DigIn! Blog

CES 2012: Augmented Reality Steps into Toys

by Limor Schafman

Toys and games for kids have become that much more exciting now that interactivity and augmented reality are joining the fore of how children can play and learn.  

There were three examples at CES that are worth noting.  First, during the Microsoft keynote by Steve Ballmer, the Kinect was showcased through a partnership with Sesame Workshop in creating Kinect Sesame Street TV.  Microsoft is taking current TV programming and turning them into interactive experiences - partially streaming video; partially interactive video game - all with the intention of keeping children engaged while learning. (Note: thank you to GameSpot for this video).  In the video you will see the learning component, coupled with the interactive participation of voice and gesture enabled through the Kinect with Sesame Street characters reacting to viewer actions and responding immediately depending on what the viewer - shall we call them now players/actors/active learners do.

         

CES 2012: Do Food and Advertising Mix?

by Limor Schafman

We've all heard of pop up restaurants being done by famous chefs and haute design food encounters created by the likes of David Rockwell (Nobu around the world). Foodies love it when the pairing of food and design come together.  How about when the design is digital, produced by projection, allows for games and interactive location based fact finding right there at table top and advertisers can buy your table for you and even top themselves up on the menu list if they pay enough.

 

That is what Inamo and their restaurant chain offers.  

2D/QR Codes Pave the Way to Consumer Focused Augmented Reality

by Limor Schafman

One of the interesting things about this year's CES was the arrival of technologies long in the works and now ready for consumer use. Such is the case with Augmented Reality.  All the rage in marketing and advertising circles, augmented reality, the use of digital interfaces or other extra-experiential mechanisms or story telling tools to bring an enhanced experiences to a given situation, is starting to show up increasingly in the consumer world.

  Now, we've been seeing the use of 2D, also known as QR, codes for some time in some one-time-only oriented advertising by brands, on magazines, coke cans and bus stop posters.  And the uses have been pretty cool.  Now we are seeing a resurgence and we will be seeing greater ubiquity in usage.  Hallmark cards will be releasing a special brand of card using 2D codes. I have not yet heard what will be the augmented part of the experience (if you go to the Sobel Media event tomorrow morning and learn more, do tell), but the very fact that a name brand is taking 2D codes and making in part of a card found in any store, is a commentary of how accessible the technology is now.

   Intel, interestingly enough at CES, was showing off its new i5 core processor with an augmented reality display.  As you will see in this video, they chose to use Esquire's December issue with Robert Downey Jr. as an example of technology requiring enough processing power to use their new chip. 

To get the full effect of what is happening with the AR, check out this video by Esquire on the December issue:

I have to say that I was not buying that this could only be done with the new Intel chip. Nevertheless, it is nice to finally see technology which was showcased 10 years ago at Siggraph and which I saw also demoed at the University of Washington Human Interface Technology Lab at that time, finally hit the mass market.

Taking this one step further, tonight, at the Disruptathon event in Tysons Corner, VA, I saw another level of 2D code use.  Until this point, we have been seeing 2D codes that are all the same, thus featuring the same media - very creatively, but still a mass production. Ven Chava of AirArts has taken this to the next level with his company's TalkingTag products. With patent pending technology, Chava has created a system for producing unique 2D codes which then allow for very personalized use of the codes to create UGC media as an augmentation to whatever you want to stick a tag onto.  This enables voice, photos, video and other data of ones own making to be added to anything that has this unique identifier - like a post note or notebook page.  All you need is an iPhone or Windows Mobile phone. Take a look at this video interview with Chava to hear more in his own words:

Take TalkingTag's technology and put the tags on Hallmark cards and you have a whole other level of personalized greetings. On the simple level think what this could mean to direct mail, books, magazine and newspaper articles.  Add the TalkingTag fingerprint-style uniqueness and imagine how cool it would be if we could embed 2D codes in a tweet and other social media communications.  Configure a photo with a 2D embedded watermark and add vocal commentary or any other additional media.  As you can see, I think Chava is on to something quite big.  Check out the TalkingTag store for products with which you can create your own augmented reality experiences.

Now if you want to hear more about Esquire and from some of the thought leaders in this area, walk fast and be ready to stand at the SobelMedia Augmented Reality panel breakfast taking place at the Samsung Experience Store in the Time Warner Building in NYC tomorrow, Thursday morning.  Come bright and early at 7:30am to hear from David Curcurcito, Creative Director for Esquire; David Polinchock, founder of the Brand Experience Lab [with whom I saw the first iterations of this technology at Siggraph oh so long ago]; Doug Dimon, Creative Director/Broadcast Design at Creative Bubble/NYC and Adam Broitman, Ringleader of Circ.us.  And with digital media visionary, Richard Carey, as moderator.

