“Kolaveri Di”; even if you are from half way around the world you would know what the video was all about. This particular video went so viral that people from different countries started uploading videos of them covering the song! Now noone really knows why the video enjoyed its mass popularity apart from the catchy beats and tune. The video going viral was the result of some smart seeding and v-SEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) by an ad/marketing agency. The tools were fairly simple once the video was shot: A Youtube channel, meta-tags, a host of other video sharing sites and the power of Social Media. The resultant rage associated with the video gave the movie, which the song is a part of, more coverage than any music channel could ever have.

The wonder of the web 2.0; YouTube ranks number 3 as the most visited site after Google and Facebook. Aside from that, more than 3 billion videos are watched on a daily basis and 48 hours of video are uploaded in a minute, equivalent to 8 years of content. This is one of the reasons why video marketing is such a powerful tool. But is Video Marketing good for regular business? The answer is a definite Yes.  Few people read online. They prefer tweeting or updating status messages in Facebook than read text. Video marketing also offers creative ways of promoting your products or brand name to potential customers.

Take for instance the highly viral video of start-ups Dollar Shave Club; whose business model is to deliver their razors at your doorstep for a small amount thus helping the user save 100$ per year.  Sounds to pedestrian a product? Well, the video alone has 3,563,456 views. The company had some 5,000 subscribers signed up for their home delivered razors on the first day itself when the ad was posted!

Not just small businesses; even the classy Old Spice changed their game after realizing the power of Social Media. Old Spice made a series of hilarious videos of two male models battling back and forth to be “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”!!

• On day 1 the campaign received almost 6 million views (more than Obama’s victory speech)
• On day 3 the campaign had reached over 20 million views
• After the first week old spice had over 40 million views
• The old spice twitter following increased 2700%
• Facebook fan interaction was up 800%
• Oldspice.com website traffic was up 300%
• The old spice YouTube channel became the all time most viewed channel!
• The campaign has generated 1.4 billion impressions since launching the ads 6 months ago
• The campaign increased sales by 27% over 6 months since launching (year on year)
• Sales were up 107% from the social responses campaign work
• Old spice is now the #1 body wash brand for men

It is obvious that more companies need to experiment with the media available these days. You no longer need an elaborate budget to place ads in traditional media to put your brands’ message across. A creative, humorous and well produced video is maybe all you need to turn up those sales!

Tweet

Imagine for the launch of a new car; the car seems to be literally driven out of the side of a building, with headlights glaring and everything, or a giant dragon spitting fire across the height of a tall building. Sounds incredible, doesn’t it? The thing with 3D projection mapping is that you have to see it to believe it. And, once you do see it; you won’t be able to get it out of your head!! Trust us.

So in this blog we are going to list out brands that thought out-of-the-box and came up with some uber-cool (and do-able by yours truly) 3D projection mapping for their promotional activities. Check the links below:

Bacardi 3D Projection Mapping:

For the launch of the new Dragonberry flavor, Bacardi projected a giant dragon upon Het Witte Huis in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The audience was literally in gasps over the Audio-Visual treat.

New Balance sneaker Projection mapping:

The concept in itself is fairly simple; the designers took a New Balance shoe and projected some cool visuals onto the shoe with flickering lights and patterns that kept morphing into more patterns and different colors. Have a look at simplicity at its best! The making of this video alone has 150,000 hits on Youtube!

Hot Wheels Secret Race Battle:

That’s right Hot Wheels, if you are a guy and didn’t own a set of Hot-Wheels cars, you should probably watch this video to know what you missed out on!  In a spine tingling show, the notorious Hot Wheels™ Skull Racers shattered the facade of the Customs House in Sydney!

Hyundai Accent 3D projection mapping:

Well you guessed it, Hyundai got their Accent to come out of the side of a building! And not just that, they got the video to make it look as If the building actually folded on its sides to let the car out! Epic!

Closer To Home- Projection on India Gate:

The project of course revolved around a more social awareness theme, viz. to highlight Campaign Clean India.

