Realtà Aumentata – Augmented Reality from soryn on Vimeo.

One of our distinct human characteristics is how organized our species has become (or at least we try to be).

Let’s shelf the natural movements of the atoms and molecules that make up our being, because when it comes to people – and our “stuff“, we like to name it, sort it, categorize it and make it easy to locate.

We organize our cultural stuff too – from words, books and knowledge – we’ve watched this information collect around the world on the Internet.

Google turned eleven years old last week and since the dawn of the Net they have built an unprecedented Internet resource that sorts information by words.

From the Dewey Decimal system to keyword searches, we’re still using letters to organize our data. We enter a word into a box and presto – we all have the history of our planet at our finger tips.

There’s a new idea surfacing on the horizon called “Augmented Reality” (AR) that blends GPS technology, smart phones, mobile software and all the information on the Internet. Instead of sorting by text, AR augments this data by location – bringing about new technologies both novel and mind-boggling.

Wikipedia defines augmented reality as “a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with-, or augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.”

Augmented Reality has been emerging for several years now, but it’s really starting to gain traction now on smart phones.

Basically, you use your mobile device or web cam to enhance (or add to) a real-world experience. Sounds very science fiction. It’s becoming very real.

The idea evolved from main frames, the desktop, laptop and now the little computers we carry in our pocket that shoot video, photos, collects email, plays thousands of songs and maps information or weather wherever we stand. It just so happens this device also makes telephone calls. The funny thing is that we still call it a “phone?”

At present, the smart-phone market share, according to Nielsen is approaching a 20% consumption rate in the United States. Italy has the highest rate of usage with numbers approaching 30% of the population.

As wireless services have improved, one of the latest introductions on our phones is GPS technology. Add a digital camera and now you have a computer that can present an image anywhere on the planet, know where it’s located and associate information related to that image in a handheld screen.

If your phone knows where it’s located and can orient itself and determine whether it’s tilted left, right, upside down or 23% – then it can position itself and relate to data in the same way.

Imagine for a moment you’re visiting a metropolitan city and you are trying to the find a subway.

With AR, you can look through your smart phone’s camera at the street scene in front of you with people and cars buzzing around you in real-time. As you move the camera around, little graphics appear within the screen and point your way to the subway – or for that matter, a pizza parlor.

For a history buff, you could visit the American landscape in Boston and hold your smart phone up on the street corner and watch a Wikipedia icon pop-up on the screen and click the link to read about the historical site that stands in front of you.

Wikitude is ready to roll out this free app right now on your Iphone.

By adding the GPS coordinates into the mix and the smart-phone’s ability to know it’s orientation. You can stand in a spot, the phone calculates your latitude and longitude and matches that to other information around you that match the two points on the planet.

How about a game? Pacman could take on a whole new level if you could play it in a park.

The graphics are still a bit crude and who wants to look at world with virtual billboards and cheesy avatars. After all, if you remember Second Life, this idea of a virtual world is nothing new. One of my favorite early presentations about Augmented Reality is from 2004.

What intrigues me though is the idea that all of a sudden, information has a new indexing method.

A lot of people enjoy Google Maps and the ability to zoom into locations all across the planet. Sprinkle that idea with a little Augmented Reality and you can walk streets and see all kinds of information and for the most part – experience a virtual world.

Let’s fast forward into the future a bit and bring this closer to home.

We’re walking on Broad Street in Downtown Kingsport. The handheld Iphone has given way to a pair of sunglasses or contact lens. As we explore the streets, we see pictures that were taken over the past twenty years of people, places, businesses, videos, news stories, sound files all mapped to where we stand.

If you’re looking to stay slightly ahead of the digital marketing curve, Augmented Reality could well be “what’s next” and a huge skip past virtual worlds.

The early apps are looking for marketing solutions and I bet the gaming world is taking note of this tech too, but there are some apps that might be extremely useful and invasive by the same measure.

How about a reality app that let’s you walk into a room and see business cards floating over the attendees?

Perhaps an app for the single guy walking into a nightclub and seeing the status of who’s single or married?

There are already ideas forming about how to us AR and Twitter like this new proposed app by TwitAround.

What if the AR app could track negative comments about businesses or for that matter track criminals in a way that even the idea of looking down a street would expose volumes of information about the place or people that surround you?

Sounds a bit too much I know, but keep in mind the ways technology could augment our world and keep us safe.

