I have to say that one of Google’s unsung heroes within its rapidly shrinking portfolio of products (thanks to the cannibalistic personality of Google+) is undoubtedly Google Goggles – the completely genius image recognition service for mobile phones.

Launched just under two years ago, Google Goggles has gone from strength to strength and is available across multiple mobile platforms including iPhone and (obviously) Android handsets.

I have to say that I prefer using Goggles’ image recognition capabilities to secure further web info than having to rely on often gimmicky QR codes to achieve the same thing. Not only can Google Goggles recognise brand logos, it can also do a whole host of other incredible stuff which continuously push the boundaries of mobile search.

For instance, the other day, somebody in the office had a picture of a building that they believed to be a French palace but didn’t know what/where it was. With a single scan with my trusty HTC Android phone, I was (rather smugly) able to inform them within 7 seconds that it was in fact the Royal Palace in Brussels, Belgium.

Also, I’ve found that the app can also find online versions of articles simple by taking a photo of a small snippet of text from a print version of the publication. So, when reading an article on the train in last week’s Economist I scanned a paragraph of the page using Google Goggles and was immediately taken to the online version of the article.

Google also reckons that the app can be used to translate text from one language into another – something that I can attest to but with varying degrees of success.

But the main reason for this post is to show the awesomeness that is Google Goggles’ Suduko-solving capabilities that have recently been added to the app’s bank of features.The point is that Google Goggles is more than just a novelty app. It is continually finding new ways to unlock the potential of image (and text) recognition. Think of it more as a platform upon which different services and features can be built – much as in the same way that Google Maps has managed to be a valuable tool for developers. Of course that would mean Google releasing a separate API for Goggles to the developer community but I’m sure that this is already in the pipeline somewhere.

Take a snap of any Sudoku puzzle and then click on solve. The gaps in the problem are filled in automatically by Google. It really works (make sure you crop the puzzle in the image finder)!

Take a look at the following video and have a go yourself if you still need convincing…

How do YOU use Google Goggles? Do you use it to capture labels from wine bottles? Have you used it to digitise business cards? Has it helped you translate a menu when you’ve been on holiday in France? Let us know in the comments below…

 

I just spotted a great new messaging app (courtesy of PSFK) called Duet that encourages you to “do things with people you love.”

Heard it all before? Perhaps. But what I like about this new service is that you have the ability to pair yourself with another individual (spouse, colleague, sibling, friend…) and then share activities with them. You get the option to store messages and share photos with your significant other

Duet goes beyond Facebook and Google+ by focusing purely on circles of two which makes sense for people who don’t want to share their thoughts, photos, videos… with their wider social network. Sometimes it’s just nice to share things with someone special.

This intimate one-to-one messaging service is quite sweet and whilst it goes against the current paradigm of the one-to-many broadcast model, I think that it certainly fills a gap that email, MMS and SMS has collectively failed to satiate.

This is how Duet works:

• A duet begins by proposing something you want to do with someone near and dear.
• You can propose duet ideas privately to your favourite people, and create an evolving collaborative life list of all the things you want to do.
• Once each duet is paired, it becomes a private conversation that you can enrich with notes, photos and video messages.
• Your conversations are saved forever and Duet becomes a digital lockbox for the people and memories you cherish most.

As usual, the app is iPhone only (something which is starting to really frustrate me) and can be downloaded directly from the links on Duet’s website: http://duet.me/

Check out the following video for more insight into the world of Duet:

Introducing Duet from Crush + Lovely on Vimeo.

Making my way back home from work tonight, I was playing around on FourSquare and scanned Liverpool Street area for nearby tips. Sometimes you can find a real nugget of treasure… where to buy the best coffee, cheap gym membership, money off vouchers… but today, it was the following screenshot that caught my eye…

Upon closer inspection…

The best thing is… I bet the bigwigs at UBS are too square for FourSquare and are too busy scoffing sushi and knocking back their Pernod-Ricard Perrier-Jouet to even know that this piece of invisible graffiti is looming above their place of work…

Nothing left to say, really…

Kudos to Richard C… whoever you are! Brilliant!