You can catch our own works on our Youtube Channel where you can also watch a video of us helping a reputed Real Estate company revolutionize the face of realty exhibitions in India!

So the question truly is when is the next big 3D projection event coming up in India?

Tweet

Advertising: Gone are the days when the only options you had for outdoor advertisements were static banners and billboards or videos with no interactions whatsoever. What if you were to walk up to a projected image of even your favorite sports shoe brand at a mall and can actually swivel it 360 degrees and see all the details of the sole. Or further your next big celebrity endorsement can have a 3D projection of the celebrity on one big surface. That kind of advertising just stays imprinted on the minds of your audience! Be it a mainstay at a mall or for an exhibition which your brand is a part of Interactive media solutions is the future that is already here.

Education: With the advent of gesture recognition technology in games, the tehnology is finding its purpose in various other fields too, popularizing the data it communicates. Take for instance the creation of gesture-based interfaces, such as Microsoft Kinect, which offer students easier and more intuitive ways to interact with the content in multimedia learning environments than ever before. For centuries students have had to make do with dull lectures/presentations and short attention spans. The results of statistical analysis suggest that the gesture-based PowerPoint presentation had positive impacts on students’ retention performances along with large effect sizes. Imagine a classroom where the students can interact with projections of animals, plants, countries whatever they are studying with renewed interests and retain all that they learnt simply because of the wonderful visual element associated in the learning! This is the future.

Apart from these applications interactive technologies find their worth in a host of other fields that include Hotels, Restaurants, Corporate lobbies, Gaming Arenas and any place else where you want to find an interactive and creative method of putting your message across.

Signs, screens and displays that are interactive, rather than static, are far more effective at capturing people’s attention and engaging them with the message you are putting out. The talented developers at IMT have been working on these very technologies that are shaping the world of media today. Come be a part of the future!

Tweet

This year America’s Department of Homeland Security reportedly paid more than $11 million to General Dynamics for a system to keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter public posts, as well as comment threads on major news websites. The system watches public social media posts for comments that “adversely reflect” on the government, and for responses to proposed government plans.

Individuals have no problem with other private individuals reading their commentary in online writings and postings in open forums, but may obviously feel a bit of unease knowing the federal government may be doing the same thing.

Although there are clear advantages to monitoring social media to identify possible threats to national security, there are also privacy and civil liberties concerns implicit in this activity. Governments need to be mindful of the rights of the citizens to express themselves online

The Indian government’s recent decision to prosecute social networking sites like Google and Facebook has triggered public anger, with netizens saying the move is tantamount to clamping down on constitutional rights of free speech and individual liberty. The Indian government’s decision to prosecute social networking sites like Google and Facebook has triggered public anger, with netizens saying the move is tantamount to clamping down on constitutional rights of free speech and individual liberty. The truth is that Facebook, Google, Twitter are just means to communicate; they can’t be blindly prosecuted for what people post or say over there. A hearing for the same is scheduled in aa Delhi-based court Mar. 12th

There are various examples of a country’s government taking the issue too far. Take for instance, Paul Chambers, a British man who was fined 385 pounds ($612) and ordered to pay legal costs after he posted a message on his twitter feed saying he would blow up Robin Hood airport in northern England if his flight was delayed.

Chambers argued the tweet sent in January 2010 was obviously a joke aimed at his Twitter followers but the courts decided that the message was menacing and convicted him under legislation that makes it illegal to send menacing or offensive messages. Another extremely grave incident is that of a Saudi journalist accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed on Twitter. The tweets are nothing but personal opinions but the Saudi government hasn’t taken too kindly to his tweets as they consider it an offense punishable by death! The move came despite concerns from rights groups that he may be persecuted at home.

It is increasingly getting obvious that governments are taking monitoring social networks for security concerns more seriously. The question still remains where one draws the line… with the monitoring or even expressing their opinions for that matter.

