It is here to stay though, and I am excited to see what unfolds. Augmented reality is a real life environment that is enhanced by technology. It is real-time, coupled with semantics and hardware (camera, sensor, GPS, video, etc). The possibilities of integrating it into everyday life are all interesting. It is still about possibilities, but there are some preliminary ideas for its adoption right now:

• Military: uniforms that are equipped with an AR device that assists the solider with location, maps, intel
• Work: Augmented reality can virtually bring participants of a meeting together within a room – remember Star Wars?
• History: Famous historic events could be digitally reenacted in the physical location it happened
• Education: An instructor could speak about a concept, a piece of art, any sort of object and that object could appear before the class virtually

Your real-world experience becomes interactive and digitally enhanced. Augmented reality could become really huge really fast if it is integrated into smartphones. Many of the components that are needed for it are already in smartphones.

A practical use of AR: you are looking to buy a house, you take a walk through a neighborhood and your smarptphone could detect if a house is for sale, list amenities, price, contact, everything you would need to know about the property. Other AR devices that would be handy would be a driver windshield, or sunglass lenses.

Any other ideas, concepts that are out there? How can it be integrated with the social web?

Attention spans have always been drastically different when viewing content online as opposed to say, reading a book. Online viewing is much more rushed, with eyeballs quickly scanning the page, looking for the information they need – and if they don’t find it, they go somewhere else. Online viewers are constantly bombarded by noise, so its always important to remember the keep it simple rule.

Make a website interesting, engaging and simple to use. The best advice I have ever received has been that marketing is all about common sense. Know who your online audience is, think about what they need, what you can give them in order to accomplish a goal. If it is to educate them on a product before they come into a store to buy – give them everything they will need: price, nearest  store location, product description, reviews so they will choose you and make the purchase. User experience is incredibly important. It builds confidence and trust in your service. With a simple website that is easy to navigate, it makes the experience more fun for the user and much easier to convert your audience.

Adding extras will make people more apt to take action:

• easy access to customer service – if they need to speak to a human being through chat, phone – the faster the access, the better
• videos that show the store, and someone interacting with the product, vlogs, live blogs with an in-store product expert
• social engagement – people want to see what others have said about the product, especially people they are connected to through social networking add value and trust

One of the biggest aspects of a great website though is making it mobile-friendly. How does your site stack up on a smartphone? More people are reliant on a smartphone or tablet and adapting a website to display properly on mobile devices will be key to the future success of online marketing.

Social media is a great tool to spread the word about something, but are we listening to each other or are we just shouting at one another? it has been a useful tool for me, but its not the magical solution. It can be a difficult mistress at times. It needs to be integrated in traditional marketing activities and it also takes time to build it up effectively. It is still a tough medium that requires constant care for it to be effective for a business. Social media outlets are taking off, but many of these outlets are still scrambling to monetize it.

For instance, Facebook has just unveiled a series of new ad offerings for businesses called Premium Ads - many of the new ad solutions are aimed to spread content from your business page to a wider audience. If you post something on your business page, it is now controlled so that it may only reach 15% of people who like your page. So if you have only 2,000 likes, one post on your wall will reach 300 of that audience. You can now pay for your content to go to a larger audience, spreading to people who are connected to those who like your page. Ads will now appear on your newsfeed on mobile devices also. Since 50% of Canadians look at Facebook on their smartphone – its inevitable.

And lastly, this isn’t new, but seems to be getting cheaper – there is a service now where someone will pretend to be your girlfriend online for $5. For that price, a cute girl will pretend to be your special lady on Facebook. Hey, lonely internet guys out there, that is cheap. What a deal.

Have a great week everyone!

If you are in the Toronto area tomorrow (Tuesday March 27) come to Third Tuesday and see William speak. Its at The Pilot at 5:30pm. The event is sold out but I’ve been told that you may be able to squeeze in the door.

Switching gears now – a great article from CBS News about how the telephone is still a good business tool. I wholeheatedly agree with this. I find people tend to hide in the safety net of emial – but to be honest, I still use the phone the majority of the time at work. Its faster, easier to communicate certain levels of information. The only downside is that email is a permanent imprint as opposed to the phone, when someone could deny a conversation after. The lesson? Don’t ask for major decisions/make decisions over the phone, but the phone is a good space to discuss ideas.

