Wolfram Alpha on the iPhone

Following on from the recent launch of Wolfram Alpha, the search engine has now been optimised for use on the iPhone and iPod devices.

The 'computational knowledge engine' works by calculating answers to specific questions, and the move follows pressure from users who posted their idea on the Alpha Community page. The company is also listening to fans' recommendations via the Community Page on what features they would like to see on the iPhone application, which is in development.

You can get it here

Augmented Reality Campaigns Round-up

We love Augmented Reality.

Here's something useful for brainstorming brand campaigns - see here a neat round-up of some of the latest and greatest AR campaigns, developed either for commercial or more artistic purposes.

- Sam

iPhone-Controlled Ads

The world’s first iPhone-controlled LCD adverts have been developed by UK-based digital comms agency, Clusta, and are proving popular in train stations and shopping centres globally. iPhone users passing by can interact with the contents displayed on the screens from their handset.

Objects on the screen can be moved by making finger movements on the iPhone’s screen, and users can even change colours and other features of the contents on the LCD screen. Clusta has essentially developed an API which allows for any input via the phone, including movement from the accelerometer or audio from the microphone.

This is truly a way of being able to engage the target audience, integrating digital OOH with mobile, with each experience being unique to each user. However, limiting the service to just iPhone users will have a massive impact on reach, and Clusta must soon extend the technology to cover interaction with all smartphones in order to reach its full potential and effectiveness.

The agency also claims that the technology is not just limited for exploitation in OOH, but could one day be used by people to interact with any Flash based process including banners or websites, implying the potential for brand involvement is endless.

- Antonia

Social Media Rules of Engagement

We often refer to the rules of engagement within social media.

Mashable neatly rounds-up the top 10 here. Handy for any brand or marketer considering dipping their toe into the social media space.

- Sam

Project Natal is born

There are some very exciting goings-on over at Xbox which promise to have serious impacts on the gaming industry.

Announced during Microsoft’s annual E3 press conference, Project Natal is the new hands-free control system for the Xbox. The motion sensing camera allows users to direct action within games by moving their hands or body, without the need for a controller. In this way Natal becomes one step more advanced than the Nintendo Wii.

It has huge implications on the Xbox’s appeal to a key hard-to-reach market – notably those who don’t consider themselves ‘gamers.’ Nintendo first tapped into this market with the launch of the Nintendo Wii, and games such as WiiFit and RockBand, demonstrating that the traditional two-hand controller is itself perhaps the biggest barrier to preventing people from taking up gaming.

The innovation isn’t solely limited to gaming though – users will be able to make use of the technology in the films and anything else they have on their Xbox, without touching any hardware. The introduction of Project Natal, which will apparently be compatible with every Xbox 360, clearly frees up people’s perception of gaming and the opportunities available.

Have a read here and here.

- Sam

bada-Bing?

Microsoft’s latest offering is the new search engine, Bing, its Live Search replacement and rival to Yahoo!, not Google, it claims.

Coined the 'decision engine', Bing aims to make search easier and more user friendly by serving up results based on similar previous searches. So if a user searches for a holiday or flight for example, they are served price offers, travel guides and destination information, rather than a list of websites. Information is served in tabbed categories such as shopping, travel, news, maps, videos and images. Users will also be presented with a ‘best match' and ‘instant result' without needing to navigate away from the results page.

The service is going live imminently in the US and in Q4 ’09 in the UK, with a beta version in the meantime.

Microsoft claims users abandon 30% of searches due to unsatisfactory results, something they wish to improve on to increase benefits to advertisers and maximise revenue.

- Sam

Wolfram Alpha – major breakthrough in Search?

To take all of the world’s data and make it immediately computable: an incredibly bold and ambitious goal for a software program. But this is exactly what Wolfram Alpha plans on doing.

The system, invented by scientist Stephen Wolfram, aims to compute answers to specific questions. In doing so it wants to create a system which does for quantifiable information and data what search engines have done for qualitative, or ‘informal’ knowledge, such as texts and documents. All a user needs to do is ask the program a question in everyday language, such as “what’s the GDP of France?” or “how many internet users are there in Europe?” The data is then represented in precise visual formats.

Comparing it to an existing search engine such as Google, which retrieves documents based on keyword searches, Wolfram Alpha aims to act smarter by actually thinking for the user. It claims it can understand the question and will then compute the answer.

Just how the system works based on its in-built models of knowledge fields remains unclear, and whether it will actually launch to any success remains to be seen, but on the surface - and if possible - this would be a hugely significant breakthrough.

Watch a webcast of the system here

- Sam