Tweet

Plan Ahead

Even with websites looks do matter! What matters more of course is its functionality and how it fares in search engines based on the content in it. Before you even look to book a server, domain name or find your HTML tagger you need to chart out a road map for it. This is important both for user experience and for SEO. So, map out and mock up a design for the site what designers call “wire-framing” and more importantly get beta test viewers for your websites who could even be a friend. This is to gauge the point of view of the future visitors to your page.

Crucial Business Information

Most companies end up building the website they want, not necessarily the website they need. Remember to keep text to a minimum when it comes to your mission statement, because you should be writing things so that people can skim. If you’re an e-tailer, you need product images (and they need to be good pictures). Depending on your business, you should have a few things on your website that fall into the realm of “information.”  If you work in the service industry and have a business that relies heavily on customer service and referrals, put some testimonials on your site.

Contact Information & FAQs

The most crucial business detail is contact information– which is why it has its own section. Have a number, email, address and a contact form easily accessible and visible don’t upload this information as part of an image,  the number or address should be able to be clicked on or copied right from the site in order to place the call or send an email conveniently and quickly. Most smart-phones these days have the ability to do “click to call” on the web, so make the process as easy as possible for users. Also, people have a lot of questions. As you hear concerns from customers and receive feedback via email, gather up the most frequently asked questions into a list and offer clear, concise answers.

A Mobile-Ready Version

Smartphones and tablets are driving an increasing amount of web traffic, and the numbers are only going to grow as mobile devices become cheaper and more mainstream. Until two years ago, designing for the web meant designing for a computer, now it means designing for anything with an internet connection

Social Media Integration

Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare. There are a lot of social platforms out there, and you should promote your presence on them on your website, because integrating these platforms into your website will help boost your SEO, improve your business’ footprint on the social web and build your following across numerous social platforms.

Tweet

Today, a user-friendly UI, fast in speed, plug-in support, security features, etc, are some of the features we look for in a good browser.

The recently released, Mozilla Firefox 10 seems to have most of these qualities. After releasing Firefox 4 in March 2011, Mozilla adopted a rapid release schedule similar to the cycle Google employs with its Chrome browser. Firefox 10 focuses on under-the-hood enhancements and bug fixes, rather than fancy new features or changes to the user interface. If you are a developer than Firefox 10 is pretty much the choice as it includes a tightly-integrated set of CSS, HTML and DOM inspectors!

Chrome is renowned for being fast and secure, and it has been showing high growth and adoption rates. It could well topple Firefox as the most popular alternate browser world-wide.

Opera is still loved a lot, by a select set of users, but again its market share is sadly languishing at a dismal 5%.  Its users are very protective and vociferous about defending it and its features – but no one can offer any reason for its low market share; even after the Browser Screens were introduced.

Safari was never expected to work for Windows, except for the select few. One of the turn-downs for installing this browser, is its large size. It comes with the baggage of Apple Updates too, which makes its download size for Windows really large.

Internet Explorer then made a strong come back with IE9. It is now the primary browser on 36.2% of Windows 7 users and more people make the switch to Windows 7 for the same reason(IE8 is the last browser compatible with Windows XP). It provided for a “modern browser” experience with compatibility with HTML5 apps.

Which of these are you currently using or planning to switch to?

Tweet

So as this butterfly effect panned out, executives at Facebook, Google, Orkut (what are people still doing there?!?) and 20 other sites got summoned, to appear in person in a lower court in Delhi on March 13 of this year. The crime: allegedly hosting obscene and objectionable content. The objectionable content also includes religious inflammatory posts, made by those few attention- craving people, who apparently find their religious calling on Facebook and other social networking sites. All of which pretty much re-enforces in the minds of the otherwise “reasonable netizens” the belief that the World Wide Web of Maya is not a good environment for the kids to grow up in. And the good dealers, I mean executives, at the afore-mentioned companies obviously know that they can’t (profitably) screen and censor the web. So what they do is challenge the lawsuit in the high court.