It’s a crazy place and if you don’t believe me, turn on the news. Last week Al-Queda terrorists are adopting drum smuggling tactics and embedding bombs inside human bodies. Airport security will either have to go to strip searches or develop some new tech that helps keep us safe and even though I admit that it’s all moving too fast – I still like to see us keep an edge over those who seek to do harm.

Besides, we all are watching as the world suffers from a inflating attention deficit disorder.

Daniel Sanchez-Crespo, a project leader at the Barcelona firm, Novarama, had this to say about Augmented Reality – “The real world is too boring for many people. By making the real world a playground for the virtual world, we can make the real world much more interesting”.

Just between friends – the older I get, the more I embrace the heart of a Luddite. I miss the old days of three channels of television and plenty of free time. I’ll admit that since the introduction of the Net, I find myself chained to a screen either on a desktop, my lap or in my pocket.

It’s hard to ignore though. Like many of you, I love new toys. Augmented Reality has some remarkable possibilities and although it probably will not help us get any closer to the true meaning of life, it’s certainly going to make it more entertaining.

AR has been called “the opportunity that’s going to blow the lid off everything,” as Denise Gershbein of frog design put it at Mobilize 09, adding, “That’s the moment when you stop looking down at a device and hold the lens up to the world.”

I’m sure that some people will think that we’re going to far shaping our realities, but TV and video games have been doing that for years and Augmented Reality could be the natural evolution of our species – merging the machines with the humans, but that’s another sci-fi flick altogether.

Rockm

There’s a turf war brewing on the Internet as Google, Microsoft and Twitter duke it out for your attention. This battle is playing itself out in the technosphere and Google is likely to win the war, but never underestimate the underdogs.

Shifts on the Internet fault-line happen quickly.

In the past few months, Google has seen plenty of competition in a volley of new services.

This year, Twitter has become a trend-setter for real-time search and last month, Microsoft launched a serious contender with Bing.

To add insult to injury Yahoo finally gave up their search services, merging with Microsoft last week to potentially solidify a strategy to steal even more market share from Google.

Meanwhile, back on the Google campus they’re starting a new campaign aimed at Microsoft promoting their Google Chrome operating system, Google Wave (a collaborative email and productivity platform due this Fall) and most recently, a campaign aimed directly at Microsoft Word and Excel users – an initiative called “Going Google.”

What’s at risk here is quite simply your attention which translates into a king’s ransom of advertising dollars.

I’m very proud of some of the new commercials we have been producing with our creative staff at GoTriCities. Here are a couple of new projects we moved out of the studios last week.

The first one is a new commercial for IShopTheTri.com – a new regional Internet directory based out of Johnson City. The commercial focuses on the depth and variety of the listings in this useful Internet application and has a chic music bed to support the tech framework.

IShopTheTri Video Commercial from David Cate on Vimeo.

The second video supports a new mobile application we just launched for Town and Country Realty. Brad Smith did a great job as talent on the spot and Elaine Rinder was a pleasureable voiceover for both of these new videos.

Town and Country Mobile Video from David Cate on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Speaking to an audience has gotten easier for me in the past several years. With 24 years of experience in sales, you get to the point where the butterflies subside, especially after you make a mountain of mistakes along the way.

There’s still a bit of anxiety though and these opportunities are always learning experiences because mastering the art of presentation is a key to business success and I had chance to speak a three gatherings recently.

We’re getting ready to launch the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce website this week. Prior to the launch, I spoke to their Board of Directors for a sneak preview at their offices in Kingsport on May 20th. A group of 50 or so people were in the room that day and I had 10 minutes to deliver the quick tour.

On Thursday, May 16th, I was invited to speak to the Tri-Cities Metro Advertising Federation in Johnson City on the subject of Social Media. Mary Ellen Miller was also speaking that day and we had a chance to present several new ideas to the area’s advertising and marketing professionals.

This was a small group, but it was a significant gathering of peers at the Bank of Tennessee Financial offices in Johnson City. This swanky conference room overlooks State of Franklin road and the board room there has some of the coolest presentation tech that I’ve seen lately.

With windows all around, I lowered the screens in the circular office and presented a 15 minute presentation before about 35 agency reps, banks, hospitals, public relations professionals and small businesses.

My presentation was a collection of social media tools from our newspaper network, a review of the tools reshaping the media landscape and review of some of the ideas our clients are implementing using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other tools.

