Augmented Reality TV quiz - Galileo and Junaio bring AR to broadcast television

An initiative by Galileo and Junaio has enabled TV viewers to actively participate in a live television show and react to things shown on the TV screen, by simply using a smartphone and the augmented reality browser junaio.

A live broadcast of the popular German science show ProSieben "Galileo" featured a quiz where viewers could point their smartphone's camera at the TV screen and participate directly.

Multiple choice questions were displayed simultaneously on the TV screen and the viewers mobile (through the AR browser.) The mobile user could then click on one of the answer options and get instant feedback on whether they were right or wrong (regardless of whether the answer had appeared on the TV by that point.) Mobile players could also see how they ranked compared to other people playing at home.

Click to see video of the Galileo Junaio TV quiz app in action!

This is another example of Augmented Reality getting more useful and another demonstration of broadcast TV facilitating the active audience by giving them an opportunity to join in. This is more than SMS voting, this is live audience participation from the living room and advances in this area could open up a range of possibilities across TV schedules. Millionaire and other shows could harness this, but so could any TV content that could be enhanced through audience interaction (political debate? sports? X Factor and so on.......)

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Porsche FourSquare Super Bowl #Porsche spotting

During Super Bowl weekend in Dallas, Porsche are aiming to create a real-time online photo gallery on Facebook using Foursquare photo check-in's.

Foursquare users at the Super Bowl find a Porsche in Dallas, check-in from that location with a photo attached and syndicate their Porsche Super Bowl check-in to Twitter using #Porsche as a hashtag. Porsche will then scan Twitter and upload the best Super Bowl Porsche photos to the online gallery which is hosted on a 'Big Game' tab on the Porsche Facebook Page.

Porsche FourSquare Super Bowl promotion - Porsche Spotting at the Big Game
(click for larger image)

The Porsche FourSquare Super Bowl activity will also be complemented by a range of Porsche cars around Dallas and available to test drive over Super Bowl weekend.

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FourSquare infographic showing user numbers and other data

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FourSquare infographic - official usage data on numbers, categories and more

FourSquare have officially published a Foursquare infographic entitled '2010: Our Year Of 3400% Growth.'

A range of data is displayed, including the fact that there were 381,576,305 check-in's last year with every country of the world represented in the list and one check in from space!

FourSquare 2010 infographic

Hat tip to Alex

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Porsche Super Bowl FourSquare spotting

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Kinect creates Princess Leia 3D Hologram!

Technological advances are making digital experiences real life experiences and scientists at MIT's Media Lab have been experimenting with Microsoft XBox 360 Kinect cameras. A hacked Kinect camera was attached to a PC and graphic cards were able to render an, admittedly low quality, 3D Princess Leia hologram image - and no need for 3D glassses.


Not as good as the original 'Help me Obi Wan Kenobi' Princess Leia hologram projection in Star Wars, but at this rate it won't be long before high quality Princess Leia holograms become a reality - I'm still impressed by the 'Touchable Holography' demonstration from Tokyo in 2009:


Holographic projection opens up a world of possibilities. Once this hits high quality, 3D experiences projected from a computer could bring an entirely new dimension to the world in everything from communications to gaming to brand experiences and more!

Link: New Scientist

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Star Wars iPad briefing

Stormtroopers 365 - a Flickr Star Wars photography project

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Moods - user expression + real-time data = new targeting opportunities?

Traditionally it was about targeting demographic groups, then came behaviourial targeting and now there seem to be more and more things around targeting content and ads to moods. No longer just a case of right people in right context, we may now be approaching a point where we can target the right people in the right place in the right frame of mind!

The NHS in Gloucestershire (England) have launched a 'Moodometer' app that monitors users' emotional wellbeing:

NHS Moodometer app

Marketing have reported that the iPhone / iPod Touch app created by Mubaloo 'asks users to rate their current mood with a selection of emoticons. Users who update their mood status on a regular basis will receive advice from the NHS about how to improve their emotional wellbeing, from taking exercise to seeking professional help.'

Advertising agency Grey in Canada have created a 'Global Moods clock' that interprets geo-tagged data for a diverse selection of major cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, as well as Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai. The clocks, in addition to telling time, reflect the “mood” of a city by showing the dominant colour from the latest geo-tagged photo uploads to Flickr, as well as the top Google search and Twitter trending word, all in real time.

Global moods clock

Another app by Syntonetic called 'Moodagent' is an 'intelligent system that can automatically decode every truly musical property in every song‚ including moods and emotions' and helps to create / automatically creates playlists grouped around moods, whilst Musicovery helps to discover music that suits the mood you are in ('Energetic, Calm, Positive, Dark.)