“Government control of the Internet will fail because the Web is almost entirely privately owned.” – Vint Cerf (“Father of the Internet”)
With the recent demise of the SOPA and PIPA bills, the web or the majority stake holders in it, so to speak, have clearly made their presence felt to law-makers everywhere. And, for the Indian government to seriously consider a censorship act is a very tall order and to me, they just have 3 options:

1.They can either go the Chinese or North Korean way, where certain sites are blocked directly at the router level. (And we might as well propagate martial law :P)
2.The French way where certain sites are screened and black-listed by the “Reporters Without Borders”, a Parisian NGO that advocates free speech. (but, the harsh reality is that anything with a “free” in its mission statement is definitely not sustainable).
3.Or the Australian way, where the government proposed a $9.8 million plan of action to encourage internet service providers to block all classified-as-obscene-material from users as an optional service. (hmm…so much money involved..it is bound to work in India)

Image courtesy- Wikipedia

Now personally I am for such sites actually taking accountability for the stuff they screen on their sites, the failure of which should lead to a government imposed censorship of the same. But, for some reason given the history of our country I am positive that a compromise can be achieved (And, you know what that means :P ). I would really like to know your views on the same as this, if you go to see, is a decision at a personal level.

Tweet

Now in all modesty our talented team of designers & developers have produced absolute works of arts for other projects in the past and even some for Mr. Raj Kundra, but this project definitely needed a whole new outlook.

The website required to be highly interactive as the Fight League would have a reality TV show, extensive audience interaction through social media integration and a highly detailed description of the sport that would need dynamic updates on the page.

Given the fiery nature of the sport the background theme of the site  is given the appearance of raging flames with smoke wisps that seem so real that you will need to check twice if your screen is actually on fire or not!

The website design and development can be attributed to our daily bread, viz. HTML 5, Jquery, CSS 3 and PHP. We have been implementing HTML-5 for all our clients since it was first launched and have pretty much made it an indispensable element in our work. All the really cool looking fonts have been Q-fonts integrated so that you can enjoy its “coolness” no matter what your computer specifications are.

When you visit the website you will be greeted with the fierce images of the athletes in an image ticker/scroller which introduces the fighters apart from a tab explaining the different kind of participants involved and the profiles of a fighter in the sport. Owing to the fact that the designers pretty much make a 3 course meal out of jQuery everyday, the scroller was as good as a walk in the park which, our geniuses could do with once in a while. (It’s as if they are having a staring competition with their screens!).

The different creative elements in the site also include the SFL logo designed by us, which merges the elements of a lion that depicts courage & strength and the wings that depict free-spiritedness.

The designers also had to visualize and re-create the way the ring arena looks to give the new viewers a good idea of the sport.

The social media integration in the site includes twitter conversations of fans as well as that of Mr. Kundra & Mr. Dutt. You can also look forward to some serious trash talk and banter on the twitter feed in the website coming in from the fighters when the event goes live!

Now Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) enjoy global popularity and SFL is soon poised to get global recognition in terms of people viewing the event on different media, as well as visiting the website. Keeping this in mind we have used CSN (Content Delivery Network) which is essentially cloud hosting, so that the MMA lovers from the world over can enjoy “frictionless” website surfing.

All in all, SFL was one fulfilling project for us at IMT and are looking forward to the event to commence and with that some more new and exciting features that will be added to website soon! Stay Tuned!

Tweet

Spatial gestures

Microsoft’s Kinect, for instance, has given rise to interfaces that use spatial gestures. Just like in “Minority Report,” your devices can be controlled simply by waving your hands in the air. Thanks to the many innovators who have hacked Kinect to work with other platforms, we may see more devices using this input method next year. Imagine starting your start menu with a gesture from your finger or composing an entire e-mail by the movement of your hands that means no mouses or keyboards any more!!

Future car technology

Brands like Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are expected to debut mobile apps that interact directly with cars and dashboards to transform them into full-fledged computers!! Even the famous Google X labs is been known to be working on a super-secret project involving a car that drives by itself! But the spotlight will be a panel demonstration of short-range vehicle-to-X (V2X) technology that will enable cars to interact with other cars, traffic lights and pedestrians. For example, Ford’s MyFord mobile app can identify electrical charge points for electric engines and plan efficient routes using MapQuest.