My main theme was the fact that social media isn’t all that new, citing our human desire for interaction and authenticity in conversations, but the the tools have certainly changed and we reviewed those ideas together.

Some of the interesting points of conversations from the session included how to effectively separate personal and professional identities using social media and how to ensure productivity in the workplace with these tools proliferating our lives.

Mary Ellen Miller did a great job introducing a lively collection of social media public relations examples and has been very successful re-branding herself after experience in television news, magazines and leading a PR firm at a local tech company. Her discussions on Social Media will continue on WJHL over the next several weeks.

Special thanks to Sarah Clevinger with The Bank of Tennessee and Jessica Bland with The Corporate Image for organizing this event. It helped me to sharpen my Keynote skills and I enjoyed sharing the new ideas about Social Media.

I’ll continue that discussion with clients over the next several weeks including a presentation to the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce tomorrow – June 1.

My last presentation was caught on video and that gives me a chance to critique the work.

The Kingsport Chamber of Commerce sponsors a Fourth Friday Breakfast every month at MeadowView Resort and Convention Center and they had me on the agenda for their session on May 22nd.

This morning meeting is open to all Chamber members to discuss business and encourage networking opportunities (plus a free breakfast) and it was up to me to open up the new Chamber website and give another peek before an audience of 250 local business people.

We had a good session and although I felt like my presentation was 20 minutes, it turned out to be only 9 minutes and that’s good. Most resources say people have at most a 30 to 60 second attention span and considering the early meeting time it would be very easy to fall asleep.

I had a good time speaking to all of these groups and look forward to other opportunities in the future.

Here’s the video from the Chamber of Commerce presentation.

Kingsport Chamber of Commerce Web Presentation from David Cate on Vimeo.

Rick Wagner called earlier in the day and wrote this nice piece on Kingsport.tv that appeared in the Friday Kingsport Times-News. David Grace took a picture of Jared and Diane in front of the green screen and we really appreciate the spot in the paper. Thanks guys – great job!

Here’s the link to the complete article.

‘Video Anytime Anywhere’: GoTriCities launches Kingsport.tv
Published Friday, October 10, 2008

KINGSPORT — GoTriCities has launched a multimedia Web site that aims to revolutionize the way Tri-Cities residents view local video content.

The site, www.Kingsport.tv, is the region’s first Internet video resource that aggregates news, entertainment, cultural and business videos in one place, said GoTriCities Director David Cate.

It’s been online for about a month but had its official launch Thursday.

“We’ve been dabbling with video in working with the Times-News,” Cate said Thursday morning. “This is our effort to roll that video into one location.”

He called the operation a partnership including the newspaper and said he works with Managing Editor Ted Como and City Editor Stephanie McClellan on content, as well as Times-News video reporter Rain Smith. Matt Carroll and Luke Brogden also are helping with Kingsport.tv.

Cate said the motto “Video Anytime Anywhere” highlights the site’s convenient model where a viewer can access content online at their leisure, for free, without a subscription or appointment. The site works with most modern browsers and works better with broadband Internet service than slower dial-up service.

“One of the convenient things about Internet video is that you don’t have to make an appointment to watch it,” Cate said.

He highlighted the site’s nod to Internet users’ overwhelming need for flexibility and choice.

“You can do whatever you want. Out of town — no problem. Go on vacation, take a trip around the world — you’ve got Kingsport video with you wherever you go.”

The site grew from a partnership between producer and online media firm GoTriCities Network and the Kingsport Times-News, Holston Valley Medical Center, the Kingsport Area Chamber of Commerce, Move to Kingsport and Food City.

Kingsport.tv gives viewers access to several local video series, including:

• “Kingsport.tv Dailies,” the city’s only local news program. Diana Meredith and Jared Bentley host the show at noon daily, providing viewers with breaking news and information.

Cate said the show’s “quick cut” format and “green screen graphics” can keep even the most distracted online browser glued to the news. Wellmont Health System is the initial sponsor of “Dailies.”

• Times-News breaking news video content from video news reporter Rain Smith.

• “Downtown Update” videos featuring what’s new in Kingsport’s active downtown revitalization, with Jared Bentley.

• “ChamberZone,” the chamber of commerce’s local business rundown, with hosts Laura Steele and Bob Feagins.

• And “Food City Cooking School,” a weekly cooking and recipe program recorded every Monday at Food City’s Crown Point Center.

