This project is in conjunction with the Bristol’s Old Vic and is aimed at enhancing peoples’ theatre experience, post-show.

thoughtden-bluetooth-box

Specifically we will be using it on Luci-Gorrell-Barnes piece, The Tragic and disturbing Tale of Little Lupin to pass out a phone wolf ring-tone to the attendees.

However, there’s even more exciting future potential for a few more ideas based with the theatre, especially since our RNCM piece.

Also, there’s the potential if you feel your event could do with a more pervasive edge to it.

We were handling a specific artist’s piece tasked with making everyone’s phone in the gallery ring with the same ring-tone at points though the evening. Our stand was set-up in the gallery’s front entrance to take advantage of anyone with their phone on them.  As soon as they were through the doors they were Bluetoot’d out a regal Trumpet solo to their device(s) and then asked to set it as a ring-tone and leave it on the loudest setting they could handle!

It was then we started grabbing numbers…

“I promise to call later”, “I don’t normally ask so early on Sir, but could I grab your number?”. Clare (iShed Director) got it down to a tee… and we all managed to pull in enough numbers.

Then at 4 intervals through the night we called every last number in our digital black book. The effect was crazy, some phones went off together, others at staggered times and then some didn’t have reception, people had put it back on vibrate! We reckoned we probably overloaded the local phone cell towers with too many numbers at once!

The final part of the gig was a ‘Party Box’ which passed out Calendar dates for upcoming RNCM events, the Box Office phone number and some User Generated Content of Videos and pictures throughout the night.

Party Box 1

• RNCM Wallpaper
• Events – Billy Cobham & June Tabor
• Box Office number
• A UGC video
• [youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=b8rrE0iJUTk[/youtube]

Aside from our digital performance, I was totally bowled over by the sheer quality of musicians that the RNCM fosters, I was lucky enough to listen to a few stunning performances of Ravel’s arrangements and then some very good/interesting/crazy interpretations. One of most moving pieces was a Titanic orchestration where a mini group played a low and dark round of the Titanic score with an ice sculpture of the boat in the forefront as it slowly melted away through the night.

Big big thanks to iShed Clare for sticking with it all night and getting involved with all the people’s phones and also for putting up with “Geoff-07″ (a Phone name) who kept on popping back to see her… also to Sam Machin who organised the Online phone calling and has filled us with ideas for another Soco viral. So officially, Thought Den Bluetooth is now open for business.

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)

A lot more mobile technology news stories are beginning to hit the news in comparison with straight internet related interest reads and so this week I’m mostly rounding up any great/bad news that’s affecting the Happy Package’s further development.

Mobile Vouchers for greasy hands

Apparently South Korea isn’t the only place where mobile phone vouchers are taking off. Following our chased by fanny post where we researched the success of mobile vouchers delivered to your phone in KFC & Subway, the McDonalds chain in Japan has launched Kazasu Coupon which uses Sony RFID technology to redeem the voucher.

It seems the wave of mobile technologies is taking off already, time for our happy fountains to catch-up in for the next iteration.

Can’t set-up your freaking phone to access the internet!

One real barrier to entry for the Happy Packages application route was that people’s phones weren’t set-up to access the internet, use MMS or use their Java applications.

Configure my phone believe they’ve got the answer to it all, for the cost of a quid they’ll send you details to correctly set-up your whole phone for access to all those services.

In our minds it seems like a good partner service to advertise with our products to allow more people to experience every application they want to.

Enjoy the Bank Holiday with 118 118

Last weekend, 118 118 jumped on events listing in the same way Happy SMS helped Bristolians find something to experience for an evening. For the whole long rainy weekend you were able to text into 118118 and be sent something interesting to do!

The system seemed a huger version of what we achieved with our product, but without a lot of the clever features. So we suppose that’s the POC (Proof of concept) dealt with, thanks 118, we just need to go build it for the next iteration of Happy Packages.

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 talk had varied speakers from Dr Tom ‘have you read this book’ Abba and Rik ‘new internet tv ideas’ Lander who both rocked out with their own projects. The lovely host Vicky ‘wonky’ Brophy chaired a great night and judging from the comments (some in French!), people loved it.

Thought Den were invited to chair a discussion on the Distribution of Video to Mobile and explore the current scene, but no one had hair nearly as good as Ben’s last night…

The Session

Started by covering work on Happy Packages and discussing Distribution to Mobile devices. This delved into the history of Film & Mobile technology, from the first personal cameras and camera phones all the way into Bluetooth, purchasing of 3G bandwidth, codecs, current internet virals (Cadburys Gorrilla, Sony Bravia Paint & Balls) and curved beautifully into where the two genres begin to meet.

A perfect example is The Royal Navy’s – Get the Message site which unions the two technologies and lets the user send personalised video content either through their email or to their mobile.

It’s clear Mobile technology is gearing itself up for accepting higher bandwidth film content, and so we whipped out the famous, Media against Time graph, which based on really er… scientific data, shows how Media is increasing over time… scientific, yup.

The Discussion

Every member of the audience had one of three cards to prompt them into thinking about,

• Scenarios – where someone’s using their mobile phone
• Content – to deliver to the mobile phone
• People – who’s going to be using the content

which when pieced together into scenarios, eg, In the cafe + Football videos + My Granny, they allowed us to explore some of the wider thoughts concerned with Mobile Distribution of Film in the following catagories.

• Types of content
• How & Why
• Issues
• Distribution Models & Revenue Streams

The Results

These were bluetoothed ou on the night to the audience along with some very kindly donated videos by Team Rubber called DudeCorp,

• Types of Content – Plumbing, Corrie, Recipies, Football films…

• How & Why – Grandson’s suggestion, Covert interest, Accidentally…

• Issues – Cost, Stuttering, Poor Eye sight, Screen size…

• Distribution Models & Revenue Streams – Free, Supscription, Pay per view, Sponsored content…

We’re chairing part of the interaction to uncover everyone’s thoughts this Thursday (27/03/08) at the Watershed 7PM. It promises to be an interesting night and we’ll be utilising some of our Bluetooth technologies so we’d love you to come. As always, there’ll be drinks in the bar afterwards!

For more details, see the Cineformation site.

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!

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