QR codes and their equivalent prophets of innovation have been around for some years now and have yet to be embraced by the masses despite several attempts from global brands to incorporate them into the marketing mix. However in these iPhone/Smartphone times,  drinks company Pepsi recently announced another new experiment around barcodes this time in collaboration with a startup called Stickybits.

Using a barcode-reader application on a smartphone, users can scan barcodes on Pepsi products like drinks cans or bottles and access videos and links hidden in the code. Users can also upload their own videos, photos and comments about Pepsi and its products.

All of this is powered by Stickybits, which specializes in tagging barcodes with information and accessing it. Stickybits’ product allows people not only to access information that is already programmed in a barcode, but add more information to it by uploading a video or photo to the barcode for other users to see.

To use Stickybits, you need an iPhone or a phone running Google Android. Once you download the app, you can start scanning barcodes or QR codes and attaching files to them—photos, video, text, music, etc. Then, when other Stickybits users scan the same code, they can see what you’ve attached. Stickybits sells packs of vinyl stickers printed with unique barcodes via Amazon, and you can also download free barcodes directly from the Stickybits website and print them out on your printer. In addition, the app works with any barcode that appears on a commercial product.

According to Business-Oportunities.biz, Pepsi thinks the Stickybits pilot is a way of providing consumers information they might want while offering a two-way communication channel, and could conceivably be a vehicle for delivering special deals, or coupons, or promotional rewards.

Reason.com sums up the concept using Pespi’s rival Coke as an example:

When you use one of the stickers that Stickybits provides, your audience is limited to whoever else scans that unique code. But a barcode that appears on a 20 oz. bottle of Coke isn’t unique—it appears on millions of other 20 oz. bottles of Coke. Scan the one sitting in your refrigerator, and your message will be instantly available to everyone else in the world who has a bottle of Coke with that barcode on it and cares to scan it.

Granted, there’s this thing called the Web that provides similar functionality. But if you only want to reach Coke drinkers with your message, and at the precise moment when they’re buying or drinking Coke, Stickybits offers a better way to do it. Or at least it will if it can convince people to add Coke bottles to their daily media diet.

Stickbits creator and all-round social media entrepreneur Seth Goldstein says:

“Just because something is made from atoms, not bits, does not mean that it is not dynamic, we have just never had a way to connect objects to each other or to people. This is an attempt to make visible all kinds of social dynamics around objects that otherwise have been invisible.”

See what others have had to say about Stickybits:

Ad Age:                  That Coke Can You’re Holding Could Be Your New Media Channel

Time:                      Social Objects

CNET:                      Wearing your Stickybit on your sleeve, or elsewhere

LA Times:               Stickybits allows you to embed digital content on objects

RWW:                    Stickybits: Portal to Another Dimension or Graffiti for Nerds?

Techcrunch:         The Secret Lives Of Objects

Have you ever wondered about the relationship between mobile phones and social media? The mobile web is growing at an exponential rate, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. This graphic from @flowtown illustrates the rates at which people access the mobile, social web, as well as what they do once they are connected.

Read more: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/how-are-mobile-phones-changing-social-media#ixzz0jxN1tnoe

(Photo courtesy of gopal1035 on Flickr, CC BY 2.0.)

Back in November, I wrote about an ambitious BBC World Service Trust project in Bangladesh which encouraged the learning of English via mobile phone handsets. Since then, examples of mobile technology bringing together traditionally remote communities have been cropping up on my radar on a weekly basis.

The application of mobile technology in the sub-continent goes beyond education as villagers in the Uttar Pradesh region of India are now beginning to use cheap voice calls as a platform for basic news delivery.

Widespread illiteracy makes newspapers and SMS alerts inadequate as news delivery systems, and irregular electricity makes television and radio unreliable. Voice calls are also very inexpensive in India, with per-second billing and a downward price-war among the main operators. Voice calls over mobile phones are an easy way for villagers to stay informed.

Gaon Ki Awaaz, which means “Village Voice” in the Avhadi language, sends out twice-daily news calls to subscribers directly over their mobile phones. Launched in December 2009, the project recently expanded to 250 subscribers spread over 20 villages.

