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!

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!

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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.

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.

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.

So not a good day for Thought Den and Mobile Pie to stay in, and as such we headed out into the big wide “real” world to do some initial Gopping tests.

We mainly focused on a few areas around town Fountains, KFC, Galleries and the Watershed (for drinks) in the hope all these areas would pull in splendid results like, every-one accepting the file we bluetoothed to them and then bought us drinks ‘cos we were so clever.

How-ever, to the contrary we found that not many people checked their phone when it beeped at them, even less people accepted the transfer and we felt like everyone knew we were spamming them. Drawing the conclusion, if people don’t know there’s something coming over the airwaves, they’re not going to expect it or even pick it up.

We’re not so bothered though, as we know that Bluetooth campaigns need to backed with lots of P.R (Pervasive Relations) and after counting about 200 Bluetooth devcies, we know a market’s out there.

As a side note how-ever we did find that…

- change the filename to ‘free-sandwich-voucher.gif’ and people will grab for it
- a Bluetooth device named ‘fanny’ kept following us round Broadmead and we now strongly believe this is the first instance of Bluetooth stalking
- Tom is very good at gopping girls
- some-one called Chan didn’t hesitate to accept a pic called ’sexy-g.gif’

Lovely.

WHAT WE NEED!
Sketches / doodles / concepts for a brand/logo based on the Happy Package concept, so a box of love, man. Ideally it’d be stencillable…A 3D box with ribbon? We’re thinking simple design, just a box or something, with minimal detail. no more than 3 colours, pref 2.

WHAT WE’LL GIVE YOU!
£30 for a sketch-doodle-concept that we choose to develop (napkin ideas if you wish) Based on an honesty policy! You’ll see the thing develop so no stealing of your ideas for no money, and we want everyone to get involved, read the blog etc so no funny business. More cash available if a final article is delivered, but sketches & doodles are cool.