27 JANUARY 2012

contentAI studios | Portland, OR | http://contentAI.com

True Story:  Once upon a time, a major motion picture Studio had one person assigned to traveling to their global offices to see if the films in development or production had any World Wide Web needs or if there might be any cross promotion potential?  The Distribution, Production and Development executives all said, “no.”

Which happened to be at a time when we were tapping into an online (remember Compuserve!) fan base for a series of novels that were being developed for a motion picture property (which we’d already licensed Electronic Game and merchandising Rights to) – The absolute hub of our activity was our Property’s URL and it’s Forums.  For us, all of the pieces fit together into one large User experience to dip in and out of from various locations.  The term “transmedia” hadn’t been invented.  We didn’t know what we were doing, other than knowing that the Whole Enchilada was a lot cooler than the individual ingredients.

Fast Forward +/- 15 years into the Future.  Today.  OK, technically  a couple of weeks ago at CES in Las Vegas.

The most exciting space for us was the INTEL® booth – OK, “booth” is used loosely, it was the INTEL Command Center at CES.

Featured were INTEL’s “trees” that we saw set up around the Command Center at their disconnected workstations.  Typically, it was different divisions and technologies and their team members focused on their silo of interest, including:

•  Ultrabooks– OK, we love them.  We use them for coding and building our apps (picked up an Asus U21 the first day it shipped)

• AppUP – Desktop apps for Windows machines; with an amazing team working behind the scenes to make the process rapid and enjoyable (See:  Encapsulator).  What an amazing platform and reach – Whether for Enterprise or for Education – Or, for home…(more on that in a minute)

• WiDi – Huh?  Wireless HDMI to bridge between the devices on your couch and your big screen

• Ultrabooks & Nuance Deal:  Lost in the press releases was a remarkable partnership announcement to advance speech recognition on Ultrabooks (yes, that Nuance, the one that really does a lot of the heavy lifting for SIRI).  No mention of this on the floor.

• Smart TV: Formerly the Digital Home Group, the device(s) to bridge from big screen to on-the-couch interface continue to expand.  While we saw competitors such as Panasonic (Vierra) and others all migrating to the “television app store” experience, the INTEL group, when coupled with other offerings within INTEL is what creates the groundwork to cohesively extend television to handheld devices.

• INTEL Embedded / Retail (though their presence at the Retail’s Big  Show the following week is what we were sorry to miss; Nice article HERE)  Update: Now found @IntelSys,  Intelligent Systems

You see, we at contentAI studios are really “content people.”  We’re storytellers.  We’ve worked on motion pictures, television, internet television and interactive television…oh, and mobile experiences.

Why is INTEL® massively exciting for us?

Because the “future” we thought was 2-5 years away is already here today.  If you just connect the dots.   If you envision how those silos all interconnect at a content experience level. ..

Our contentAI studios platform was originally created to produce emotionally engaging, personalized interactive experiences with film and television characters on hand held devices.

It looks like this:

That’s the image that’s been in our PowerPoint® deck for about a year.  It was a vision of our “Gen 4” UI.  It was science fiction.

But, looking at INTEL during CES, we realized this could exist now.  We can deliver this experience today.

The idea that the Audience can engage in one-to-one, personalized “conversations” (text or voice) with a character on television (Pause the linear show and engage in a one-to-one chat); where the consumer discovers new and alternate storylines…where Brands have all new interactive real estate (in someone’s hand).  All possible.  Now.  Today. #wayCool

When we looked around at INTEL’s “trees” at CES, we saw the forest.

We feel that in order to make this truly exciting, the content that is offered needs to be more than games or fancy new, intuitive cable menus.  The content needs to connect on an emotional level.   After all, “television” was always a storytelling device in our homes.  Tapping into that engagement level is what will both sell devices and also satisfy the new interactive audience.

And, what about the opportunities for retail solutions with these same tools?  Absolutely possible.

Where does will it start?

With the question:  Why doesn’t every Saturday morning cartoon allow kids to directly engage with the characters via a conversational interface?

We know the issues from the Television production side.  Someone needs to slap the Unions on the upside of their head so they don’t prohibit Writers and Actors from participating in these new storytelling formats.  Union contracts need to be “living” documents that can be changed year-round to adapt to emerging technologies (rather than showing up 5 years late to the party).  But, that’s another blog post…for another day…

But, the “forest” is much wider and deeper than Saturday morning television – with the contentAI studios’ platform solutions alone, we see ESL schools in China using these tools to improve conversational English.  We see in-store Retail “intelligence” also being delightful and intuitive. . .and more. . .because there’s always more. . .

