Being able to pinpoint your location on a smartphone using GPS has become a pivotal feature for mobile apps and services.  In addition to the obvious use for finding your way around using Google Maps or similar, many apps are now available which use information about your location to filter information that is relevant to you.

FourSquare is one of the most successful names in this area, allowing users to find out whether their friends are around, find useful information about their surrounding area, or receive offers from stores that are close by, and Facebook Places helped the technology to gain popularity, but there are many other similar services:   Ask Around is a directory service which allows the user to capitalise on local knowledge when in a new area,  NearbyFeed gives you a feed of news and weather relevant to you local area.  More imaginative location-based services include, StreetSpark, a location based dating service, and a number of interesting games which use local data to populate your game world, such as MyTown, or even turn the map into a playing-field such as in Shadow Cities.

Unsurprisingly, retailers have realised that there is great potential for attracting people to stores.  There are already a number of apps which send users offers and deals relevant to their local area, such as Google Shopping and MyVoucherCodes.  It would be advantageous, though, if shops and retails could detect when customers were actually in the store, not just nearby – retailers could give incentives for customers to visit the stores by rewarding them just for going into the shop…  And this is where the technology has it’s limitations.  GPS is accurate down to about 10 metres in some cases, but phone signal and GPS accuracy is less reliable in built up areas, or indoors.

This represents a new hurdle for location-based services - accurately identifying where the user is, even in built up areas, and whether or not the user is actually inside a specific store or location.  A number of methods have already been used to detect when a user is in the vicinity, such as sending a signal by bluetooth, or designing the smartphone app to recognise which WiFi hotspots it can pick up.

A truly innovative approach to this problem was employed in ShopKick – they use the microphone on the device to detect a sound that is played in the store, but is inaudible to the human ear.  This means that if the user is running the app, they can be ‘checked-in’ as soon as they are close enough to pick up the signal.  The advantage of this system is that the sound signal obeys the physical boundaries of the store – ie, the signal will not go through walls like a WiFi signal, so the app will not get confused if two adjacent stores are using the system.  Of course, this system will only work for locations that have the system installed.

This is a technology which we are very interested in at Scribble, and a particularly interesting one for clients in retail and development.  Google has already started a massive effort to add large indoor public spaces such as airports and shopping centers.  Clearly, some new infrastructure will be required, but the technology is being developed to add a new level of detail to the location services we currently use.

Here at Scribble, we love augmented reality.  Augmented reality is being marked by many as a key area to watch in 2012, and with more and more exciting examples of the technology are coming onto the market each day, we cannot disagree.  So we thought it would be a good idea to take stock of things that are going on in the field.

There are a number of different categories that augmented reality apps so far fall into, we take a look at a few which promise exciting things in the coming year…

3D Augmented Reality Games

These games allow the user to use their device to look around and shoot or interact with 3D objects superimposed onto the real world via the device’s camera.  The systems in these games are pretty simple in terms of the broad vision of augmented reality, they do little to interpret the world around us, the simulated 3D objects thus do not interact or correspond to objects in the real world, but the direction the device is facing is tracked, giving the impression that objects are floating in 3D space around the user.  Despite the simplicity, however, there have been a huge number of games released, not just on smartphones, but handheld consoles such as the Nintentdo 3DS and forthcoming Playstation VITA (check out this amazing video where the user places multiple cards onto the table to build a virtual football stadium!!).  In the future, augmented reality games will be able to interpet the 3D space around us, such as in Ball Invasion, a game that employs technology created by NASA!  This is still a simple demonstration, but it shows what exciting possibilities lie ahead.

Image Comprehension

This concept is at the core of augmented reality: the ability of the software to comprehend what it is looking at and then perform some relevant task.  Image interpretation is one of the big challenges in computing, but we are beginning to see some tantalising prospects of what this could bring us.  SREngine is an app that uses image recognition to identify objects and scenes – the demo shows the app recognising an office building and items on a menu.  WordLens is another innovative concept, this time using augmented reality to perform translation: point your device at some text on a sign or product packaging, and WordLens will replace the text in the image with it’s translation into French or Spanish right before your eyes!  TAT Augmented ID uses facial recognition to create a visual tag-cloud of a person’s interests floating around their head.

GeoLocation

This is likely to become the most widespread use of augmented reality: hold up your phone camera to view information about your surroundings.  Big players are moving into this field – Layar is growing in popularity and Microsoft’s Bing are invested in the technology.  Now LG is including an Wikitude, an augmented reality browser, on the LG Optimus.  Adoption by handset makers is a significant step on the path towards augmented reality becoming an integral part of the technology we use.  It may still be a long way off, but companies such as Google and Nokia are already looking at ways that indoor environments could be mapped to allow the same kind of navigational tools that we now take for granted with services such as Google Maps.

Many of these technologies are still in their infancy.  But improvements technology and infrastructure will help bring augmented reality to fruition.  There are countless startups coming out with innovative new uses and examples of the technology, and we will see more of this as the technology matures.  The presence of major players and the first signs of widespread adoption from handset manufacturers is a clear indicator that the technology will be able to move forward and fulfil many of these exciting promises…. hopefully some of them in 2012!