The goals of Gaon Ki Awaaz are:

• Create a local-language news broadcast that is accessible to non-literate villagers
• Create a means of getting information from villagers and re-broadcasting it
• Develop a self-sustaining business model through ad revenue

Here’s where I point out that all this was set-up for with a budget of just $1,000 (over 4 months)!

How does it work?

Gaon Ki Awaaz has two local reporters from the village of Rampur-Mathura, Divyakar Pratap Singh and Priya Gupta, who produce twice-daily news reports (broadcast at noon and 5 p.m.) by recording 30-to 60-second voice notes on their phones. These files are then sent via MMS to local editor Satyenda Pratap who converts the audio files and sends them on to the project coordinator at the International Media Institute of India for final review.

Subject matter for the broadcasts can include alerts such as when health camps are coming to a nearby area, farm tips, events happening in the village such as religious and/or community-oriented celebrations, or local-centric government announcements.

The initial feedback from the village is very heartening.  Villagers gather around mobiles, whose speaker phones are turned on  to listen to the bulletin.   A local merchant even released an advertisement that was broadcast on March 5, showing the supplementary economic potential of such services.

Further south of the region, a similar project is operating among the members of the Adivassi tribe in India. Like Gaon Ki Awaaz, it allows villagers to share and receive news over their mobile phones in their native language (in this case, Gondi). Launched by Shubhranshu Choudhary of the International Center for Journalists, the project focuses on citizen reports with dozens of citizen journalists reporting throughout the region.

View the video below for more information on how the set-up works:

These two projects highlight the true potential of mobile phone ubiquity within targeted communities to deliver cheap, reliable access to hyper-local news that may be more independent than government-controlled media.

As mobiles become more common in rural areas, similar projects can provide a way to keep citizens connected.

To find out more about these and other projects, visit the following links:

http://gaonkiawaaz.wordpress.com/about/

http://mobileactive.org/case-studies/gaon-ki-awaaz-news-alerts-rural-villagers

http://mobileactive.org/survey-voice-based-mobile-tech

http://www.psfk.com/2010/03/using-mobile-phones-to-broadcast-news.html

You’d have to have been living in a cave over the past few months to not have heard about Foursquare, the location based mobile social network. Even more so, if you happen to work in PR/communications, as the platform is being hyped by many as the “next big thing since Twitter” for consumer-savvy brands (for whatever that’s worth).

Foursquare is a really interesting service which has attracted a lot of interest from brands like Starbucks who see an opportunity to tap into friend networks, offering discounts and special deals to loyal and regular customers. Unlike Twitter, Foursquare has been quick to spot the potential revenue streams for marketers looking to connect back with users (see: http://foursquare.com/businesses/)

With this in mind, it’s worrying that UK PR agencies have failed to embrace Foursquare with open arms. Given that registration is free and it is very simple to set-up an account, why have so few consumer PR agencies in the UK ignored location based social networks like Foursquare?

Imagine the following scenario:

I’m the head of a UK consumer retail brand looking for a PR agency to deliver a cutting-edge, smart, creative, engaging campaign which is relies on no/low media spend. I turn up at your agency’s offices to hear you deliver your well rehearsed credentials. These creds will invariably contain some waffle intelligence about social media and community marketing to complement your agency’s experience in traditional media engagement.

However, I arrive early for the meeting and as I’m waiting in your über trendy [insert Shoreditch-esque location] reception area as your pitch-team rushes to put the final touches to their PowerPoint presentation, I check in to Foursquare.

One of five things could happen:

1. Your agency is not listed on Foursquare: At best, this can be interpreted as you being ‘behind in the game’, at worst it exposes your social media hyperbole as lies.
2. Your agency is listed on Foursquare but nobody has checked in: This tells me that whilst someone recognises that you should be on here, even your staff refuses to engage with this platform.
3. Your agency is listed on Foursquare and I am met with some trivial in-jokes from your staff about who got drunk at the office party in the ‘tips’ section of my iPhone App: This shows a disregard for your company’s ‘public image’ and sends alarm bells off in my head about not being able to trust you with my brand’s reputation.
4. Your agency is listed on Foursquare but unbeknown to you, a competitor/disgruntled client/ex-employee has posted some negative comments which are now being read by me: This tells me that there are smarter cookies out there who are taunting  your ignorance or indifference. It’s like a giant neon sign over the door of your agency which you choose not to see from the inside of your building.
5. Your agency is listed and as I check in, I see a message welcoming me to the agency with a link to your website: I know that this is an agency which covers all the angles and knows how to present itself to the world.