I'm always interested in hearing more about cool uses of 2D codes and experiences and explorations into augmented reality.  So please do write in and send links to cool things we should take a look at.

IPv6 Forum Israel Asks: Are You Ready for 2010?

by Limor Schafman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - The IPv6 Forum Israel yesterday, on March 3rd, held a day long tutorial on the New Internet protocol at day two of the ISOC-IL (Internet Society of Israel) Annual Conference.  Speakers  joined from the IPv6 Forum, Google, Juniper, CISCO, Piano Networks, Bechtel, the IDF, ECI Telecom, PurePeak, and KeystoneTech Group.

In this third annual IPv6 Forum Israel participation in the ISOC-IL program, the Forum asked: “Are you ready for 2010?” The session focused on the key the drivers of IPv6 deployment – the significant depletion of the IPv4 addresses, and the opportunity of innovative v6 driven application development.  “We are moving to another level of interest and focus with regard to IPv6,” says Limor Schafman, outgoing President of the IPv6 Forum Israel.  The ISOC-IL conference focused yesterday on personalized ad serving, mobile web, video games and virtual worlds, and cloud computing.  Each of these assumes and demands ubiquitous, connected, on-demand content distribution systems which can only exist if IPv6 is adopted, deployed and activated through new applications.”

The conference emphasized new applications such as Piano Networks’ Vidder video distribution v6 over v4 browser based application, case studies by Bechtel, and in-depth presentations by the IPv6 Forum, Google, Juniper, CISCO, the IDF, ECI Telecom, PurePeak, KeystoneTech Group and STKI.

IPv6 deployment and development is of particular importance to Israel.  “Israel’s economy is largely based on its famous high-tech industries, which have been one of the main engines of its growth. Recently it seems that its technological superiority compared to the rest of the world is diminishing. Countries like China, Japan, South Korea who prioritize development of advanced high-tech industries, have all of them have implemented IPv6,” says Sharon Peleg, CEO of PurePeak and in-coming President of the IPv6 Forum Israel. “If we do not come to our senses and regain the famous Israeli technological advantage by actively adopting IPv6, we may find the Israeli high-tech market and Israeli economy in general, in a much degraded state.”

The IPv6 Forum Israel IPv6 Tutorial conference program can be found at www.isoc.org.il.  The full video of the conference will be available on the site in a few days.

Contact Info:

IPv6 Forum Israel:  The IPv6 Forum Israel (www.IPv6Forum-Israel.com) is the local chapter of the IPv6 Forum. It’s mission is to It provides information, education and resources to promote the deployment and development of networks, systems and applications utilizing IPv6.  IPv6ForumIsrael@yahoo.com.

 

Limor Schafman: Limor Schafman, outgoing president of the IPv6 Forum Israel, is honored to have worked with the co-founders of the chapter.  She is president of KeystoneTech Group (www.keystonetechgroup.com), a Washington DC based interactive marketing strategy and implementation company using mobile, social networks, video games, and virtual worlds.

 

Sharon Peleg: Mr. Peleg, incoming president of the IPv6 Forum has over 12 years of experience in entrepreneurship and in product and business development. He is the CEO of PurePeak (http://purepeak.com) – a highly technological, leading company that provides advanced solutions for IP networking requirements, establishments of large networks, ISPs and NGNs, and provides high-end colocation solutions in premium data-centers around the world.

Business Opportunities in 2009: A Conversation with George Kliavkoff of NBC Universal

by Limor Schafman

 

I had the privilege this week to interview George Kliavkoff, outgoing Chief Digital Officer for NBC Universal, at the NY:MIEG (New York Media Information Exchange Group) [http://www.sobelmedia.com/2008/07/29/2396/]  Breakfast held at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Building.

 

With a focus on gift wrapping 2008 and casting forward to opportunities in 2009, we covered a number of different topics.  The full interview is available on TV Mainstream.  Here are some highlights:

 

Olympic Online Consumption

Customers want to consume media wherever they are and they are proving this with viewing behavior.  The Olympics stats are impressive:  2200 hours of live programming, 52M unique on line viewers, 1.4B page views, and 10M hours of streaming media over the 16 day period of the Olympics.  Note however, that 90-95% of Olympic coverage consumption was on the TV, with the remainder on the Internet and a very small amount on mobile.  The numbers show what a success the Olympic Games were for NBC Universal, and proves the adage that customer experience needs to be a driver of product and services development.  If it is, advertising, investment, and other revenue streams will follow. 