And lastly, where to relive the 60s 3 martini lunches in Manhattan. You know I am checking these places out next time I go.

Have a good week!

Some interesting things happening around the world this week. One being the Kony viral video, and the aftermath that ensued. The creator of the film’s public breakdown, and the backlash against the Invisible Children charity from many angles. The one that really caught my attention was the point that focus should be on more current and relevant issues within Uganda – namely “nodding disease”.

There has been a few disgruntled ex-employee news pieces floating around – the most famous is the Goldman Sachs letter that appeared in the New York Times, an editorial written by a G&M columnist about why he left Bay St. for a substantially lower paycheck, and what I want to focus on, the ex-Google employee, James Whittaker.

The Google story is interesting because it shows a Google that is taking a very different path than it did a few years ago. Away from technology focus and more emphasis on social media and advertising. Again, it is a disgruntled ex-employee – but there could be some things to pay attention to in the message. A few years back, Google engineers were allowed to work on their pet projects for a percentage of their time – fostering the likes of gmail and a few other winners. This has changed:

 ”The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.”

The days of innovation are gone at the company, and Google is now more focused on competing with Facebook. Some have argued that Google+ will affect the company’s future success greatly. Its true, many have joined Google+, but it hasn’t necessarily taken off yet. I still hear crickets when I go into it.

As a marketer, I have made sure to set up company pages as it will definitely have an SEO effect. Only time will tell if they are able to make it work effectively – and snatch away the mass audience on Facebook. I also notice getting a much more tailored customer service experience in regards to AdWords. They recently restructured this area of the company and find my account team is much more attentive. It is sad to see that the company is focusing more on advertising revenue, but Google still the clear choice for searching online right now. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months.

I leave you with the Urban Dictionary’s definition of a disgruntled employee. Have a good week everyone!

There has been talk of having more digitally enhanced dashboards, so that the dash would operate similar to an iPad

Or, the disappearing car door – this is the sort of thing I would like to see more of in automotive innovation right now.

It can lead to a variety of issues. One being the boring and bland articles to help just fill in the gap of information… Another issue is the more constant mistake of misreporting of facts. In order to get the most interesting story or fact out first, bloggers, writers, anyone with access to social media…. will publish something that may or may not be true – using a knee-jerk reaction to get exposure, without the important step of  fact-checking. What other issues can arise from this? Let me know your comments.

Enough of that. Here are some links I found this week about outer space:

The moon is alive

Dark matter blobs that could potentailly change our understanding of the universe

Rick Moranis in outer space  a glimpse into the future….  classic

RCC Institute of Technology (RCCIT) and its three schools, Academy of Design, Toronto Film School and School of Engineering Technology & Computing have undergone a transformation with new websites. The main objectives of the new websites are to clearly illustrate RCCIT’s brand story and allow viewers the ability to educate themselves of all program offerings. Viewers can easily get a feel for the student experience at the schools by viewing student work, and what each campus looks like. The new websites easily give the ability for users to seamlessly request information online, apply to the schools and connect through social media.

Elemental Inc. is the Toronto-based agency which was hired to complete the project. The new websites clearly show the quality and value of education that our schools provide. I would like to especially thank our agency partner Elemental for their expertise and professionalism – every step of the way. I highly recommend them for website development.

As governments lately are attempting to get a grasp of and control the internet (Canadian version, look up Vic Toews) – the UK government has announced that they want to keep ALL data of internet users for one year and pressuring ISPs to do so. UK is big about keeping tabs on its citizens, big brother is watching you

Here’s is an article about the U.N. wanting to keep tabs also

Trying to wrap my head around Pinterest Any thoughts from people out there?

Airlines are going to get regulations shortly from the CTA for advertising online (Facebook, Twitter) based on the “free” flights offer and also for airlines to be 100% transparent about hidden taxes, surcharges for flights using loyalty reward programs. This is good news - we need more transparency – regardless of what medium an ad appears.

All the craziness swirling around the internet in the past few months – notably the clear indication that most politicians and governments are completely out of touch… I am not going there in this post today – read a GREAT article in Wired UK about The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, and how the entertainment industry is not accepting change. Instead, they are trying to punish the agents of change. Worth a read

LOVE this parody…. Ace Ventura saves a goo-ee-na pig