Of the top 50 Consumer PR agencies in the UK, not a single one of the companies that made the PR Week List in 2009 managed to tick box number 5.

I’ve been number crunching this weekend, and this is what I’ve brought to the surfaced:

• 60% of the Top 50 UK Consumer Agencies are NOT listed on Foursquare. Surprising, given the recent coverage the site has been getting not just within the marketing trade media, but also within the mainstream consumer press (broadcast, print and online).
• Of the 20 agencies that were listed on Foursquare, only five have had more than five unique users check-in. This means that an average sized UK agency consisting of around 30 staff,  only a handful of employees are encouraged to experiment with new technologies which could well be beneficial to their clients. I suspect most agency senior directors are clueless as to whether or not the company has a presence on Foursquare, Facebook or Twitter for that matter.

How can agencies look their clients in the eye and talk about social media when they refuse to practise what they preach on their own doorstep? To add a location, it takes no more than 30 seconds of logging into Foursquare (via the website or on the handset application) and entering your company name and address.

Search:

Only ONE of the 50 companies researched managed to include relevant tags in their Foursquare profile to make the location searchable using keywords. That agency is Consolidated PR who also added their staff’s Twitter profiles as keywords, enabling searchers to associate the agency with its individuals as well as by industry keyword.

As search engines like Google, Yahoo! And Bing place a higher weighting on realtime search results, Foursquare will undoubtedly become increasingly visible as people comment on where they are when they check-in.

Which begs the question of why you would go to the trouble (admittedly, not too much trouble) of registering your agency on Foursquare (allowing you to be found by ANYBODY who is in the vicinity), without letting people know what exactly it is that your agency does?

Foursquare’s latest iPhone application attributes icons to the location depending on the category which has been preselected for it to make businesses like restaurants, bars, retail outlets more distinguishable from each  other. Similarly, the tags can help those who are using FoursSquare as a search engine.

Currently, a tag search for “PR” lists the following agencies/organisations in London:

Edelman
105 Victoria Stree
Buckingham Gate
London, Greater London SW1E 6QT

Engine
60 Great Portland Street
London, UK W1W 7RT

Consolidated PR
22 Endell St
Camden Town, Greater London WC2H 9

Publicasity
15 kean street, London, WC12 4AZ
Drury Lane
London, UK wc12 4az

Chartered Institute of Public Relations
52-53 Russell Square
Camden Town, Greater London WC1B 4HP

Fishburn Hedges
77 Kingsway
London, UK WC2B 6SR

Brand hi-jacking:

My main concern is that 31 of the Top 50 PR Agencies don’t even have Foursquare on their radar which means that they would be unaware of any negative comments that may have been posted about them. You can imagine the situation where frustrated hacks who have been poorly pitched by a PR exec one too many times could have a bit of fun posting messages on Foursquare at the offending agency’s location. This is worrying only because it shows that if they can’t keep tabs of what damage is potentially being done to their reputation, how can they then safeguard their own clients’ own good standing?

I was highly tempted to expose the remaining 31 agencies on the list who are yet to put themselves on the Foursquare map by adding them myself together with a note saying something along the lines of:

“This agency doesn’t even know they’re on here. If they claim to be cutting edge, don’t believe them”.

I would of course caveat the tip with some text saying that I will remove the tip once someone from the agency comments or indeed, checks in. In my mind, I had even devised a cunning plan to track how long it would take the agencies in question to even notice that the comment was there, and how long it would take them to respond. Think of it if you will, as a modern-day equivalent of a “kick me” sign stuck on somebody who claims to have eyes in the back of their head.

On the point of rewarding your ‘active staff’ who do invest their time in exploring new networks like Foursquare… how about this idea for headhunting digitally savvy PR folk from other agencies? Farfetched, but possible!