 

 

Smart Co-opetition Partnerships Can Build Success

Consumers want ease of use, convenience and a great customer experience.  If you build it and there is value, consumers will come.  Seeing the hunger for digital media and knowing quantity and quality of content were needed to draw consumers in, NBC sought out partners, and formed a joint venture with News Corporation to distribute premium content online with an advertising revenue model.  Hulu was born and today reaches 98% of the US marketplace with its multiple and varied distribution partnerships.  MSN, Yahoo! MySpace, AOL, Comcast, TV.com all stream Hulu video, with the video player skinned with that particular brand’s logo. CBS and ABC/Disney are the only two companies not working with Hulu, though their content can still be searched found and linked to through that site.  The centralized aggregation and distribution of premium content gives Hulu the scale and means to be successful.  

 

Advertising

Kliavkoff believes monetizing content with advertising will not be as difficult as people think.  Companies will be more concerned with the use of their dollars, so there will be a “flight to quality.” Though reduced in quantity, the money will be there. 

 

One interesting nugget of learning from tests on Hulu is that while consumers don’t like to view advertising, they will view it for value received.  And when given a choice between seeing a long movie trailer up front or a series of shorter advertisements over the course of a video steam, the surprising research results are that people are divided 50-50 as to preference.

 

Opportunities for Development Investment in 2009

Innovation is a key driver of revenue, and now is the time to invest in new technologies and new business models.  NBC/U and GE Commercial Finance created the Peacock Equity fund to make Series B investments in technologies that are tangential yet related to NBC/U’s core business. Capitalized with $250M, the fund has invested $100M thus far in 11 companies.  One company has successfully exited – Adify was acquired by Cox Enterprises for $300M within 6 months. Other investments include those in ad networks, mobile, and video games advertising companies.  These give a sense of how NBC/U is perceiving its business going forward, what it considers “tangential,” and where the opportunities lie for companies starting to build technology now.

  

George believes that the future lies with digital platforms replacing traditional distribution and advertising mediums. Distribution of content across all platforms – traditional, internet, mobile and onward is the plan of the future. Companies wanting to place bets will find advertising dollars seeking out digital means to deliver their messages when they return to the market place. Local distribution and advertising will become personal.  Advertising delivery systems that can target consumers with their specific needs (to buy an automobile) with advertising and information for as long as they need that content (once the car is bought, ads shift to nearby locations for road-trips or oil change discounts), will be of interest to consumers and investors.

 

Mobile has undergone an opening of the doors of possibility with the introduction of the iPhone, the Android OS and the G phone. George anticipates a marketplace for premium applications and a wave of new mobile development and associated business models. Of particular interest to him are companies focused on personal productivity and services.  This is an underserved and compelling market sector.

 

As a final wrap, George named 2008 the year of “Great Achievements,” and sets the bar for 2009 with the tag, “Recession Accelerates Shift to Digital.”

 

You heard it here first and to listen to the full interview in George’s own words, go to NY:MIEG’s online TV Channel. 

 

Virtual Worlds, MMOGs, Video Games & The Law: Tips on How to Avoid a Real World Lawsuit

by Limor Schafman

You may think, upon reading this title, “What on earth does the law have to do with virtual worlds, MMOGs and video games?”  The answer will astonish you.  I am not even referring to Intellectual Property law, contracts, software licenses or the like.  I am talking about how Federal regulators, like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Commerce, and Congress reach in to virtual worlds and have direct impact on the design, play, interactivity, and relationship with the consumer.

This past week, I asked James Dunstan, Partner of Garvey Schubert and Barer to come on my DigIn! Radio show to discuss what game designers, developers and publishers need to watch out for and how to prepare to meet Federal requirements.  Jim spoke at our Games Gateway serious games meetup  in DC two weeks ago and I knew this knowledge needed to be shared with a broader audience.  (I will use the term “virtual worlds” in this post as a short hand for the different categories of online game play we are discussing here.)

The first thing to know about virtual worlds is that, in fact, they are worlds unto themselves.  Some visitors/consumers/gamers think that they can do whatever they want in this alternative universe.  That no laws apply to them.  However, just as one enters a private real alternative world like Disneyland, there are rules that govern that space.  And the rules are developed by the owners of that virtual world, the game developers and publishers.  In virtual worlds, End User License Agreements, (EULAs), Terms of Service and Codes of Conduct are the constitution and laws by which players/consumers need to abide.