So, now we need to figure out how to tie the pieces together as a Developer.  Heck, I can’t even tell if my Ultrabook has WiDi?  Or, what device I need to make it so?  Or, if the Smart TV group have an App Store, or if they will be leveraging AppUP?

To navigate through the forest path at INTEL, we are fortunate to have a Senior Community Relations executive who can help steer us.  That kind of one-to-one relationship between INTEL and the Development Community is remarkable – We’ve been extremely impressed with their AppUP team since early 2010 and look forward to weaving our way through more branchs of INTEL in order to realize the potential, from a content Developer’s point-of-view, of their astounding technologies.

While HTML.5, Ultrabooks, WiDi and other technologies all link to one another, it’s the human component within INTEL® that serves as the Pandoran Neural Network…it’s humans that glue it all together…fortunately,  corporations have evolved in the past 15 years compared to  when different motion picture divisions ignored each other (especially digital divisions; and, um, Motion Pictures studios are now paying the price for such early ignorance).

Seeing INTEL’s forest, as an outside Developer, made the trip to Vegas worth every long line, worn out pair of shoes, over-priced everything and endless package of mints that were required for the trek.  For next year’s CES, seeing these devices all playing nicely together and creating all new content experiences is what we’re looking forward to and hope to be a part of.

#CES2012

http://mathieson.typepad.com/genwow/2011/07/trident-lates-to-use-qr-talking-heads-video.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+GenerationWow+%28Generation+Wow%29

Showing a Trident print ad, with QR, that leads to an “AR’ish” experience without AR.  Near as we can tell, it’s just a video being pushed from the QR scan.

Here’s the Youtube link directly:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X62xhsDqdBQ&feature=player_embedded

What interests us about the format is how we could FIRST engage in a quick “chat” with the end user and then deliver, for example, one of ten, different videos so that it is a more unique and personalized experience for each end user.   It’s a very clever format to expand upon.  Let’s hope we see more uniquely mobile experiences coming off of QR codes (and NFC) rather than shrunken internet experiences.

How this could be applied to our mLearning apps is also interesting to consider – particularly, the ESL apps where we could add a pronunciation feature that would be fun and engaging for the children’s content.

http://www.gomonews.com/your-mobile-device-phone-web-browser%E2%80%A6-secret-lover/

With this line standing out in particular:

“People are experts at “humanizing” their devices, attributing human characteristics, moods and behaviors to their communications devices. Now, it’s nothing like the connection you have with an actual person. You can never feel as close to your phone as you can to a real person. But those feelings are there, even if they’re only faded reflections of the real thing. And I think that advertisers and marketers would be wise to pay heed to that…”

How does this apply to our mobile content and platform?

http://contentAI.com – conversational mobile marketing and entertainment

http://ESLai.com – conversational mobile simulations for mLearning

It’s about 2-way communication that’s PERSONALIZED.  For mBooks, each reading can be personalized by the user.  For mCoupons, a User gets a coupon for their personal needs, not a one size fits all.  For mLearning, it offers the safety of practicing learning with a virtual character in a personalized conversation.

Mobile and personalization = peanut butter and chocolate.  Yum.

But, we want the entire experience to be intuitive and part of a broader shift in how User’s perceive their mobile devices and what’s possible with it.

QR-2D Tags have tried to demonstrate how a “bridge” between the real-world and a mobile experience could happen.  But, the QR-2D industry is fairly fractured and haven’t told consumers a compelling story about why this is part of a new mobile lifestyle.

Along comes NFC. . .

Lots of collaboration and a lot of money (primarily because “payments” is going to be lucrative), but this crosses over to advertising, marketing and even mLearning — Because NFC ventures are creating a compelling story about how mobile devices are essential to someone’s daily lives.

We posted in detail about this over on:  http://contentAI.com/blog

There are  range of new initiatives that incorporate geo-data with NFC scans — all creating a new platform for mobile stories and engagement.  We believe that QR-2D ventures and platforms will benefit from the NFC story, provided they jump on board; rather than argue technology formats.

Want to learn more about conversational mobile marketing, entertainment and mLearning  from the team?  We’ll be showing some private Beta demos with new features and discussing how our integration with apps will further expand the platform.

Yes, most of the emphasis of attending is on the contentAI studios side of the coin with regard to mobile marketing and entertainment.  But, we’re also looking at mLearning relationships that can reach a significant number of International users.

Pop us an email and let’s connect.

We attended the MobilePortland gathering last night that addressed Mobile as a Platform for Change.

It was an unusual tech event for Portland, in our opinion, because it (a) thought bigger, (b) inspired outside of the box thought, and (c) was global in scope — local events don’t always hit those points.

