Augmented reality (AR) is at the heart of the advertising campaign for the new Volkswagen Golf Match.

Created by Tribal DDB London and Proximity London, the campaign features an augmented reality version of the car which can be examined by the consumers in 3D space.

The augmented reality experience is activated by showing a card containing an AR code to a webcam on consumer’s computer. The card is recognised by the webcam and becomes a road with the AR car travelling along it. The user can tilt the road to make the car move faster or slower.

A number of spots appear around the car highlighting the various features via pop up text panels detailing the cruise control, parking sensors and all other features of the car. This interactive feature enables consumers to have something close to a real life experience of the car.

Volkswagen is hoping that augmented reality will help to give consumers a better experience while researching online. Augmented reality enables consumers to have a closer look at the key technological features in a 3D space from the comfort of their own home.

“The advantage of using augmented reality is that it really delivers a closer and more engaging experience with Volkswagen”, Josie Taylor, communications manager at Volkswagen, said.

Victoria Buchannan, creative director at Tribal DDB added that augmented reality was not used just for the sake of it.

“On the surface it is a straightforward use of augmented reality, but in terms of overall user journey it is a big step closer to the levels of experience we want Volkswagen prospects and customers to have with the brand”, she said.

“This isn’t AR for the sake of AR, it has a practical application of the technology which is very useful for prospects.”

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Everyone keeps talking about it. And the internet is buzzing with different demos of all the cool things you can do with it. But what does Augmented Reality really mean for marketing? And what do you need to know about it? Read more…

Augmented Reality – what is it and where is it taking us?

After trying to control what was said on its own social media pages, the company turned to blogging for help.

They hired two reporters to provide ‘editorial updates’ on the crisis – counting perhaps on journalistic objectivity to help rebuild its damaged reputation.

While there have been doubts about the impartiality of these employed bloggers (and the blogs don’t seem to be existing online anymore), the move demonstrates the sensitivity of multinational companies to the potential of social media in managing their brand image.

Another incident where a global company has responded to negative PR using social media is the infamous Domino’s Pizza case in North Carolina, USA.

Two staff members filmed themselves abusing food that was to be served to customers and posted the video on YouTube.

The company’s response came swiftly. Both employees were sacked the next day when Domino’s was alerted to the video and the company expanded its own online presence by creating its own Twitter account and posting an apology video on YouTube.

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“We haven’t really used it in any of our projects yet because the browser support simply isn’t wide enough yet (usually down to Internet Explorer)”, he said.

“One of the frustrations of web development is that we usually end up standardising on yesterday’s technology in order to ensure a wide potential userbase and that we aren’t cutting off a large share of possible site visitors to a clients site through compatibility.”

According to Gary, the new version of HTML5 is, from a technical stand point, “just more of the same” in comparison to its predecessors.

“It doesn’t require any new skillsets and doesn’t make any huge conceptual leaps. Most of what it provides are standardised solutions to problems that web developers and designers have been working around for a long time.

Some of the new features:

Descriptive tags to contribute to the ‘rise of the semantic web’
“An important step in serving content to multiple form factors (desktop, mobile etc), but also aid SEO by letting us use a consistent and standardised vocabulary to tell Google & Co which areas of a page are important and warrant indexing.”

Multimedia support (at least in theory)
“The introduction of Audio & Video tags mean that we now have a plugin-free method of including a/v content in web pages. There are still a number of drawbacks to HTML5 video, notably the lack on consensus regarding video codecs.”

Offline storage
“Not widely supported yet, but offline storage allows data to be stored offline so that it can be retrieved even if the user has no internet connection. Google makes good use of this to allow you to store all your gmail emails offline with a compatible browser and is also starting to use it in their Google Docs suite of apps.”

Canvas tag
“The canvas tag gives us a 2D drawing surface that we can draw to at runtime using javascript. This, along with the video tag, are the reasons why so many people are touting it as a flash killer.”

HTML5 vs. Flash

Gary also lists some of the pros & cons of HTML5 and Flash, while noting that the release of Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 will inevitably change things again.

