Our concept and prototype for the next level in locative rating systems really caught the attention and I found myself getting excited all over again. Two buttons, one red one green. Or one smiley one sad. Or one tick, one cross. And all you do is rate how you’re feeling at that time in that place. The iPhone fairy then takes over, sends the rating and GPS data to our servers and we create a happy heat map of the world…

In other news, touchscreens have taken over the world. Every shop front worth its salt within a square mile of Oxford Circus now has some form of large, interactive touchscreen wizardry for passing pedestrians. The battle is on for the hearts and minds, fingertips and hard-earned dollar of the casual window shopper. You Tube and 4OD have also teamed up in Carnaby St for a truly widescreen touch-off.

The exciting news is that Thought Den and Joanie Lemercier have been plotting some similar schemes over the last few months and our first prototype will be demoed at the TD offices in the new year. Watch this 3D space…

We’ll be presenting the project in all it’s detail to Pervasive Media Ethics group (http://pervasivemediaethics.blogspot.com/) who are then invited to discuss anything and everything. No holds barred!

I’ll then be blogging up the main points later, good and bad!

http://hello-thought-den.appspot.com/

This is all a ‘clever’ play on words around the programmers standard Hello World and this application at face value is clearly shameless use of thoroughly untested practice code to see who’ll say hi…

However, in the background it’s part of a serious feasibility study for Happy Packages exploring how useful Google’s App Engine will be to us.

If the test goes well we’ll be using the Engine to host the back-end cleverness for all the iPhone app interaction. The Engine basically means we’ll be able to handle squillions of user hits and database calls with less chance of lag and annoyingly slow interaction that a normal server would have.

That’s the sound of our own trumpets screaming to the heavens as we find ourselves in the industry magazine NMA (New Media Age).

The article is all about the Happy Packages project and covers how Thought Den and Mobile Pie are working together in the Pervasive Media Studio to produce a sexy iPhone application aimed at friends leaving fun trails for each other.

If you’d like to read more about the initial Happy Packages project, take a look at some of our posts.

Small side note, it’s worth mentioning that they managed to spell our name wrong and we’re now ‘Thought Deeds’. Also while we’re at it, it’s a good time to mention the Evening Post’s misspelling of Ben’s (our creative director) surname a few weeks ago. Good morning, Mr Pembleton!

[/PARP]

The Team have been ripping the research apart and putting it back together in the form of the Pervasive Campaign machine ready for investment.

Though June we chatted through the different areas, SMS/Bluetooth/GPS then analysed what was hot and what was not. We took some time to explore what similar market areas are doing and what cool new technologies have appeared on the scene since.

Next up we’re planning some client case studies, investigating research partners and most importantly User journeys when running a campaign.

Keep an eye on our blogs for the more current news,
- The Thought Den RSS Feed
- Mobile Pie’s RSS Feed (Low fat)

Apparently my ‘phone-losing house-mate‘ hasn’t checked hers in a few days too and it raised the point relating to my pervasive weather post.

We’re more likely to interact with our desktops over winter’s cold months, but we’ve got our phones and iPods out when the summer’s rolling.

That’ll mean we’ll see slumps in the Pervasive market during certain warm seasons in comparison to Winter.

Have you been using your Desktop much these last few days. Also, should Facebook be grabbing more of the pervasive market by pushing their mobile version over the Summer months?

It’s been hard-core few months, as you might tell from the other blog posts and mediasandbox…a lot of fun, inspiring, challenging, and more than anything this project has opened hundreds of doors for everyone involved. A realisation dawned this week that we really are operating at the forefront of the pervasive media industry…things break, people don’t understand, it’s new NEW stuff!

Our stand looked beautiful, as did Tom’s face beaming out from the 42″ plasma screen. People milled around, took the Happy Packages GPS demo for a test drive, asked us what on earth we were talking about and nodded knowingly when we explained the difficulties working with pervasive convergence in multi-platform content distribution systems.

At around 3 or 4 it was time to deliver the 6 minute presentation and face the judging panel, who were:

Sam Ingleby – Digital Communications Programme Manager, Intellect UK
Dan Sutch – Researcher, Futurelab
Paul Appleby, Series Producer, BBC NHU

It was all over in a matter of seconds (360 I suppose) and as the beads of sweat poured down my face my mouth moved of its own accord, parrying everything the judges could throw out – It’s a niche product, a playful campaign machine, a response to the enthusiasm shown by modern consumers to engage with their brands…And as it turned out, the cold hearted commercial hard-sell was what done it for us! After a painful few hours wishing the other Media Sandbox participants the best of luck, the announcement was made.

Happy Packages lives on! After an awkward group hug (and some slick high-fives) up on stage the party was on full swing. It wasn’t long until we headed to Start The Bus for more, and while I didn’t manage to get the barmaid’s number (no appreciation for Pervasive Technology it seems) it was night to remember: Champagne, food, friendly back slaps and promises to take over the world. Watch this space.

So rather than commenting on the youth of today, the price of cheese and other such things, we tried out some Bluetooth gopping with out the support of any Pervasive Relations (P.R). The test also had some different variables to our last gopping experience when we were chased by fanny in town,

• most of the subjects were static in a queue
• the pervasive weather situation was better
• the age range was more defined (16-18)
• we were trying video

The results

• There was a significant increase in people with their Bluetooth on, averaging at 47 devices.
• We only got 1 confirmed push (our software is a bit pre-release still, so a possible 5 others)
• Larger amount of devices with personalised names (in comparison to ‘chased by fanny‘), something of interest to “Merolyn the phone” readers,
  • Brown Hair Bitch
  • Ary
  • Dom
  • RowRow
  • Harley

So this week, we’ll be ready with some P.R and attempt a bigger uptake on the Bluetooth gopping.

The Situation

People who are constantly bombarded with repeated Bluetooth requests every time they walk past Co-op’s Bluetooth gopping device are slowly or possibly very quickly going to get annoyed with the vibration in the pocket requiring their attention. It’s just bad etiquette to interrupt someone with something un-expected and then probably ask them again the next day. So if during their personal time, while a client is choosing a sandwich, they’re re-asked to about downloading something, are we providing them with some very simple and mostly detrimental choices, get it, ignore it or turn their Bluetooth off.

Either option is going to be painful to the project, because as the Pervasive group mind map diagram shows, certain media should be subtle and intelligent. If someone’s who’s already downloaded the Application is repeatedly prompted to “Accept the incoming transfer” when they were thinking about which sausage roll to buy from Greggs, they’re gunna’ be pissed off and a little more worn with the whole idea.

A Parallel

To re-enforce the idea of fatigue, imagine work experience tea-boy who keeps forgetting how many sugars you take, and each morning will interrupt you anywhere and everywhere to ask. Not only is he tiring you each time, he’s meant to be (within reason) intelligent about the situation so should remember, the same way people will assume a digital device knows what you’ve got already.

The Issues

Unfortunately, the technology surrounding Bluetooth isn’t always going to know who has what without extra programming, so keeps searching for new connections and asking them to download some content. Which presents us with the problem of Digitally Fatiguing our users.

This clearly brings up the wider questions and solutions, is there a situation where Bluetooth Gopping won’t completely ruin a fragile relationship people might have with the technology already? Is the best way to interact with people over Bluetooth using loads of P.R (Pervasive Relations) or maybe if there were certain zones where people walked into to get content?