a whole, and even if they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication.”

Will man be ready to abandon his best friend, the mouse? Productivity could be increased by the new interface, and the same could happen to the way we traditionally experience the web: new website designs, new interactively enhanced rich media ads, new ways of integrating social media in everyday life.

Are you dreaming of a future of physical interface to virtuality, or you realistically think that homo technologicus isn’t willing to move all his muscles to achieve what a simple keystroke can accomplish?

For more on the subject, view Project Natal on YouTube or visit Project Natal’s Official website.

In a digital society like ours such wonderful work can definitely be considered a masterpiece of the digital world.

Information Architects have done it again. They’ve launched the fourth version of their Web Trends map series in beta, displaying all the most prominent companies, products and trends of the Internet.

The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by iA Inc. It maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue with map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the characters of each.

It presents every single tie and inter-relationship between businesses, sites, software, social media, etc  of our current digital world. The domain’s height represents its success according to amount of traffic and revenue while the domain’s width is directly linked to the stability of the mother company.

Enjoy this great piece of work! For a larger view of it, click on this Flickr image.

One small observation for the guys at IA, the black background, not very eco-friendly…white backgrounds are always best, wouldn’t you think?

Then I open my Safari and head to Google.it home page…and what do I find? A link to Cadie explained on a Google page as (I translate from the original Italian that I also report 

una nuova e potente tecnologia per la risoluzione dei problemi di apprendimento per rinforzo, che ha dato vita al primo cluster operativo di apprendimento neuro-evolutivo su scala mondiale

a new and powerful technology for the resolution of learning methodologies by “push” (??), that has given birth to the first operative cluster for neuro evolutive learning on a global scale

I have no idea what this is all about…:) to me it is something that could have possibly be written by the great Ugo Tognazzi…

Anyway the Google page of explanations for Cadie takes me to the homepage of  a site dedicated to the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, CADIE…

I have attached a screenshot and leave you to choose between 3 options:

1. At 7am I am so stoned that I don’t catch it

2. Google has been hacked by a chinese Panda named Caddie

3. This is Google’s April Fool day Joke…

Have a nice day….

Marco

Well here I am, on the 25th, waiting for RAI 1 to broadcast “NEMO“…finding the time to mention a great initiative that involved some of the 77 offices…the XMAS Video competition…

About 2 months ago, Melissa, our Affiliate Champion suggested that the 77 offices started a challenge that involved the production of a music video. The result of it made me so proud of 77 and I want to share it with all of you:

77Kiev

77Milan Full Version

77Milan eXtras: The BVDU trailer

77Riga

I have also added a video produced by my little brother about 77 corporate culture

Need to run…I am 5 minutes into NEMO…

Ciao

Marco

Take a look at some of the Halloween logos and spooky themes wandering the Web…if you run into any other, share them with us! :-)

The Yahoo! logo you’ll have to see it live because they went all out with a cool animation showing funky, dead people pulling off ‘Thriller’ moves.

Visit XBox’s House of Horror!

AOL’s Halloween logo is also animated, watch out for the bats!

IKEA promotes its new campaign dubbed ‘Come into the Closet’ by welcoming users into their website which looks like a video but functions as an online catalogue at the same time.

The site is http://www.kominigarderoben.se/. Once in, you find yourself in a sort of open stage scenario displaying a repertoire of Ikea closet items together with surreal characters who spice up and enliven the experience by dancing to the beat of funky remixes.

Each scenario has a different selection of furniture and upholstery and presents different plots. Situations vary from super heroes and an old couple, to a pair of funny guys looking smart but wearing no pants, just socks…pretty funny stuff.

As you pass from scene to scene, items change, music alters, beat is different and characters vary. Underneath the main window on the screen, you are given three products to choose from that when clicked separately, they set-off the item code, name and description of the specific product.

The feel and look of the site is very slick and fresh. Although the site’s main purpose is to show off their line of products, it still manages to leave space for the user/consumer to interact with it making the affair ever so entertaining. It’s even possible to play with the characters by moving the mouse or perhaps talking into your computer mic, which will make them move accordingly.

What a nice way to combine pleasure and well…budget allocation.

Apple just presented a line of colorful, revamped iPods at a San Francisco press event, featuring the iPod Nano which underwent the most changes, followed by the iPod Touch, with just a thinner cut to it and finally, iTunes’ new version revealing a key intelligence system called Genius which recommends what to buy based on the user’s playlists.

It also acts as your personal DJ by playing songs that go great together from your personal playlists.

As for the new Nano, this one has officially become the thinnest Apple iPod ever made and the coolest, I must add. Its new, most eloquent feature -the accelerometer- if you shake your Nano vigorously, like you would an Etch a Sketch, this will shuffle all the songs on your playlists creating a single, random playlist.

Simply shake.. to shuffle!

This same accelerometer also gives the refreshed Nano a mind of its own. It can tell which way is up or sideways, and just like the iPhone, it will flip the image or videos in your screen to the position in which you’re holding the device, whether vertical or horizontal.

The new fourth-generation Nano will come in an 8GB version which will go in the market for €139 and a 16GB version for €189. The design is said to resemble that from the first ever released iPod back in 2005, more elongated and rectangular shaped.