This means that these laws have to be clear, thorough, and read by the players.  This ensures that players know what they can and cannot do, and the companies involved in the game development (including third party developers and technology contributors) and publication are protected.

Let’s take a look at a few of these documents.

End User License Agreements are those annoying multipage scrolls of text that stand between the player and the game play and which, as a result, players usually do not bother to read, quickly check the “Read and Agreed” box and move on to entering that world.  These agreements are key documents that define the world and protect the creators of it.  Their main objective is to limit vendor liability and push behavioral obligations to the players.  They include the “Thou Shall Not Unless You Want to be Excised from This World” lists.  For example, Gold Farming, the collection of in-game valuables or building up of avatar characters for RMTs (real money transactions) is not permitted in some worlds.  (Note: Some worlds do permit this.  This is up to you, the game designer.)   If a player does this contrary to the EULA, the player’s account can be closed, all value and characters lost, and etc.

EULAs need to be internally consistent.  There can be no arbitrariness in their construction or in their enforcement.  As a game designer, you do not want to paste together a number of paragraphs you have grabbed from different sites.  There needs to be real meaning behind what you are writing and relevance to the world you are creating.  Also, enforcement must be consistent or this can be used against you in court.

Terms of Service Agreements inform players of what they can expect from their experience and what you will do to protect them.  Again, these agreements are meant protect both parties – the developers and the players - in this world.

EULA’s, Terms of Service and Codes of Conduct agreements are the internal rules of expectations, behavior and conduct as defined by the game developer and publisher.  Now we turn to some examples of how external Federal regulators impact games.

Congress passed the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in 1998 and handed implementation and enforcement authority to the Federal Trade Commission.  COPPA prevents the collection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from children under the age of 13 without prior consent of a parent or legal guardian. What this means changes over time, so developers always have to stay apprised of the latest interpretations that will affect their user interface and back end design.  Age verification is up to the good faith judgment of the designer, but you can’t adopt practices that encourage children under 13 to lie about their age.  For example, just having a check box saying that a person is not 13 or younger is insufficient.  The FTC also considers it a violation of COPPA to allow a subscriber to use the “back” button to change their age when it becomes apparent that having admitted to being under 13 now restricts access to all or part of a website or virtual world.  The FTC is serious about enforcing COPPA, and just this week Sony Music was sued this week for failing to get parental consent on hundreds of its websites before acquiring PII from the children.  As a result Sony will pay a $1M fine (or $33 per registered user).  An expensive oversight.

What could have been done to avoid this cost?  There are several organizations like the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) that will review a website to certify that it is COPPA Compliant.  The service costs $20,000 on average.  A hell of a lot cheaper than a cool million.

CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994 and enforced by the FCC, avails wiretapping privileges of telecommunications carriers to Federal law enforcement agencies.  It applies to online game play that uses live chat, or in any way uses a system,third party or developed specifically for the game, which interconnects with a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).  This means that if the telecommunications system deployed behind the scenes in a game in any way can be used for other than computer to computer Internet connectivity, whether for that game or because the provider offers that service in general (i.e., VOIP and cell calls), then the game is subject to CALEA and developers must plan accordingly.

Though this has never been called to bear as far as we know, as a developer and publisher you need to make sure your hardware is CALEA compliant (most of today’s routers are) and your software doesn’t impede wiretaps; designate a 24/7 contact person in your company to interface with law enforcement agencies; file a continually updated System Security Integrity Plan (SSIP) with the FCC and Department of Homeland Security; and read carefully your agreement with the VOIP provider to pass on as many obligations and related costs (like the compliance and 24/7 contact person) to them.  One point Jim stressed is to be sure that you don’t become a VOIP service provided.  One virtual world he was working with wanted to enable calls to be made from that world to friends over a landline.  This immediately subjects a company to further Federal requirements like E911 and costs such as the Universal Service Fund which demands ~10% of gross revenues as payment to the government.  A steep price to pay for “cool” interactivity.

How much does all this preparation for working within Federal regulations cost?  Approximately $100,000 or 5% of the game development budget.  This includes the legal work, filings, training of security IT staff, and related customer service.  It may seem like a lot, but compared to some of the numbers discussed above, it sounds reasonable.

We didn’t even touch on European Union regulations, encryption, or privacy related requirements, so I know we will be having Jim back.  

To hear Jim in his own words, please visit the show site for streams and downloads at DigIn! Radio or download the show off iTunes. And you can find him at Garvey Schubert Barer.