Last month YDreams Med launched a Magic Book installation, commissioned by agency MPG Spain for Nike.
The book is viewed through a 2m wide plasma-wall placed inside the shop-window of Nike Woman store at the L’illa Diagonal Shopping Mall, uptown Barcelona. Users may browse through Nike Woman’s seasonal brochure and the campaign is thought to last one month.
The shop-window has undergone a complete redecoration for the occasion and the set-up looks really nice. Check out the video:
For more perspectives (in spanish), click here or here.
The Sea Monsters Interactive Exhibition for Lisbon’s Oceanarium movie has also been made available recently:
Watch out also for Filipe Freitas (a Portuguese Computer Science student at University of Aveiro), who wrote a detailed description of Microsoft’s TechDays event, complete with some videos of the installations we had at the show, like this one:
A bit old (2004) but interesting Ted Talk by Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief and author of the “Long Tail” book and concept – “How endless choice is creating unlimited demand”.
In this particular video, Chris presents the idea that each technology goes through four different key stages – “setting the right price, gaining market share, displacing an established technology and, finally, becoming ubiquitous” - and supports this with the analysis of a bunch of different technologies.
In the very near feature we’ll have a new version of the Virtual Sightseeing Scenic Viewer, our Augmented Reality landscape exploration device. Here’s a teaser, courtesy of Pedro Cardoso, our Art Director:
The 2008 record breaking 28th edition of the FITUR, one of the world’s biggest tourism fairs, took place in Madrid between the 30th of January and 3rd of February. The 170 country strong fair boasts some impressive numbers, with its 879 stands sheltering over 13.000 different exhibitors across 150.000 m2 of exhibition area. Some 9.000 accredited news reporters from 60 different countries and a total of 250.000 participants (150.000 professionals) crowded 12 huge pavilions for 5 days.
YDreams Med was on hand as the interactive installations provider for the Consorcio de Turismo de Madrid stand, the tourism agency for Spain’s capital region.
8 different Magic Books were set up on 42” plasmas while a 4 m wide plasma-wall hosted yLabs’ newest installation - yFaces (yes, the ‘cartoon thing’ used for the first time at Microsoft Innovation Day in Brussels). The application had speech and thought balloons with phrases promoting the region, popping up over people’s heads.
The stand was a huge success, with all the main institutional players being encouraged to explore the yFaces plasma-wall by the stand’s reps. This installation really proved to be their golden baby. Later on in the day more good news with the Consorico de Turismo de Madrid stand taking first prize for FITUR’s “most innovative and functional” space at the venue, and Portugal’s stand the prize for best stand in the countries category.
Check out this short clip (1:39) courtesy of Internet TV station Libertad Digital about the Madrid stand, where YDreams’ magic is featured in the main spotlight.
A brand new 3,300 m2 bookstore, Byblos, opens later today, in Lisbon’s Amoreiras Square. Besides 150.000 books, Byblos offers customers five didactic and recreational based interactive solutions conceived by YDreams.
A yStores Shop Window won’t let you miss the store when walking by on the street. Accessible from the street, this interactive touch sensitive interface enables customers to access Byblos-related content anytime of day or night. Inside Byblos, you’ll find an yMagic Book by the auditorium with the scheduled activities.
A specific area designed for kids includes the yLight - a magic lantern whose light source is used to drop the pieces of a thematic virtual puzzle into place; the yWalk – an interactive walkway representing a virtual garden; and a virtual board game - aTrivial Pursuit’ style board game based on kids’ literature.
Congratulations to all YDreamers involved in this successful project!
On the 28th of September, Eduardo gave a conference at Picnic’07 about Augmented Reality. The event had some considerable media exposure and apparently caught the eye of Ben Sutherland, a journalist from The Economist, who was preparing a piece about Augmented Reality. The reporter called up YDreams wanting to know more about our work in Augmented Reality. The Virtual Sightseeing caught their eye.
What ensued is a YDreams and the Pinhel’s mention in the Technology Quarterly edition of one of the most renowned newspapers in the world (yes, The Economist is a newspaper):
‘Augmented enjoyment’
“The technology also has less serious uses, however. YDreams, a marketing and digital-media firm in Lisbon, Portugal, has developed an AR sightseeing viewer called VSS. The first such machine, bolted atop a battlement on the 12th-century Pinhel Castle in north-eastern Portugal, delights tourists who tilt it up, down and around for an augmented view of the castle and its surroundings. Place names and explanatory text are superimposed over objects seen through the viewer’s screen, and animated graphics show how some structures were built or destroyed. The number of visitors has doubled since the viewer was installed in July 2006, says Isabel Almeida, who manages the castle.”
(excerpt, read the full article)