Musicovery app

Spotify have been toying with the mood targeting idea for a while now and as the web and (more importantly) analytics goes real-time, then this sort of thing becomes more feasible. 'I want to target x audience, on x platform, in a positive frame of mind' may start to become a reality.

I didn't make any prediction lists for this year, but real-time responding and mood targeting (the fusion of Paid and Earned / the ability to couple Paid Media placements with targeting based on user expression and sentiment) is definitely an interesting area!

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New Google Goggles app links offline ads with online mobile information automatically

I've been talking a lot about how traditional ads can offer a gateway to a wider digital content experience for the active audience who want to get involved more deeply. Tagging print ads and TV creative with things like Facebook addresses and QR codes have been examples of this, but now Google have taken things further with their latest iteration of mobile app Google Goggles.

Google Goggles is a mobile app designed to let users conduct visual searches. The mobile user opens the app, takes a photo of something and the Google Goggles app then returns information in the form of related searches. This has been seen to work for everything from landmark buildings to famous works of art to product bar codes (I posted about Google Goggles and how it works here.)

The latest edition of Google Goggles is now designed to offer links and relevant information about products featured in newspaper and magazine advertising too - regardless of whether the ads have QR barcodes or not.

Example of a magazine ad captured by Google Goggles and returning mobile web information

This started with an experiment last year with 5 brands in the US - Buick, Diageo, T-Mobile, Disney and Delta. This video explains more:


This was an experiment, but Google have now expanded the program so that Google Goggles will show links and mobile information in response to photographing ANY print advertisements from major US magazines or newspapers since August 2010. This brings interactivity to any traditional ad regardless of whether a digital call to action is embedded in the print execution. This opens a whole range of possibilities, breathes new life into print formats and should be a further spur to action to those who are yet to embrace mobile optimised versions of their websites.

Amazing technology and another sign (if we need one) of how everything is fusing and linking together. If any print ad can automatically act as a mobile referral, there are some interesting times just around the corner!

......and Google Goggles can now solve Sudoku puzzles too (just photograph the puzzle and the Goggles app will provide the right answers almost instantly!!!!!)


Hat tip Google blogs here and here

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QR code short story competition

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Intel - The Chase Film [video]

To drive buzz around the '2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 processor', Intel have created a piece of video content called 'The Chase Film.' The video description states that 'the spot demonstrates the performance capabilities of the new processors by creating an action-movie style chase sequence that takes place through a wide variety of program windows on a computer desktop.'


The film sees the heroine jumping in and out of different software packages with one of the YouTube comments giving timings as:

0:12 Windows media player 0:13 Quicktime 0:16 Microsoft Words 0:19 Microsoft Excel 0:24 Facebook 0:33 iTunes 0:34 Photo Viewer (?) 0:37 Blogger (?) 0:41 MSN 0:44 Adobe Photoshop 0:46 Random Fighting game...? 0:52 Google Earth 0:52 Flickr 0:55 Youtube 1:02 Google Maps 1:05 Google Maps Streetview 1:09 Adobe Flash Player 1:10 Microsoft Powerpoint 1:26 Windows 7

The Chase Film does not seem to link to anything or open up a wider content gateway, it is just an interesting piece of video creative and, according to Contagious Magazine, The Chase Film forms the centrepiece of the Intel exhibit at CES in Las Vegas where the second-generation of i5 is debuting.

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Twitter demographics vs Facebook demographics - infographic showing user statistics for 2010

A nice infographic highlighting the demographics and user profiles for Twitter and Facebook in 2010 (though the Twitter data seems to be from March 2010 and user counts have increased significantly since then.)

The data shows Twitter to be more US centric, slightly older and more mobile:



You can follow me on Twitter @nickburcher.

Hat tip to the Wall blog and Digital Surgeons

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Twitter facts and figures - statistics, users, countries, demographics, timelines etc

Latest Facebook usage statistics by country  - Dec 31st 2011

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Facebook usage statistics Dec 31st 2010 vs Dec 31st 2009 vs Dec 31st 2008

Over the last year Facebook has continued to grow significantly, with the fastest growing markets now being seen in Asia. There has also been strong growth in Mexico, Eastern Europe, Brazil and India - can Facebook keep growing like this through 2011? (Russia is one to watch too - currently at number 31 in the list and showing 2 year growth of +2519% with 3.2m Facebook users now.)

