It’s a very smart way to grow your business by adapting to the needs of a local market. And for me personally, I’d much prefer to shop via a virtual display to avoid the faff and stress of the supermarket! UK next??

Via Protein Feed

Via my new enthusiastic AMV grad.

StreetMuseum by Museum of London

The Museum of London has launched a pretty slick iPhone app that enables users to access its extensive art and photographic images of the streets of London. 

The free app uses the iPhone’s geolocation technology to allow users to hold up their phones to London landmarks and overlay a historic image of it on the real-time image.

The really exciting thing for me about this app is mashing up the past with the present!

More info here.

Pacha / Ibiza AR app

The yet-to-launch Pacha VIP Guide will be much more than “yet another guide to Ibiza” (or so they say). They’re using augmented reality to guide tourists around the island and allow them to find out what is happening in every club in real time. Apparently you’ll be able to discover locations for secret parties, cool bars, and hidden gems.

I’m giving my liver a rest from Ibiza this summer, but if you’re lucky enough to be going, I’d give this a go

Via the other clever Nick.

Pepsi Loot

Pepsi’s new iPhone app (which launches later this month) will offer consumer rewards in the form of free music downloads. Users “check in” to locations (ala foursquare) to earn badges for regular visits. What’s more, buyers will gain one point for each purchase through Loot – every three points earned equates to one free download from a base of 250,000 licensed songs.

It seems that finally location-based brand utilities are taking off!

iNap taps into your phone’s location sensors and sounds the alarm when you get close to your destination. You can even determine how much warning you need. If you’re a slow riser, you can tell it to wake you up 10 miles early. If you wake up fast, you can give yourself less warning.

Awesome, soon I won’t even have to think for myself.

According to new research from O2, the six degrees of separation has fallen to three due to the impact of social networking and developments in technology. Email and mobile phones were the technologies that had the most significant impact in facilitating the reduction of degrees from six to three. Whilst social networking sites such as Facebook were highly rated by the youngest age bracket but usage declined drastically the older in age was asked. For more info, read the press release from O2 here.

We really do live in an age of social connectedness.

We need a new diagram!

This experiment works as a hybrid system that explores the dynamic and spatial capacities of smoke and light, in relation to modern mobile technology. In Memory Cloud, visitors can text any message they like to the artists’ creation, and that message will be made into huge light-and-air smoke signals, all in real-time.

The project motivates social interaction through visualization of personal expression, and a collective act of writing space. This new exploration of personal expression in public spaces is from Minimaforms, founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos as an experimental architecture and design practice.

Smart technology such as this creates huge opportunities for brands to enhance our real-world experiences, or simply create engaging brand experiences. This technology isn’t radically new, it’s evolving, and yet very few brands are grabbing such opportunities. Perhaps this sort of thing is still too close to the geek world, and yet to enter the cultural vernacular.

Radio 1 played around with this technology back in May which allowed people to have their favourite band playing live in the palm of their hands – check out my post here. I also posted something very similar to this particular mobile application back in February 2007 here – so it’s certainly nothing new, but hopefully it’ll catch on soon enough…

Found via Rubbishcorp (R) - who’s blog I recently discovered and simply can’t get enough of!

It’s definitely generating word-of-mouth, what’s more, punters are actually playing around with this (branded content) in pubs – so it’s ticking a lot of boxes for me already. While the entertainment is short-lived, it is somewhat engaging and certainly poses the talkability factor. The iPint spoofs are already in full swing, take iMunchies for example.

Despite the idiocy of drinking a ‘virtual’ pint, the application actually uses ground-breaking technology. And yet the creative execution is so simple. So simple that I would argue it’s actually rather smart.

And to those marketers who think it’s just plain stupid – I can only bet you’re secretely annoyed you didn’t think of it first! Carling have leveraged the popularity of the iPhone, and they have the sucessful results to prove it.

Digital isn’t just banners ya’know. Technology is a huge part of the world we live in, whether we’re vastly aware of it or not. And we’re sharing engaging digital experiences with our friends. We live in exciting times! And brands need to realise the role they can play and value they can add in this exciting world.

My verdict – simply genius.

More info here.

A project by TXTual Healing.