What does all of this mean?

For one thing, it means that the traditional PR industry (‘The Old Skool’) still doesn’t practice what it preaches. The last few years have seen many agencies – old and new – jump aboard the social-media bandwagon and use it to bolster existing PR budgets which were already starting to lose ground to more digitally savvy marketers. However, many of these ‘modern’ agencies have yet to grasp Twitter, Facebook and the concept of blogging let alone even more disruptive technologies like location based mobile marketing.

It annoys the hell out of me that PR agencies who claim to understand new trends in consumer behaviour still fear the platforms that they are only too quick to sell on to a client, wrapped up in strategic jargon and disingenuous enthusiasm. Foursquare has added an average of 100,000 users in the past week or so (mainly thanks to SxSW) – surely a trend like this should prompt marketers to check out the service for themselves?

Even the companies that I’ve named as having a Foursquare presence are failing themselves by not having a clear enough identity on the site. A lack of tags, categories, tips, etc. Suggest that the listings are being managed and used by a small percentage of (often junior) staff who may not have considered the wider consequences of their official presence on Foursquare.

If the PR industry wants to take a slice of the social media pie, it must bring to the table a suitable fork with which to eat. Otherwise, emerging ‘social-media’ agencies like We Are Social, 33 Digital and 1,000 Heads will continue to legitimately steal established clients away from digitally paranoid PR agencies.

Am I being harsh?

Yes. Quite possibly. The reaction I expect is one that echoes “We can’t have a presence on EVERY new social network that comes along – we simply don’t have the time”. Rubbish!

My point is about reputation. If PR Week calls you up to offer you a free 1 page advert in next week’s print edition, would your agency be so “meh” about things? Hell no! They’d be on the phone, making sure that the copy reflects the true brand of the company, fussing over correct pantones and pondering over which image to use. Foursquare offers your company the same thing except you never know who’s reading.

My second reason for writing this post is to find out why PR agencies aren’t focusing enough time on R&D. Other service industries are constantly investing time and resource into the research and development of new products which ensures the future-changing media economy we’re living in. We all know that the industry “‘aint what it used to be” and that new technologies and emerging communications paradigms are forcing us all to repackage the basic PR offering. Tools like Foursquare give us a glimpse of what tomorrow’s clients will expect of us. Only by taking the bull by the horns will PR professionals learn the nuances of new marketing disciplines (mobile, search, location-specific) which can be developed into client strategy.

This post could equally have been about Twitter six months ago or about Facebook a year ago. The difference is, as communications experts your agency should be ahead of the game and not playing catch-up.

Finally, I guess if you can’t be bothered, then don’t pretend you are when a client asks you your opinion. Who knows…? They may not even need to ask you. They may already know.

If your agency is mentioned in this post and you have changed the way you present yourself on Foursquare, drop me a line or post a comment below.

Checking out….

As featured in this month’s Wired magazine, Papa Sangre is forging a whole new genre of gaming: the world’s first audio-only, 3D audio no less, video game for mobile.

The game (commissioned by 4iP) has been in development since mid-last year, and is set for release later this year.
Now I’m no gamer, but this project really excites me as creates a fully immersive environment which incorporates cutting edge audio technology with a very dark and sinister narrative.

Papa Sangre describes itself as a video game with no video. It’s a first-person thriller, done entirely in audio by an award-winning team of game designers, musicians, sound designers and developers. The developers have created an entire world using the first ever real-time 3D audio engine implemented on a handheld device.

Here’s a sneak preview of Entering the Palace of Bones from Papa Sangre on Vimeo:

You should follow @papasangre himself on Twitter where he’ll be revealing more about the game.

For more information on the Papa Sangre philosophy, check out the following blog post: http://www.papasangre.com/blog/#post-119

“You are lost, deep in the darkness of the land of the dead. Your eyes are useless to you here — but your ears are filled with sound. And what is it you can hear … ?

All you know is someone is in grave danger and desperately needs your help. Can you save them and make your escape or will you be trapped in the blackness forever?

