Not a normal grainy one with endless castles and pit potential. But more like one of the Media Sandboxes that the Pervasive Media Studio has just released.

The Pervasive Media Studio

To fill you in, a Media Sandbox is a funded challenge open to any technologists. It’s aim is purely at  allowing people/companies/artists to come up with a idea to tackle a problem, create a new service or create an experience.

A 2009 Media Sandbox commission

The first is B-Open Sandbox (http://www.mediasandbox.co.uk/awards/), and invites ideas on utilising the wealth of data-feeds out there and turning them into useful apps, sites or experiences. So for example and app which helps people decide which city to move to according to a government air-quality feed.

The second is Pervasive Experiences Sandbox (http://www.mediasandbox.co.uk/awards/) and invites ideas on creating ground-breaking pervasive which should pull together mobile, wireless & sensor technologies to create meaningful experiences.

Thought Den, being a company who are constantly playing with, researching and creating new technologies for clients, commissions and fun (just check out our latest Geek club). Will definitely be putting ideas & concepts into the mix.

Then hopefully we’ll have a new Sandbox to play with in the Den.

Our previous Media Sandbox commission

Happy Packages Dick Penny

Journey to the Centre of the Night, a game involving over 170 people who were emailed a secret location on the day of playing and were told to meet at dusk. What ensued turned out to be a real highlight of the weekend for everyone involved. ‘Players’ following cryptic clues across Bristol, stalked by the fearsome ‘chasers’, encountering bizarre and wonderful experiences if they were stealthy enough to evade capture. Locations included gold-digging in Castle park, intense intimidation in the cells of Bridewell police station and a frantic dash across the river in a specially commissioned boat.

Rainbow Rain on a sunny Saturday afternoon was a glorious spectacle mixing the carnage of Battle Royale and the paint-spattering creativity of Play School Arts Day. Three teams, three colours, and eventually a paint spattered Castle Park even Van Gogh would be happy with.

Sneaks and Blaggers, an urban twist on Snakes and Ladders, was played out in a town centre Cark Park as the dust settled on a momentous Saturday. Players congregated for the briefing outside the high rise car park, some still paint-covered and exhausted from previous exploits, ready for the tower block battle – a mad dash up the stairs and down the ramps, collecting coloured strips, avoiding the ‘Blaggers’ stalking the car park in sleigh bells, to finish first with by shouting : “DULUX!”

Korean Laser Ball was an energetic start to Sunday, with teams of 5 battling it out in the Arnolfini Arena, commentated superbly by two visiting Americans. Each team had a theme song, a costume, a laser, 2 mirrors and one target. The battles were fast and furious, and only the highest scoring teams progressed. Team Perv, honourbly entering the arena to show how it was done, racked up a measly 6 to the following scores of 50, 68 and 100. Team Rubber suffered an ignominious defeat despite an awesome fightback from behind in the 2nd quarter…

A huge thank you to Clare Reddington, Simon Johnson, the Helens, Mobile Pie, Ed Nixon (for the poilcemen photo) and many many more who helped make this such a special event. Roll on next year

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?

This box will be able to push out files over Bluetooth to enabled devices and comes with a mini antenna and some fun Bubble-wrap!

The aim now is to get this thing being powered by batteries to make it mobile and then start researching it with the Happy Fountains project, which is a part of the Pervasive Media Research Grant. The box will begin pushing the select files out over the Bluetooth spectrum and gopping people in select areas around the city.

There are some things we require help with however,

1. The electronics to make it powered by batteries so it’ll fit in our pocket.
2. We’re going to need a lovely free Linux programmer to work out all the Bluetooth Push and Pulls!

If you’re not sure what all this Happy Packages malarkey’ is, Happy Packages has been in the Guardian, met Alister Darling – Chancellor Exchequer and done a shed load of research. The full project is described on the Media Sandbox site.

Is the new term given to people who send unsolicited files in a Bluetooth zone posing as the people visually transmitting.