The site also includes a archival function with key word searches, and viewers can subscribe to a blog to get notice of content updates.

“That’s just kind of the beginning of where we’re going,” Cate said. “The landscape has completely shifted for all media with the continued growth of the Internet.”

He said television is no longer “the” medium for video.

“All the major networks are shifting their content to the Web,” Cate said.

Cate said plans are already in place for expanding Kingsport.tv programming to include many new ideas including the presentation of user-submitted videos from YouTube, MySpace, Google and other video sharing sites.

“It was important for us to integrate the social aspect of the Web into Kingsport.tv,” Cate said.

Other plans include adding a range of programming from history to outdoors, he said.

For more information contact Cate at dcate@gotricities.net or 392-1741.

After several months of development, our team at The GoTriCities Network launched a new website today and a new brand. Introducing Kingsport.tv.

Our community here in Kingsport lost its TV station many years ago as WKPT made a business arrangement with the Johnson City Media General affiliate WJHL.

Since then, The Model City has been without its own station. That’s why we thought it would be a good idea to jump out there and bring something fresh to the City of Kingsport in the 21st century.

It’s not the same old TV station either. We’re using advanced Internet technologies at The GoTriCities Network to bring our community a cutting-edge online resource that combines video, familiar from our experiences with television along with the desktop convenience of your computer.

It’s easy to access online videos and you never have to make an appointment to see any content. Just click and play and search our archives too. Find something you like – email it to a friend.

Stay tuned too. We’ve got great programs lined up for the future and we look forward to your ideas too as we continue to culture creative entertainment for the information age. Our initial lineup includes (Continue reading – for details );

Click here for the Press Release

I usually abhor talking shop here on the blog, but this graphic passed around the web this week was too good to pass up and explains it all.

For anyone who’s ever met Graham Clarke, you know you’re in the presence of an inspiring man that has empowered many of Kingsport’s youth as coach of the Dobyns-Bennett Indians Football team.

Did you know that Graham also sings a mean James Brown and is now a local television star in a new commercial with Diane Hills?

This past week, our guys finished editing round two of the TriCityWheels.com commercials.

At the first shoot, we made a few mistakes. Most notably, we didn’t take any high-rez pictures during the shoot and that made it difficult for us to translate this program to outdoor and print advertising.

A couple of weeks ago, Paul Bishop was once again a real gentleman downtown and he let us borrow his photography studio once again. We brought down a new cast of characters and had fun in front of the video cameras, the lights and yes…the photos.

Personally, I had a great time and fell in love with light. What I mean by that is the way a real studio and a great lighting rig makes a huge difference in our work. Paul had a remote flash that attached to the front of my Nikon that gave me some of the best photos to ever come from my Nikon D-80.

Above is the photo of the Bentley family. Vanessa and baby Adalaine Bentley. A gorgeous shot of this beautiful new family. You can see all the photos here.

Special thanks to the following folks who helped create our new commercials too. These new billboards will look great as they begin to appear August 1 in the Tri-Cities.

Here are the new spots featuring Kyra Dykstra and Lyndsey with the Kingsport Chamber and our champ Mark Fusco and Vanessa. Thanks to everyone for a truly professional and creative experience.

Lyndsey and Vanessa

Kyra and Mark

Our consulting group has enjoyed an incredible summer as we are preparing to engage some of our most intriguing Internet projects from here in Kingsport, TN.

We have the privilidge of working with customers all over the Tri-Cities and we couldn’t be happier to work with One Stop Wines in Johnson City. These folks run probably one of the finest businesses in the region with decades of praise – now in their second generation.

Last week, we launched the new One Stop Wines website and congratulate alot of folks who participated on this production. It’s a local idea which forges complete online content management and a special wine pairing tool that automagically suggests what would go best with tonight’s prime rib or whatever you like.

We also worked with these folks to create customized software so they may communicate with their customers via email and special online sales which we plan to work together on as the months proceed.

Of course, I have a special interest with this business for a number of reasons. It used to be most notably the wine, but I also appreciate my new friends who continue to be amused by our efforts. We loved working with them and had a great time on Boone Lake a few months back with Mel, Josh and the lovely Kelley who share the secrets of Wine Tasting 101 – all online.

Thanks again to my staff and our new friends at One Stop. We look forward to watching your traffic grow.

Visit One Stop Online.