Pro for HTML5

1) It’s an open standard that isn’t reliant on a single vendor (Adobe) to bless any new platforms with a plugin before it’s usable.
2) As a developer who uses javascript every day, I don’t have to learn and keep up to date with yet another language (ActionScript 3) in order to product rich interactive content.
3) It’s free to use, whereas Adobe’s Flash creation apps cost a lot (it is possible to create flash without paying Adobe, most of the stuff I do is done without the help of Adobe’s apps, but you loose a number of the benefits of using Flash that make it a good platform for non-developers).
4) A big plus for OSX users is that it doesn’t use Adobe’s notoriously bad Flash plugin for Mac. The reasons why its so bad is down to yet another competition between Adobe & Apple, but whatever the reason, Flash on OSX is horrible.
5) It works on Apple mobile devices.

Cons for HTML5

1) Current implementations are generally slower than Flash when producing the same results.
2) Flash currently has a richer set of drawing tools available to developers.
3) A very personal one, but I find ActionScript3 a much better language to develop large scale apps in when compared to Javascript.
4) This is a obvious one, and only really an issue because of its immaturity, but when compared to Flash, the number of re-usable third party libraries for HTML5/Javascript is very small.  Actionscript 3 has a number of mature libraries and frameworks.
5) Again, down to immaturity, but when compared to Flash’s 99.7% availability on the desktop (and a growing footprint on mobile platforms, Apple excluded) HTML5 is just too small a target to develop for right now.

Feature article

The latest development in the HTML5 vs. Flash debate was YouTube rewriting its mobile site entirely in HTML5 – after criticising it in their official blog. This was happy news for iPhone and iPad users, but the rest of us are confused. Who’s in the right and what’s the future of these web technologies? Read more…

Is HTML5 ready to take over multimedia content on the web?

After installing, Stribe toolbar is completely customisable. You can change the logo, description, colours as well as the background to mach your site.

Stribe can be included as a widget in your sidebar, or as a standalone social bar on the top of the page.

Users can log in using their Facebook or Twitter login details and are keept up-to-date with message and chat notifications from all of the Stribe communities they’ve joined.

‘Stribing’ your website gets you:

* Customisable profiles including user-specific photos, status updates and community information

* User modules to show who is online, and let users chat and send messages

* A Newsfeed where users can create new topics and share with the community

* Facebook and Twitter Connect to let any visitor of a website sign in and join the community

* Badges to reward most active users and websites

* RSS sharing to distribute and provide more news for visitors

* Widget size to make integration easier

* Meta social network to look for communities, join them or create your own to link with others to boost your visibility.

* Stribe in White Label: webmasters can now customize their Stribe.

Most of these features are free. There are additional premium modules that require payment, such as the back office functionality that allows websites to track key metrics of social activity and manage an online community.

To read more and sign up visit Stribe website

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A few days after the official launch of ‘Stribe’, its creators talk about the importance of social traffic on the web. Read more…

Taking place at the University of Sheffield, Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010 (IWMW) will have a strong online presence using various Web 2.0 tools to get the best features from each.

This year, geo-location services will add to an official event blog and a Twitter hashtag.

“The intention is to geo-locate the main venues as well as places for social activities on Gowalla”, Brian says.

“This will allow people, who have the software installed on their mobile device, to choose to check-in when they arrive at a venue and see who else is around.

“This might be useful especially in large venues. For example, it allows people to make contact with others if they know their name but not what they look like.”

One clear benefit compared to Twitter hashtag is that users don’t need to actively be making comments on Twitter in order to be “seen” at the event.

Read Brian’s post about geo-location services in his blog.

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Is location-based social networking the next big thing?

Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to share details of their private lives on a completely different level to what we knew before. Now, with the geo-location services gaining momentum, the web is set to offer us the chance to let others know where we are at any particular time. Read more…

Here are a couple we found interesting:

New ways for journalists to gather information

Social media blog Mashable’s reporter Vadim Lavrusik got a group of media professionals together to act as a ‘collective source’. Gina Chen, one of the participants, argues that apart from offering an easily accessible platform for a group discussion, the tool itself actually made the process more valuable than if all the participants had been interviewed separately.

And yes, she admits, the idea of interviewing people as a group isn’t new. But social media makes it a lot easier to facilitate this. And also, from a purely practical point of view, after a wave conversation the reporter doesn’t need to go through the lengthy process of transcribing a taped meeting or a group interview.

