out of the box :: The awesome world of digital

Sony launches AR Headphone Music Festivals

How do you launch a new range of headphones to a socially connected mobile world? Sony think they may just have the answer. This campaign, straight from the streets of Tokyo takes some of Japans top bands and brings them to life in Augmented Reality. By holding your smart phone up to posters around the city, people could experience exclusive gigs from some of their favourite bands. 

Some great tech behind it (no doubt using Sony’s own ‘SmartAR’) and a nice way of giving fans something fun while they are out and about. Whether or not it will drive sales remains to be seen, perhaps there is a drive back to retail that I am missing in the translation? What do you think? Clever use of technology or a missed opportunity?

Sony launch ‘Wonderbook’ - Augmented Reality books for the home

Since Sony launched their Move platform a couple of years ago, some might argue that it hasn’t quite lived up to the potential. Yes, it’s like Wii…. but so what? What makes it different? It seems Sony are trying to address some of these concerns by launching a new content platform on PS3. Wonderbooks brings real-world books to life in your living room, thanks to a combination of EyeToy and Move. 

People can turn pages and interact with the stories, perhaps even changing the outcome as they progress. It’s like ‘choose your own adventure for a new generation. What will potentially propel this new platform into the stratosphere, is early support from nine other than J.K.Rowling. She will be bringing the Harry Potter universe to the platform with a new game called Book of spells. This new book integrates with the much anticipated Harry Potter digital platform, Pottermore. With some unique features, and one of the worlds biggest franchises launching it, I am extremely excited to see what other wonders await this new interactive storytelling platform.

Sony Playstation re-invents mobile Augmented Reality

With the new PlayStation Vita launching here in February next year, people are wondering about some of its new features. One such feature, and one I hadn’t really considered to be ‘groundbreaking’ until now is its use of Augmented Reality in games. With mobile phones we have seen many iterations of Augmented Reality (and also with Nintendo’s latest handheld the 3DS). But with the power of Vita, Sony could really be set to kick all of the competition out of the water. Even these early games look like they will be offering something a little different, with great graphics as well as seamless interaction with the surroundings. 

Whether the reality will live up to these demos remains to be seen, but if they can, we could finally see high end graphics, and some unique executions in the Augmented Reality field. It is still unclear if Sony will work with brands to offer things to consumers other than the current game line-up. But it will definitely be interesting if they do open it up, as the added hardware could massively benefit the types of executions that you can do. Watch this space I guess.

The Vaccines - Instagram music video

In an inspired move, Sony Music are giving fans the chance to appear in their very own music video. By simply tagging their instagram festival photos with #vaccinesvideo, fans snaps will be pulled into the website. From here, the director will select the best photos and edit the music video for The Vaccines new single ‘Wetsuit’.

This is the first time I have seen popular photo taking service Instagram in this way. Since they opened up their API, there have been some creative uses, but none that spring to mind that use this content in a way that make the users famous. This is not the first time fans have appeared in a music video, Feeder did it years back before social media even existed with their single Just a day, and the One frame of Fame campaign last year allowed anyone to appear for one frame via their webcams. However, this idea taps into what is cool right now, and with 5 million plus users worldwide in little over 8 months, there is no denying that the social photo craze is growing traction.

Feeder - Just a day

One Frame of Fame - More is Less by C-Mon & Kypski

What are your thoughts on crowdsourcing content within popular culture? Is it cool to give people their 15 minutes of fame?

Thanks to DizitalBuzzBlog for reporting this.