HOLOLENS AND THE FIELD OF VIEW HIDDEN BY MARKETING

Since first seeing the Hololens everyone were impressed, unlike Oculus which is a total virtual reality covering your sight, the Hololens immerses with your real world view.

However, it seems that that was just the concept impression shown by the marketing team. In a recent promotional video, released by a collaboration between Microsoft and Case Western Reserve University we can actually see what the user is seeing, and it’s not a full field of view image that has holographic images. It is a window, in front of the viewer which shows the holographic object.

Hopefully, it is only a viewer version of the Hololens, and indeed us the viewers will be able to see what we were told we will see

Read more on this story

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You'll probably see Minecraft world through a window in your field of view

You’ll probably see Minecraft world through a window in your field of view

ART X VR CREATES WONDERFUL WORLDS

In this non stop environment we live in, sometimes it feels like there’s no stopping.

Field studio in London harnesses VR technology for calming the outside mess of tech for an inner experience.

“It’s really calming and it’s a nice pleasant experience. There is no shooting involved,” says Wendt, Field’s creative director, “It’s more like going to a sauna or a spa.” in this interview covering the project.

The VR head mount is so well designed you just want to hold it close. Combined with probably a great inside aesthetic immersive experience, we wish it would go on sale in stores.

The project was presented in a London exhibition in May 2015, sponsored by LG. Read more about the exhibition

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Yahoo! Digests Are Taking Away Banner Ads

Yahoo! Tech daily digest will be banner ads free

Yahoo! Tech daily digest will be banner ads free

I watched Marissa Mayer’s keynote at CES and was most impressed from the digests, giving crisp, beautiful experience combined with great UX.
They added the fact that the Yahoo digests (for example yahoo.com/tech) will not include interfering banners. Then the question arose – how? Yahoo is looking for ads like any other site. They said “we will explain later”, so I waited until the end of the keynote, but still no explanation.
So far I have not seen any ad. I guess they are carefully integrated.
I’ll look forward to seeing one. I do hope (for their own sake) they are not selling away content.

Becoming An Apple Best App Is A Mysterious Art Called Marketing

Just finished reading about the awesome experience it is for a app developer when his/hers app is being featured on Apple Featured Apps. Well, sure it is awesome, you don’t need a whole article to know that. You immediately get a massive number of downloads per day. But how do you actually get featured? That’s a formula nobody knows how to crack.

appstore_kids_screenSo, I started to investigate a bit around the web to find tips for being contacted by Apple’s featured team. But – most tips were along the lines of “Build a great UX” / “Build a Apple-ish App” / “Build an App people need” – well, come on! I don’t know if there’s a developer in the world that is not building an App while hoping he has these concepts in mind. The question is how do you get noticed in the sea of apps submitted everyday (750,000 apps per month)

These are the only actual tips I collected from my searches:

  1. Localize To Show Scale – Use app store localization to get more traction with local crowd. This  can get you ahead when competing with other apps in the same field. You will be able to localize your 100 keywords to the locals.
  2. Push Your App In Their Hands – Go to WWDC events and try to get an Apple dude to see your app. Actually place the device in his/hers hands. If you couldn’t get in the event (which is usually the case) note that there are lots of byline events, parties and meetups surroundings the WWDC that you’ll be able to go to and meet an Apple dude.
  3. Show Revenue From Scale, Not Banners – Make sure you get revenues the way Apple wants, otherwise you’ll probably note a candidate. That means that if you make your revenue through banners and other advertising in your app and it is completely free then Apple will not consider you. Your app needs to be a paid app or offer in-app purchases or have big brand affiliation.
  4. Linkedin – try sending an invitation to an Apple employee that works in the content or apps division. You can get to these through a basic search. Send them a 50 words description of the app and your need. You cannot send any links through the Linkedin invitation but once you are approved as a connection you can.

By the way – look at this engaging post that analysis which apps get featured on the App Store. Take a look and see if you fall into any of the categories.

Bottom line is, it’s not only important to develop a great app, once you finish the hard work starts – you need to market it. It’s a marketing mission.

Good luck!

Let me know when you get featured 🙂

 

The Best And Worst Gadgets Of 2013

TechCruch honors the Best, Worst and Ugly of 2013. And guess who are in the worst – “Android Game Consoles” (like the buzz word of 2013), OUYA (an Android Game Consoles….) and Leap Motion (the marketing shabang that got away…)
I agree with every word, especially on the fact that LG places the turn-on/off and volume button on the back. But why?
Great read.

Plain Vanilla Raises $22 Million In Round B For What?!

quizup-masthead-finalI was amazed to read that a small Icelandic mobile game studio Plain Vanilla that just launched one game a few months ago raised an astonishing 22 million dollars (today announced) for round B funding. Their app QuizUp is a trivia game, where you can choose from 300 subjects and compete against people worldwide. Great stuff. Although the game reached mass crowd of 5 million downloads, it reminds me of such temporary success apps that had a blast into app-heaven and then went away such as that painting game, and that music trivia game… all great, all gone to really small numbers.

What seems to be unique here is their social boards which they claim to get 100,000 posts on daily.

So where will the $22 million go to?

Conversion to Android –  Ok, that’s like 2-3 months of work…

Localization globally… – mean translating, developing more questions and marketing, cool. QuizUp team claims that most of their local questions come from the local people, and that’s actually a great social idea. Crowdsourcing the local trivia.

Still this expansion plan depends mostly on the right execution. I still don’t understand the investors. Most trivia apps have the same bell curve of hype and then slope to oblivion. Are they expecting it to be the next Angry Birds? I highly doubt it.

What do you think?

No More Woop Aims To Recognize Pets Basic Thoughts

What? Do you think it is possible to recognize specific brain patterns in  the dog’s brain and translate them to actual sentences?

Well, if it’s possible for humans, why wouldn’t it be possible for dogs?

This bunch of developers think they can make it happen: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/no-more-woof

I need to investigate more into that