Organising day-to-day conversations in a small company

Based in different countries 8500 kilometers away from each other, a small company consisting of two people started using Wave to keep on top of their fragmented communication.

The problem for Caroline Dahllöf and Carolyn Uy, founders of Lyn And Line, was that a good part of their working day takes place while the other one is sleeping. They set up an individual wave for each project (no matter how small) which needs discussing.

“Unlike the clutter of emails that get saved in some folder, blips of information can be added to a particular wave wherever we need them to keep the conversation flowing and organised,” they described the benefits of a wave.

For Caroline and Carolyn, the beauty of the tool is that it notifies when a change has been made. So instead of going through an extra email summarising what has happened, each one can quickly glance through their inboxes in the morning to see what the other one has done.

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What went wrong with Google Wave?

Designed to merge emails, instant messaging, social networking and document sharing, Google’s “ultimate real-time collaboration tool” hasn’t been the success it was hoped to be. Read more…

Epiphany Solutions, the UK’s fastest growing search specialist, has conducted preliminary SEO work on behalf of JD Williams’ six main brands. According to the company, the results show a dramatic improvement in the brand’s online visibility.

Initial site modification, in addition to content and architectural changes, were undertaken to maximise the visibility of JD Williams’ sites.

Epiphany Solutions, which recently announced it had appointed Andy Heaps as Director of search from rival agency Latitude, will now spend the next six months modifying the six clothing brands’ websites to ensure they are fully optimised.

Tony Wood of JD Williams was impressed by the preliminary results.

He said: “We have been impressed by both the speed and scale of improvements Epiphany has brought to bear on our websites and we look forward to continuing to work with them as our online visibility grows.”

Shane Quigley, Chief Executive at Epiphany Solutions, said the company is delighted with the results and the positive effect the changes will have on the client’s business.

He said: “To see such dramatic improvement in just six months is testament to the quality of work undertaken by our team and we look forward to further improving the SEO of the well-known and well-loved brands in JD Williams’ stable over the next six months.”

About Epiphany Solutions

Epiphany solutions has been managing SEO and PPC campaigns for clients including Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Confederation of British Industry (CBI), SilentNight Group and Three Mobile since 2005.

Their structured and proven approach to performance-led Search marketing has enabled them to consistently deliver world-class results for clients across 12 countries. Epiphany has recently been certified a Google Conversion Professional (GCP) and is now in an elite band of companies in the UK endorsed by Google as being an expert in website optimisation.

Worshiped by the Apple-cult, loathed by the PC conservatives, Jobs doesn’t struggle to spark an opinion.

Currently, the polo-neck enthusiast from California, makes it regularly to the headlines of the digital world. Yet in 2004, when London iTunes store was launched, a Guardian article described him as practically unknown compared to Bill Gates.

There’s also another massive difference between the two. Whereas Gates is busy keeping up his richest-man-in-the-world image in smart suits and a nice smile, Jobs rants about the future of the digital world in his black turtle-neck and misfitting jeans.

True visionaries tend to come with their drawbacks. Jobs’ character has led to trouble even within his own company.

After co-founding the Apple Computer Company in his garage (legend says he even sold his Volkswagen camper van to finance the original design) Jobs was sacked after a reported power struggle.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs

But in the style of true innovators this did not deflate Jobs. He continued his passion and entrepreneurial efforts, which eventually lead to both him and his new company being bought by Apple a decade later. There was still something in him, they thought.

The decision turned out to be, not just a good one, but a great one. Jobs has since revolutionised both the music and mobile industries and carries on fulfilling his vision – and/or making money.

Apple is currently estimated to be worth somewhere around $140 billion. It would be interesting to find out what the figure would be without Jobs. Having a character as a CEO is a powerful thing when you team that up with vision.

Jobs’ character has recently also been picked up by the entertainment industry. Cable channel Epix is planning a satire TV series set in Silicon Valley.

The series, which is written by Dan Lyons, the man behind popular parody blog fakesteve.net, is set to be directed by Larry Charles, director of Borat, Seinfeld and Entourage.