Privacy & Security

Online security is going to be a huge issue this year with more marketers out there to know if you fit their buyer’s profile your social privacy and security related issues are likely to go up and at least 35% of Indian mobile users will click an unsafe link. Global mobile malware business will turn profitable in 2012. More people are going to be shopping online with an estimate crossing $10 billion. That means there are more chances that someone is likely to misuse your information and might find more creative ways to lure you into parting with your credit card details etc.  Thus you will see more malware security related resources and requirements needed this year.

Cloud Computing

Although, recently this sector taken a bit of a hit after major companies have had problems with their clouds, but there’s no doubt that Cloud computing will feature heavily this year especially as companies like Amazon push their tablets to consumers and incorporate ‘online’ storage in the cloud. Again, security is going to feature big time here. This is going to transition into the corporate world and change the way we all work. The days of all going to the office and working will soon be gone, and Cloud computing could be one of the most important factors in the race to reduce the carbon footprint of the corporate world – with these innovations and better communications the number of people working at home will steadily increase.

Tweet

So let us have an over-view of what are going to be the biggest contributors to this space in 2012. That is of course if the Mayan calendar doesn’t get to us first! :P

Smart Devices

This year definitely is going to see a lot more people glued on to their mobile devices tweeting away, checking into places, sharing and even making purchases! Enthusiastic reports suggest that pretty soon tablets would start replacing PCs, a claim companies like Dell and HP still refute. Yet, the sales of tablets are reaching new heights with almost a 300% increase every year! Take for instance Amazon’s reader Kindle, the iPad series, Samsung’s Galaxy series or even India’s very own “Akash”. And, we can definitely watch out for more players entering the market; case in point RIM with its PlayBook!

Today, smart phones are at the threshold of being a popular mode of purchase and transaction with technologies like NFC that have become a common feature. The reason Smart Phones enjoy their popularity is because well it’s popular, meaning more people are constantly in touch, sharing opinions, liking/commenting on stories, images etc. with their group of friends. The simple integration of social networks into mobile phones has indeed been a game-changer; which bring us to well..

Social Networks

So how did Hollywood look at it, Mark Zukerberg gets a movie that is entirely revolving him whereas Gates & Jobs get Pirates of Silicon Valley. Consider this silly example, because if you look at it Facebook is a common platform for Apple and Microsoft users and even Google purists. Not sure if Sergey Brin and Allen Page are going to get a movie anytime soon because let us face it Facebook pretty much rules the roost in terms of popularity right now. Between 2008 and 2011, Facebook has enjoyed an 1100% increase in active user accounts. More than 30% admit to visiting the site several times a day.  In second place, with 20% users checking into their account more than once a day is Twitter. Take a moment, to reflect on what this simple micro-blogging site has achieved right from being a platform for social causes to revolutions to celebrity break-ups! :P *Slow Claps in the head* Social Networks have provided a platform for businesses like never before, right from wineries to small businesses to even the travel business.

Smart TV

Ok so before you get all ready to chuck out your remote and start pressing keys on your smart phone you need to know who the players are in this space with the likes of LG, Samsung and even Lenovo challenging the vision that Apple first created with Apple TV that would be linked to the iOS! The reason our money is on Apple is mostly because they seem the most in-tune with the user interface experience. These are televisions with Internet access, which enables you to use the TV as a portal for all manner of online services. Surf the Web, share email or access any supported video-on-demand service, including YouTube. And much more… In future, some TV channels will be made available as apps on these next-generation devices. In years to come, it seems you’ll subscribe to the channels you most like directly as apps, using these apps on your television, computer, iPad and smartphone.

For now we these are the 3 biggest biggest game-changers in mainstream consumerist technology for 2012! So what about things like smart cars, gesture recognition, devices with bendy interfaces and the thing looming over all our heads-Cloud computing? Well we have Game Changers of Consumer Technology part II coming out shortly.

Tweet