Latest Facebook usage figures - Dec 2011 here

The table below shows the top 30 countries by number of active Facebook users with end of year 2010 Facebook user information compared to end of year 2009 and end of year 2008 Facebook usage statistics (leave a comment if you want to know statistics for other countries.)

Here are the Top 30 countries with highest number of Facebook users (31st Dec 2010 - data from Facebook):

Rank	Country	Number of Facebook users Dec 31st 2008	Number of Facebook users Dec 31st 2009	Number of Facebook users Dec 31st 2010	12 month growth %	24 month growth %
1	USA	42,078,960	101,303,240	145,749,580	43.9%	246.4%
2	Indonesia	897,040	14,681,580	32,129,460	118.8%	3481.7%
3	UK	14,937,180	22,625,300	28,661,600	26.7%	91.9%
4	Turkey	7,934,340	16,943,780	24,163,600	42.6%	204.5%
5	France	6,587,240	14,290,700	20,469,420	43.2%	210.7%
6	Philippines	390,700	8,387,560	18,901,900	125.4%	4738%
7	Mexico	1,440,640	6,505,040	18,488,700	184.2%	1183.4%
8	Italy	5,585,700	13,272,760	17,812,800	34.2%	218.9%
9	India	1,071,280	5,397,480	17,288,900	220.3%	1513.9%
10	Canada	10,862,040	14,228,460	17,288,620	21.5%	59.2%
11	Germany	1,255,480	5,799,520	13,678,200	135.9%	989.5%
12	Argentina	2,255,300	7,387,120	12,359,260	67.3%	448%
13	Spain	2,596,080	7,701,200	12,235,080	58.9%	371.3%
14	Colombia	3,632,760	7,243,520	11,665,860	61.1%	221.1%
15	Australia	4,330,040	7,611,920	9,661,720	26.9%	123.1%
16	Malaysia	850,420	3,975,640	9,544,580	140.1%	1022.3%
17	Brazil	209,460	2,413,900	8,821,880	265.5%	4111.7%
18	Taiwan	112,900	5,490,300	8,752,640	59.4%	7652.6%
19	Chile	4,153,060	5,808,020	7,586,060	30.6%	82.7%
20	Venezuela	1,874,220	4,952,340	7,552,760	52.5%	303%
21	Thailand	168,720	1,963,560	6,732,780	242.9%	3890.5%
22	Egypt	822,560	2,341,880	4,634,300	97.9%	463.4%
23	Poland	194,820	1,609,100	4,540,320	182.2%	2230.5%
24	Sweden	1,696,700	3,066,180	4,042,260	31.8%	138.2%
25	Peru	296,200	1,510,480	3,888,560	157.4%	1212.8%
26	Belgium	1,655,940	2,872,160	3,850,300	34.1%	132.5%
27	Hong Kong	1,458,520	2,727,980	3,673,580	34.7%	151.9%
28	South Africa	920,200	2,434,500	3,422,920	40.6%	272%
29	Netherlands	351,280	1,689,480	3,417,540	102.3%	872.9%
30	Saudi Arabia	326,180	1,421,980	3,274,460	130.3%	903.9%

[*figures are taken from Facebook and then compared to Facebook usage statistics lists that I have previously compiled (allowing the 12 month and 24 month comparisons.)]

As always, if you want to know the latest Facebook usage statistics for another country (and data is now published for almost every country in the world), leave a comment in the post below and I will post the relevant Facebook user statistics data.

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Facebook USA - usage statistics by US state July 2010 vs July 2009

Top 30 Facebook Fan Pages - October 2010

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Happy New Year from London! [fireworks video]

Happy New Year from London!

The London new year fireworks display has now been uploaded to the BBC YouTube channel:


A comment by OLFlux has also detailed the track listing for the soundtrack to the London new year's fireworks, claiming:

0:58 - 1:01 Club Foot - Kasabian
1:52 - 2:28 20th century boy - T-Rex
2:34 - 3:33 We Will Rock You - Queen
3:34 - 4:14 Pass Out - Tinie Tempah
4:15 - 4:33 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - The Beatles
4:34 - 5:10 You Got The Love - Candi Staton
5:11 - 6:00 London Calling - The Clash
6:04 - 6:56 Don't Stop Till You Get Enough - Bollywood Freaks
7:01 - 7:33 All Time Low - The Wanted
7:34 - 8:17 Song2 - Blur
8:18 - 9:52 Holiday - Dizzee Rascal

Great fireworks, great soundtrack, great way to start 2011 - and well done to the BBC for uploading to YouTube again!

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