Titled iCon, the show is described as “a savage satire, a study of ego, power and greed” with its lead character, Tom Rhodes, being a composite of Jobs and other Silicon Valley titans.

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Mobile-based online payments are the future for mobile marketing company Interlinked, says the managing director Chris Newell.

According to Newell, the company is in the process of setting other mobile marketing ventures aside and focusing on the new service, ImpulsePay, with full force.

How does it work?

Based on the industry-wide payment system, Payforit 2.0, ImpulsePay allows customers to make purchases using their mobile phone with a maximum limit of £10 to be added straight to their phone bill.

ImpulsePay prides itself on its simplicity. The process sidesteps the time-consuming entering of bank details or personal data. After clicking “Buy now”, users enter their phone number and receive a text message with a secure PIN number. The PIN is then typed onto the purchase page and voilà – the transaction is completed.

ImpulsePay has recently added a possibility to use the service to sell adult content. After the users have entered the secure PIN online, the operator checks that the user is registered as over 18 years. If not, the transaction will not go through.

The background

ImpulsePay was launched in September last year and has been growing solidly since the start. Newell says the growth was almost too rapid at times, allowing the company to hold back on marketing the service.

At the moment, ImpulsePay has 581 profiles created and the company is making revenues of about £50,000 a month. Targets have changed as the service has taken off. Newell said the first step in September was to simply get the first client. Then the tenth, twentieth, and so on. The current target for monthly revenue is £100,000.

What’s new about it?

The underlying idea behind the service is that if you want to charge online, it has to be simple. ImpulsePay is all about optimising the check out procedure. Newell points out that making an online payment with your credit card can require as many as 120 keystrokes to complete – ImpulsePay requires only one click.

As a payment method, ImpulsePay also compares well with premium rate texts. The shift from people sending text messages to something much more seamless is a huge improvement in terms of user flow, Newell explains. Text messages don’t really lend themselves to making purchases when you go online with your handset, he says.

Newell also points out that as opposed to other similar services, ImpulsePay is extremely easy to use for the content owners. The technical side of it consists only of a simple line of code to be added to the website. This, along with the possibility of tailoring the monthly service fees according to the needs, makes mobile payments accessible to small businesses, bloggers, musicians,and so on.

Find out more about Impulse Pay on their website: http://www.impulsepay.com/

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It has been talked about for a good part of the last decade but now it looks as if the mobile has finally become an important force for media and advertising.

Read our feature article: Year of the mobile finally here?

Inspired by Obama’s troops in the US election, UK parties have been busy organising their digital media activities – with varying success.

The Conservatives took a head start after the last election with their campaign sites, including David Cameron’s successful video diary, WebCameron. The Media Week reported that, up until recently, the Tories’ lead has been so substantial that the party has been hailed as an online pioneer in the April issue of Wired.

But even the pioneers can get it wrong. The Tories were recently the target of large scale online ridicule thanks to their naive use of unmoderated Twitter feed on the campaign website Cash Gordon.

The first individual social media disaster was provided by a Scottish Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan who was sacked by his party after tweeting offensive comments spiced up with swearing.

To make the situation worse, the Scottish Labour officials initially stood by MacLennan, blaming his bad behaviour on his young age. It took the Tories to attack with a call for Labour to sack MacLennan before any action was taken.

In addition to social media efforts, both parties have also turned to Google in their campaigning efforts – according to Rory-Cellan Jones, the Conservatives have bought 1,500 search terms in the recent days, including the likes of “fund my constituency”, “polling station” and “mortgage rates”.

And following the example of Obama’s digital campaigning, good old-fashioned email campaigning has also been utilised in the battle. With their reported half a million email database, Tories are investing in quantity whereas Labour is emphasising quality with their 20,000 email addresses.

Follow the latest digital campaigning in BBC’s Rory-Cellan Jones’ blog.

Tech site Pocket-lint has also put together a useful list of who to follow in the run up to the election.

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For the first time in the UK, social media is expected to play a key role in the outcome of the General Election. Just as the power to enrich campaigns and engage with voters is only a tweet away, the possibility of humiliation is not far away either.

Read our feature article – Parties tweeting their way to Downing Street