Last Thursday a few of us from LBi, Lego, P&G and Pereira & O’dell did a workshop on building a believable brand for the digital age. As part of the session set two briefs and asked the attendees to response with ideas for how to launch this new product.
We referenced a number of interesting projects and their case studies. These can be found here:
In our homes we don’t collect rain water and use it as our main source of water; instead we utilise the services of a water provider e.g. Thames Water. Similarly, we don’t have electrical generators in our gardens we simply link in to the national grid and purchase our power from one of the power companies. If we become unhappy with our power company of choice, we can easily change to another without the need to rewire our houses.
This utilisation philosophy is now rapidly gaining popularity within the internet space and has produced its own term; ‘Cloud Computing’. The cloud computing rational is about providing services that companies and individuals can use within their own websites (normally for a monthly fee). By the way, do not confuse cloud computing with ‘distributed computing’ which is where large computational tasks are split up and undertaken by a number of networked computers in parallel.
Currently there are a number of companies offering cloud solutions; everything from full e-commerce systems to ‘modules’ which will provide functionality that to either buy-in or develop would be prohibitively expensive.
For example, Bazaarvoice offer components which allow users to rate and review products as well as ask and answer questions on them:
For the above service Bazaarvoice will charge around £1000 per month which includes analytic reports on the data. This may sound expensive but when taken in context where e-commerce licenses can easily cost £100,000, requires an IT department to maintain and offers less developed reviewing capabilities then the Bazaarvoice module begins to look attractive.
To integrate with cloud services a number of paths are normally available. From iFrames and javascript blocks to server side web services the one ethos which is maintained is ‘simplicity’. Ease of integration is certainly one of the top reasons for opting to use a cloud service over a traditional self hosted solution.
The other main reason for choosing the cloud services or Software as a Service (SaaS) route is cost. The pricing model is that of subscription and therefore very low upfront costs. Of course, over time the cost of ownership can be high but arguably the pain of ownership should be lower (software upgrades will be transparent, no hardware issues, no staff required to maintain it etc).
Currently cloud services offerings are very popular within the CRM, E-commerce and social network sectors. Within ‘Search engines’ and CMS SaaS is less developed. However, this is likely to change; this week Microsoft came to talk to us about their Azure project (http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx ) . Microsoft view cloud computing as the future and have created Azure to allow companies to easily develop and deploy SaaS services.
Azure is only available for developers at the moment but when it goes on general release you can expect an explosion of new cloud services as the path to make money by selling your cloud services has just been widened.
At the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, E3, much of the hype was around new controller systems from the usual suspects. Two of the manufactures, Sony and Nintendo, presented impressive, but ultimately incremental wand based methods with which to control your home console. Microsoft however took a different route, and one that demonstrates when they put their minds to it they can come up with innovation to match anyone.
Microsoft presented ‘Controller-less Gaming’ – a motion tracking system which accurately maps the gamer’s motions into the game itself. ‘Project Natal’…
These give you the idea:
What is impressive, and the reason why initial reaction of everybody who watches this is that it is staged or just plain sci-fi, is the sensitivity to which they can achieve this – not only can it detect a body moving in the distance but it can detect tiny movements and even recognise facial features and gestures.
Project Natal also explores a solution for allowing ‘objects’ to move in and out of the virtual world, rather clumsy in comparison to some of the other subtleties, but a scanner is included to pass drawings from the real world to the virtual one. So ironically I guess a good old fashioned paper and pencil is required to get the most of out of it then…
Peter Molineaux, of Populous and Fable fame, has applied this technology beautifully to demonstrate just how this might play out and why it is indeed revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Meet Milo…
Time will tell just how effective this particular device is – however they are now on the way to game developers and are been demonstrated to a sceptical public and press with impressive responses.
Undoubtedly the first time most people will knowingly experience this technology is gaming, however Project Natal is most interesting when you take it away from this context. I don’t believe gaming interfaces are what Microsoft’s ambitions are here – I believe they are making a play for the interface and the method with which we interact with it more generally. ‘Touch’ already seems confined and limiting, it feels niche and more akin to mobile than it does to revolutionary interfaces. Disappointingly I say that after only just getting an iPhone…
Elements of Project Natal have immediate application in a variety of real-life scenarios. The motion tracking could watch you around store and differentiate genuine interest in a product from presence at a display stand. It could watch crowds and identify groups or individuals who act suspiciously, or watch a bus-stop to identify the ‘undesirables’ hanging around. The voice tracking and facial recognition could replace swipe cards at security doors or replace tickets for a play that you’ve bought on-line…
Ultimately this type of development moves us significantly closer to being able to link the online identity to the real-life identity and so share information and experience…
So, next time you pass a security camera ask yourself whether it knows your name and address, your online activity, which play you watched last night, your latest tweets and what you favourite Rock Band track is… Because it just might…
