And you thought my giant robot prediction was crazy....

Earlier this month I was able to visit CeBIT, the world’s largest technology show case, in Hannover, Germany. The exhibition space is absolutely enormous totally over 5,000,000 square feet. Imagine the biggest convention center building you’ve ever seen then imagine at least 20 buildings of that size and you’ll have an idea of how big CeBIT is.

I was able to meet some brilliant people from around the world, speak on a panel about social media, and be exposed to some great bleeding edge technology. All in all it was a great couple of days (even though I missed my flight on the way back).

Most buildings were focused on one subject that included green technologies, security, enterprise network technology, mobile, GPS, computers, gaming, or my personal favorite “the future parc”. The future parc was focused on innovative new technologies whether they had been productised or not. You could look at technologies at an early stage with the potential that you might see a new opportunity for it’s use.

I’ve highlighted some of my favorite items below that I saw during the conference. Some are really far out and some are fairly simple – I hope you enjoy the quick summary.

AIPTEK – This German company has produced a very small lightweight project that fits into the palm of your hand. It’s got no where near the kind of power you’d need to do a full blow presentation at good quality, but it would be great for projecting movies from an portable device like an iPod or iPhone onto the wall. Another nifty feature includes an oboard memory card so you can just store movies in the device and avoid the third party portable device all together. It’s still early days, but very cool none the less.

Global Emotion – This wasn’t actually a piece of technology, but it stood out to me for two reasons. One, I have full intentions of living in Asia this year and two I just thought it addressed a very interesting issue for westerners trying to do business in China. iWays is offering a course that allows you to learn to understand the body language and facial expressions of the Chinese people in comparision to some western body language that might cause you to mis-understand a business situation. I could see how this could be invaluable in today’s world.

GestureTek – These guys are doing some amazing interactive displays. They’re doing everything from massive table top displays that allow you to drag content around with your finger and close and expand additional content at will to touchless screens that react just based on the movement of your hands. It’s starting to feel really futuristic.

Another cool product they had on display was called “The Cube”. It was a self contained and portable system for doing projected interactive displays that react to gesture control. Imagine for example projecting a bunch of lilly pads onto the floor that when you moved near them with your feet bounced and rippled in reaction to your motion. This is definitely eye catching stuff. I still think they haven’t unleashed some top level creative talent onto it yet, so they’re still a lot of room to do some amazing things.

Fraunhofer Institute – The Fraunhofer Institute booth took the cake for me for most mind blowing innovations (with actual working prototypes). Some of the highlights included:

• Flat panel TVs that displayed near perfect 3D imagery without the need for 3D glasses.
• 3D digital dashboards for automobiles that also reacted and tracked your eye movement.
• Real-time facial expression analysis that could identify your gender and mood.
• A digital wardrobe where you could change the color and design on your clothes by just standing in front of  a special mirror.
• A bathroom designed to help manage the elderly (for example) in terms of making sure they’ve been doing their bathroom routine and taking the appropriate medications. It then reports back to any caregivers to alert them of abnormalities.
• An image search that allowed you to dynamically search for “simliar images”. The system was smart enough to identify properties like number of people in the image, consistent colors, a positioning of objects in the frame.

I’ve included some of the photos I did manage to take. I should probably also do a quick shout out to the people that invented the massage chair with matching audio and light stimulation. I couldn’t relax as well as I would have liked while testing their product because I kept thinking about how much I wanted to buy one…

Photos after the jump…

I was out with some friends having a drink tonight when the conversation sparked a memory of a big prediction I had a couple years back. Everyone thought it was a bit nuts, but in the interest of making it public record I’m going to share this prediction with you. Why do I need to make it public record? Well, according to my friends one or all of the following thing will happen if I’m right:

• They will immediately pay me $1,000,000
• Pigs will fly out of their asses and do some form of aerial acrobatic show.
• Hell will not only freeze over, but Satan will open some form of ice skating rink that also serves free heart shaped lollipops.es

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I’m going to share one of my most far out predictions for the future. Call me crazy, but I truly believe this will become reality in our lifetime.

Does anyone remember  BattleBots? It was a series of tournaments where remote controlled robots loaded with weapons and a healthy dose of armor kicked the snot out of each other in an arena. It reached it’s cultural peak in 2000 to 2002 when 5 tournaments were aired on Comedy Central.