You’re in Papa Sangre’s palace. His palace is in an afterlife that takes the form of a malevolent, unpredictable carnival: imagine a Mexican graveyard on the Day of the Dead — with the lights off. You’re the piñata for a host of partying monsters. They probably look a lot worse than they sound. You should count yourself lucky it’s too dark to see them.

Get out. Save the one you love. Do the right thing…”

Last week I posted the BBC’s latest iPlayer monthly viewing data which got me thinking about how much I use the service to ‘catch up’ on missed programmes.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of iPlayer and my support continues to grow daily as new bells and whistles are added. However I mainly uses iPlayer to catch up on BBC’s archived radio shows and tend to only watch TV shows online on a handful of occasions.*

The user experience is brilliant and I love the fact that I can access the content using my iPhone (despite there not yet being a dedicated app).

From time to time, I stray to other on-demand services from other providers to watch must-see programming I may have missed first time around. Channel 4′s 4oD service has a really impressive back catalogue of content which goes back to truly iconic shows which were made in the eighties and nineties (Desmonds, Eurotrash and some of the early episodes of Brookside – Channel 4′s sadly decommissioned original soap).

However, 4oD just doesn’t have any of the style / sexiness of BBC’s iPlayer.

Vs.  

My girlfriend often uses Channel 5  five’s new-look on demand service to catch-up on Home&Away and Neighbours at the weekend (tragic, I know) but the bandwidth issues persist and I invariably advise her to watch them on YouTube’s new TV channel which now syndicates selected content from both 4oD and demandfive. That said, I do quite like the redesign that five has done with their service.

So, is ‘live’ TV dead? Have we forsaken the urgency of rushing home in time to watch [insert your guilty pleasure here] on the box? The Beeb says no.

In fact, a BBC blog has just published seven facts that are testament to on-demand’s positive influence on the live TV schedule:

Fact 1 Most catch-up is close to first broadcast
The bulk of PVR and iPlayer viewing is in the first 24 hours after live transmission – suggesting that the bulk of ‘on-demand’ is in fact catch-up and still anchored to the live channel schedule.

Fact 2 Young people still ‘do’ live TV
For 16 to 24s, live viewing still accounts for over 90% of the TV they watch. In fact, for the whole audience, catch-up viewing (including PVRs, VCRs and iPlayer) only accounts for 5% of the TV we watch. This is growing, but very slowly.

Fact 3 Audiences can only take so many channels
The number of channels viewed per person per week has only grown from 7.1 in 2001 to 8.5 in 2009. But there are hundreds of channels available in the UK.

Fact 4 iPlayer is not the main catch-up device
50% of all BBC time-shifting is via the PVR compared to 15% via PC iPlayer. For 16 to 24s, iPlayer usage rises to 31% of all time-shifting and PVRs is 46%.

Fact 5 TV viewing is not in decline
TV hours watched per head in the UK have remained stable since 2001 at approximately 25 hours per week. There is no evidence of decline – the latest quarter of figures has actually shown a slight increase.

Fact 6 Time-shifted viewing gets higher AIs
The ability to view content you want at your convenience has led to AIs (Audience Appreciation Index) for all programmes going up and especially for those programmes that audiences have time-shifted, by approximately 5 percentage points.

Fact 7 We still love our TV sets
10m people watch any kind of online video in the UK but only 0.4% of the population watch TV through online alone.

Some good insights here although one commenter on the blog was quick to point out that the iPlayer’s limited archive distances it from other ‘on-demand’ services:

It’s interesting (for me at least) to see that the iPlayer accounts for only 15% of delayed viewing compared to 50% for PVRs. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to me as my parents still use their VHS to record shows they absolutely have to see but can’t. It’s only when the VHS fails them (often the case) that they may watch the show online (with a lot of down-the-phone counselling from yours truly).

In fact, I remember the day we bought our first ever VHS recorder in the Lakhani household. It lasted my folks nearly 20 years – amazing when you consider that the iPlayer interface goes through a refresh in what seems to be every few months.

How do you ‘watch’ TV? Comments below please.

*I’m only writing this post as I have missed the live airing of the BBC’s brilliant Being Human series finale and am waiting for it to appear on iPlayer.

Yes folks, the EGO has landed…