"Imagine bubbles floating before your eyes, filled with cool info about stuff you see on the street". No, National Geographic isn't describing the first signs of a stroke, but showing us the way we might soon be experiencing the world through augmented reality (AR). 

After downloading software, smartphones can use built-in GPS, compass, and camera to find information about nearby ATMs, restaurants, transport, and other points of interest. 

No matter where you stand, your smartphone will even be able to tell you who's Twittering in the area, where the cheapest take-out is and when exactly a statue was designed.

Makes current executions of AR look pretty weak.   

In this i(Pawn) game, each player uses a small pawn to participate in a role-playing conversation. The game pieces are distinctly recognized by the system, and as they interact with the software, players are offered a variety of paths to take. 

Let's be honest, this game looks about as interesting as a cup of cold tea, but it's good to see digital designers starting to push the boundaries of ageing touchscreen applications.

The future of the coach-potato is looking up as new technology has surfaced that will allow you to move things using only the power of your mind. 

Now you can turn the volume of your iPod up and close curtains by merely visualising these things happening. But what if you visualised someone dying, would it kill them? Something to think about. 

(skip to the last couple of minutes)

To be perfectly the honest, the thought that an iPad app might replace the gross-out biology class experiences abhors me, but I suppose for the ultra squeamish/animal rights activists, a frog dissection app is a good way of understanding anatomy.

But what's next? Virtual chemistry experiments which avoid the need to use dangerous chemicals? A virtual cookery app where you get none of the mess but also none of the taste? (possibly good for places where there is a high level of obesity).

I’m lucky enough to sit on the British Screen Advisory Council and they recently asked the me question ‘what keeps you awake at night ?’ with respect to Posterscope and the out-of-home communications business.  Here’s what I said:

What keeps me awake isn’t to do with restrictions or threats it’s about how we as a business and as an industry, capitalise on the opportunities that are arising from technological developments and changes in people’s behaviour when they are out of their homes with these two points being increasingly interlinked.

What will products such as the i-pad mean for OOH media owner and agencies?  With more people connected (to other people, information and brands) in more places, what we need is better understanding of how posters, screens, interactive installations, experiential marketing and the like, influence app and web usage on such devices and how they in turn influence other behaviour OOH.

The medium’s ability to drive mobile search is something that we have started exploring and the explosion of smartphones makes this incredibly important for the future of our industry.

A huge amount of social networking is taking place via mobiles, In fact, according to Comscore those who access social networks via mobiles do so for much longer than their PC based counterparts.

Our research projects and campaigns are starting to teach us about the power of OOH media in triggering immediate discussion or advocacy through the mobile web but there is much more to learn.  Facebook makes self expression really easy but connecting this to screens in places like bars or city centres adds location based relevance, coupled with crowdsourced data or localised real world fame.

Facebook are about to launch a location based service allowing people to ‘check in’ via a mobile app when they arrive at certain locations, much like Foursquare and this certainly presents an opportunity for OOH media.  For example, a study by Loca Moda demonstrated that displaying Foursquare data feeds on OOH screens doubled the numbers of people ‘checking in’ to those locations.  But at the same time apps have the potential to increase the proliferation of location based ads so does that diminish or enhance the uniqueness of posters.  How does the OOH industry ensure that this is an opportunity and not a threat ?

This sort of thing is happening everywhere.  In 2008 Google applied for a patent to overlay virtual posters onto billboards in it’s Streetview photographs and the principle of online style adserving to digital OOH screens has been talked about for years. 

OK, so other people are encroaching on an area historically ‘owned’ by companies like us.  But at the same time we’ve been doing the same with initiatives involving mobile apps, social media elements or the placement of billboards in computer games.  I’d argue that accepting overlap, striving for collaboration and the creation of new business models is the way to go.

What we are seeing with all of this is convergence and aside from the technologies themselves there are other factors that act as convergence catalysts with one great example being the Olympics.

2012 has already driven changes in media infrastructure and will continue to do so.  One of the main reasons that there are digital advertising screens all over the London Underground is because they will help boost the image of London as a modern city for Olympic visitors. 

During the event there will be an increase in consumer demand for the latest associated content and with peoples increased expectation of instant gratification mobile devices and OOH screens can play a very significant role in delivering this.

One concern with a lot of these technological developments is that they can generate huge amounts of data about people’s behaviour OOH.  GPS tracking, loyalty cards, travel tickets and even trackable supermarket shopping carts are just a few examples.  So what constitutes responsible use of this data?  The answers to this question require some careful consideration and are not always obvious.

But whatever we do as a company and as an industry if we try to maximise the extent to which our communications plans add value to people’s OOH lives we will stand the greatest chance of success.

Once we’ve cracked all of this, I guess I’ll sleep better !

Do you ever come away from a night out with a friend and feel that they just talked at you for a few hours with little regard for what you had to say? Well there's an app for that. At least, there is an app that monitors the possession of the chat by listening for the different voices, called the Talk-o-Meter, created by Unperfekthaus Hotel.

All you need to do is place it in between you on the table like a watchful arbiter and you can monitor the balance-of-chat-power...

Elaborate barcodes don't exactly provoke huge amount of excitement in consumers. Japanese creative agency Set has taken things up a notch by creating a QR code out of the Frisk mints:

Colchester, South East England might not seem like the most likely location for a pilot of cutting edge mobile phone technology but being a pretty average UK town makes it a good place to test just how interested ordinary citizens might be in using their smart-phone cameras to interact with poster sites.

Viewing any of the poster sites in Colchester through the camera of a compatible Nokia device will automatically offer the user on-screen hyperlinks to content specifically related to the poster in question, ranging from video clips to competitions.  This is achieved through a combination of image-recognition and GPS technology. 

In addition a series of icons have been developed which when viewed through the camera, trigger links to useful local online information.  The icons can be found on ‘street furniture’ such a bus shelters and telephone kiosks.

In order to take part, Nokia’s Point & Find app must first be downloaded by sending an SMS to a shortcode.  To interact with a poster or icon, users load the app and point their phone at the image but there is no need to take a photo as the poster or icon is automatically recognised as soon as it comes into focus.

There are several players in this area including Google, but Nokia’s approach is unique.  They have been running a poster campaign purely to promote the service to consumers, instructing them how to download the Point & Find app. 

To some extent QR codes do have similar functionality however the main reason that they have not become mainstream outside of Japan is that there has been insufficient media activity that explains the proposition and encourages consumers to download the software.  The Point & Find app does include other features not mentioned here including a barcode scanner.  More details are available at http://pointandfind.nokia.com/

The project is a collaboration between Nokia, media owner JC Decaux and out-of-home agency Posterscope.   It has been approached very much as a learning exercise and no decisions have been made as to future availability to advertisers.