The advancement of robotics over the coming ten years (and ongoing generations) will allow us to  build some fairly sophisticated robots. They’ll be bigger, faster, be able to handle bigger weapons and sustain more damage.

I predict that in ten years time robotic combat will become a more frequently viewed televised sport and in the coming decades will become a major spectator sport.

The reality is we love violence and competition. It’s evident in the sports we like from American football to Ultimate Fighting Championships. What boy wouldn’t love to watch four eight-foot robots rip each other to shreds with machine guns, flame throwers, and modified chain saws?

Apparently ESPN has just licensed them for another seasons that’s coming out in the spring of 2009. I’m interested to see how an updated version feels after 7 years off the air. Additionally it will be interesting to see how a sports network approaches it as opposed to a comedy channel.

Hopefully, you don’t mind my deviation from trend watching in marketing and simultaneously don’t think I’ve gone mad.

(I’ll have the last laugh though…. Oh you’ll see…. You’ll see…)

It works by providing the augmented reality software with some form of tracking marker that it knows to overlay 3 dimensional graphics over. The results are astounding – it truly allows consumers to feel as though you have brought a little piece of your imaginary world into their reality.

Right now marketers and technology innovators have done some very interesting examples of augmented reality using symbols printed locally and are then placed in front of your home web camera. Although I think this is fun and definitely buzz worthy I believe the true opportunity is in the not too distant future as more and more mobile phones adopt the technology. Image the potential of being able to re-invent outdoor and print marketing by adding an interactive component to almost any ad by just pointing your mobile device at it.

If you know of any other great examples please forward them to me. I have included a great example of a two player mobile game for Fanta developed by my friends over at the Hyper Factory as well a brilliant Papervision 3D and augmented reality combination.

Visit Fanta.eu to watch a video of the Fanta game in action or actually use it with compatible smart phones.

Otherwise check out the video after the jump.

Papervision – Augmented Reality (extended) from Boffswana on Vimeo.

Due to it’s long standing success and the quality of the work it has become, without fail, the most respected advertising award show in the world and draws in the greatest minds in advertising and marketing. Say what you like about marketers we do actually have some brilliant wonderfully creative minds in our industry. I think really great creative types are less concerned with the medium they work in and are just focused on being able to unlock their mind and think in unconventional ways.

Humanitarian Lion is a group advocating a new addition to the Cannes Lions. They want all agencies that submit work to the Lions to also submit a single document of their thoughts on how to solve some of the worlds great humanitarian issues.

In a recession most of the world’s businesses and individuals will be donating less money to some of the great charitable organizations that have been operating for years or in many cases decades. It’s going to be a terrible travesty to watch the results of these funding reductions.

Sadly I totally understand the necessity to hold back much needed cash flow during these times, but why can’t we donate more of our brain power. I’d love to see something like this get pushed through.

If you’re in the agency world, check out the video below or visit their site to sign-up and support the cause. Only a few major agencies would have to stand behind this to really give it some momentum.

The most popular matrix code is a QR Code, created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes.

QR Codes are used in a broad context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

I always thought that every Nike ID shoe should come with a Matrix Code for anyone to be able to scan it and launch the exact configuration to recreate it.

The latest addition to data mobility is the Audio Barcode: data embedded in sound waves that’s picked up by target devices with a microphone — mobile phones, for example –, analyzed by special software, and then extracted.

Data to be transmitted is superimposed (embedded) by Acoustic OFDM, the technology behind Audio Barcode, in such a way that it is not detected by listeners. With a transmission rate greater than 1kbps, a URL or simple text transmission takes a mere one to two seconds.

This technology has many uses… from being able to append artist urls to every song, dynamically embed DRM information, or even combine this with audio/visual such as movies to allow sending out product information on specific scenes without having to display or affect the video at all… Just think how much information can be embedded everywhere with all these techniques… I already use 2d Barcode applications on my iPhone and I can’t wait to install an Audio Bar reader.