But, it was also sobering.

For all of the potential of mobile, it also reinforced the notion that most people involved in mobile campaigns or initiatives are sadly lacking imagination.  The “shrink the internet” work that permeates this space was highlighted as delivering consistent failures.  The utopian advertising ideals of entirely rethinking how ad-dollars can truly add value to a brand and the human condition was refreshing…though I suspect it’s a tough road to travel.

There are signs of hope eeking through.  The effort for mobile English learning in Bangladesh that was highlighted by National Geographic here:  http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/29/english-in-action-mobile-learning-in-bangladesh/ that converges a television show with mobile learning (“transmedia” anyone?) is a terrific read.  For contentAI studios and ESLai.com, this article and the efforts in Bangladesh represent the original impetus for creating the platform — Extending television properties to interactive mobile engagement, based on the most intuitive form of mobile interaction:  short, conversational text messages.

Additionally, it ties in with he application of our  platform for mobile English language learning at:  http://ESLai.com

So:

• 5 Billion Mobile Devices in the World
• 1 Billion People engaged in some for of ESL learning
• Advertising dollars shifting to Mobile which could add real value to people’s lives and support the Brand

How to tie this all together?

These are great ingredients, now it’s time to figure out the recipe.

contentAI studios and ESLai.com are imprints of zyntroPICS Inc.

We’re anxiously awaiting AppsGeyser to tweak their platform so that the apps can be submitted into the new AMAZON Android App Store (whatever it will be called???).  Word is “about 2 weeks.”  In the meantime, the apps are already on the main Android Market, GetJar and a few others.

The news that BLACKBERRY’S tablet will be compatible with Android apps was a fascinating development in terms of some level of standardization emerging.  We hope more OS’s will allow x-platform app access.  We still highly believe in mobile web and a build-once strategy; but, the AppsGeyser solution allows us to leverage our single build but be found in multiple locations.

Finally, we were impressed with the Vid.ly “universal URL” offering to deliver optimized video across all mobile (and desktop) devices and platforms.  Very cool.  It also has an embed feature which is the first we’ve seen for mobile (though we’ve talked about it endlessly).

It’s great to see the mobile ESL efforts taking off.  Global traffic has increased on ESLai.com — and, the engagement analytics are terrific to review.  But, the real “perk” is reviewing the anonymous chat logs from the ESLai.com and contentAI.com mobile apps — Are we creating “believable” scenes between virtual characters and people?

You betcha.

These are the days when being a mobile content technology and service are terrific.

Near Field Communication, which has languished and been plagued by security issues, is taking one giant step forward today with Google’s announcement of rolling out a limited program in Portland, Oregon at the retail level:

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/cross-posted-and-excerpted-from-hotpot.html

Does this sound competitive to QR, 2D and Location Based (GPS) apps?

It is.

Will brands and advertising agencies be attracted to this?

It’s about the User Experience.

How simple and intuitive is the experience?

Being a Portland company, we’ll be trying this out and updating this post.  But, every indication is that NFC could be the next ‘really big thing” with mainstream mobile adoption.  RIM, Apple, Android, Nokia along with the major US carriers have all made announcements in the past month about their commitment to NFC at the OS, device and carrier level.

No “apps” required — Any phone with data access will be able to interact and join Santa on a narrative adventure.

The production of the story pulled on many disciplines, from scriptwriting, to natural language processing, to creation of mobile friendly images designed for on-the-go viewing and engagement.

The purpose of the piece is two-fold – to introduce agencies and brands with the broader services of contentAI studios with regard to WAP content and delivery…truly, this is a new story telling format.  And, to open this up to consumer-facing engagement…to see how End Users will respond?  How they will commence the engagement (QR, 2D or shortcode and keyword)?  To see how we can continuously improve our content offerings.

The plan is to re-release MySantaTalk each Holiday Season with whatever new (sleigh)bells and whistles we’ve concocted during the year.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

Beta release is for early November with a mid-November launch.

You can get a feel for the platform and it’s marketing applications at:  http://contentAI.com/demos/retaildemo

While we really enjoy seeing this used for marketing and also mobile learning — We’re anxious to apply this technology and delivery service to entertainment and story-driven content.

The impetus for launching contentAI.com was as an ancillary story platform for film, television and internet television properties…providing the ability for on-screen characters to engage in one-to-one conversations with the audience — to break down the wall between character and audience and turn the audience into Participants.

The ability to enhance the interactive narrative conversations with visual and audio materials is a fascinating new story platform to explore…

Stay tuned…