Nico Nico Douga is one of the most popular video sharing sites in Japan. The very unique feature they have is that users leaving comments on videos appear in an overlay in real time. This allows comments to be timed to certain aspects of the video adding relevant thoughts at the appropriate time. Some users have even used it to add sub titles to their video.

I think this is a great addition. I’ve been watching YouTube for some time waiting for a comparable feature to appear. I’m suprised they haven’t tested even a prototype to see if western culture makes this as much as phenomenom as the Japanese did for Nico Nico Douga.

Now with all of that said – try and watch this video of some kind of Ronald McDonald from hell without your head exploding…. Ah, I love Japanese culture.

PS – Recently I found a new guitly pleasure. It’s a Japanese game show called Ninja Warrior that they are airing on G4. It’s basically the hardest obstacle course I’ve ever seen. Only one guy has beaten it in the 14 seasons of the show. I strongly suggest watching it – even my girlfriend finds it amusing. If nothing else listening to the announcer in Japanese makes my day.

The two I’d really like to share, and I hope they get your imaginations going involve a video wall revolving around interactive water and a new holographic 3D technology that will leave almost any crowd with their mouth open.

The first project by Mark Burton of Northumbria University’s Design School.

“Mark’s ‘Waterboard’ uses the mixed media of new digital display technology with traditional pens and erasers to encourage creative thinking about the natural progression of the earth’s water supply. It is a large, interactive installation that gives the user a chance to play with flowing water without getting wet, and consists of a wall-mounted white opaque board (2.2m x 8m) with four projectors and four cameras providing back-projection and detection. The sound of running water enhances the visuals. Several users can play at once, and can use the tools provided to draw or erase objects to try to control the flow of the water. The concept is playful, yet educational. The water will follow its own course, whatever the intervention. Abstract life forms may appear in some areas of water and where the water is stagnant it will become cloudy and discoloured.”

Click “Read More” to see the second example and my thoughts.

The video demonstrates some technology from the company Arena 3D. I’ve done some research on several of these firms and I’m most impressed with what I’ve seen here. Quite a few brands have used this technology and a comparable technology (Musion) was even used for a Gorrilaz peformance at the MTV music awards a couple of years ago.

The real question for us as marketers, and in some cases technologists, how do we apply these in more innovative scenarios than have been done before. How do we create compelling pieces that engage consumers, excite the media, and in a best case scenario create an extended shelf life in the online space.

Why shouldn’t we make a version of the interactive wall for Vitamin Water (Coca-Cola) or a interactive 3d holographic display that allows people to play football between London and NY during the world cup.

The future is for those that have courage – take hold of these initiatives and don’t regret it when your competitors beat you to market and you’re reading about their success.

Internet publishing networks and other entities have ways of analyze browsing behavior and click-streams of every connected workstation. Every time you open a site, click through another site, search for a product or service, click on a banner or paid search keyword, … every time you do any of those things, someone is watching, logging, and analyzing. You might think it is invasion to privacy; I used to think so too. In reality, they don’t know your identity and they store all behaviors anonymously. Is it bad, awful, a crime? Not really, all they’re doing is improving your browsing experience. The fact of the matter is that if an advertiser buys an ad space, you are going to see it no matter what, but wouldn’t you like of it at least to be relevant? I would. There is no escape, so we better just accept it. To take it a step further, these entities even know to differentiate multiple people sharing a computer in a household by behavioral trends. They will know the difference of dad, mom, little sister, and little brother by the time of day and group of sites they usually visit.

Let’s take the same principle outside, to the real world. Imagine a billboard or posters with tiny cameras that analyze the people walking through. They know who looks, how much time they spend on it, and by facial recognition they even know the age, sex, and ethnicity of the viewers. Imagine if they could record all these data and use statistical information to display targeted ads to demographics by location and time.

Let’s take this last idea a step further. Imagine if these billboards and posters had the ability to store the frequency of your mobile device and capture the fact that you might be interested — this frequency is called RFID and all mobile devices emit it. Imagine if all billboards are connected into an intelligent grid, know if you’re approaching them by following your signal around, and show you direct targeted ads.

Everything I mentioned is either being done or coming. It is rather scary I might say, but none of it is captured against an identity; at least for now, though the scary part is that it could be with minimal modifications.

Let me get it started with a few thoughts on behavioral targeted advertising.