Augmented reality is going to play an increasingly important role in mobile technology into the future.  Our mobile, web and social media are becoming more integrated every day, with every piece of internet content bearing the obligatory line-up of ‘connect’ and ‘share’ icons along the bottom.  Even this approach to connecting services is likely to change.  Facebook is leading the way, absorbing many more content and services so that users access third party content without leaving the site – creating a seamless experience.  In the same way, augmented reality promises to integrate our mobile devices with the world around us.

Combined with location services, augmented reality is an attractive technology that promises the potential to enrich mobile maps and directory services with information relevant to our immediate surroundings:  simply point your phone at the theatre building to find out what plays are on, see on-screen directions to find your way to the nearest oriental restaurant, or point at a bus stop sign to find out when the next bus is coming.

 Just as social network integration enriches our web experiences by connecting them with our friends or social contacts, augmented reality will integrate our mobile devices with our locations and physical surroundings, making experiences more relevant, engaging and real.

The technology is still new, however, and it will be some time before the technology becomes settled enough to provide a set of standards and become seamlessly integrated into our phone’s camera and map apps.  In the meantime, developers are hard at work innovating with new features and exciting applications.

Augmented reality games using a device’s camera are popular, particularly with marketers looking to create an engaging experience connected with their brand.  Recently at Scribble, we have received a number of briefs showing interest in another area: location-based augmented reality apps.  There are already some great examples of this; marketers have started using this technology to incentivise users to ‘check-in’ to a particular location, rewarding customers for attending specific events, for example.  A popular concept that we have received inquiries about from clients is the AR ‘Treasure Hunt’: this involves hiding virtual ‘treasures’ that users have to find using their phones, and can take place on any scale, over an entire city, or around a building or venue.  New applications are emerging that can trigger events or gameplay features based on the user’s location, or incorporate real-world locations into the gameplay experience.

Being a new technology, there are some good and some bad examples of augmented reality in action.  So why not try some out yourself?  To make this process a bit easier for you, we’ve tried and selected a few great examples that we feel really show the potential of augmented reality:

Shadow Cities, created in Finland, is a game that combines augmented reality and geo-location to create a unique gaming experience.  The game turns the player’s local area map into a game ‘board’.  Players move around the area, battling for control of territories, casting spells by making gestures on the phone’s screen.  This innovative approach exploits new technologies whilst harking back to childhood playground games.  Shadow Cities has become a popular title in Finland and has recently launched in the USA and Europe.  The game is a MMORPG, an online multiplayer game, and as such requires quite a commitment to get anything out of it.  The real meat comes from forming teams with other players.  But the concept of battling it out for control of real-world locations is great.  It’s worth checking out just to see what an imaginative use of the technology this is, and a glimpse of things to come.

MyTown takes a great spin on the concept of town-building by letting you choose real businesses in your area to add to your town.  It’s a simple concept that adds a unique level of personalisation to the game.

Star Walk is not only a wonderful idea, but is amazingly well executed.  Point your phone at the sky (or even at the ground), and you will see a representation of what stars and constellations you should see in that direction.  It’s great for learning about stars and constellations, but it goes much further.  The whole picture is zoom-able to an amazing extent, like Google Earth for the stars, and each and every star in the sky can be tapped to show extra information or will take you to an online encyclopaedia.

I would expect to see something like Layar built into our mobile devices in a few years’ time.  Layar helps you to find points of interest in your local area.  Locations are sorted into ‘layers’, which anyone can create, and you can select at will.  You can point your device at points of interest to show more information, or get Layar to give you directions.  Layars layers are user generated, and sorted by local relevance, which allows for some interesting content.  Firing it up in the Scribble office allows me to view a guide to nearby street-art in Brighton, nice!

People are downloading apps to their smartphones and mobile devices more than ever before.  But with more than half a million apps in the Apple App Store, and more than 200,000 in the Android Marketplace, it can be hard to make an app that stands out.

As well as making an app stand out, it is important to ensure that users will keep using the app once they have downloaded it.  Here at Scribble, we know that getting users to keep coming back is of the upmost importance, and we are always looking at ways to keep users engaged and to create apps that last.

Loyal customers can be an important revenue stream.  More and more developers are exploiting in-app purchases over app sales as the main income from apps.

Make it usfeul

The apps that stand the best chance of staying on users’ phones are the ones that serve a specific purpose, and do it well.  If you can find a niche and create a useful app, then your app has a good chance of success.

This is useless, however, if your app does not find it’s way into the hands of your target audience of ‘organic’ users.  These are the users who will seek out your app themselves and are the most likely to keep using it.  Advertising, of course, is important, but it is also important to make sure that your app is easy to find in the online stores – this can be as simple as giving the app a title which is self-explanatory and search friendly (ie the app title contains words that users are likely to type in when searching for the app they need), and making sure the app is in the correct categories.

Make it fun

With so many choices, users are likely to lose patience quickly and look for an alternative app if they become frustrated while using your app.  Conversely, if the app is fun and enjoyable to use, they are more likely to keep coming back.  This can be as simple as making the language of the content entertaining, and making the presentation attractive and fun.

Update Content

We regularly build CMS systems into our solutions to allow clients to manage the content of their app themselves.  Regularly updating content within the app is a great way to keep users engaged.  Live feeds from social networks are an easy way to bring up to date information into the app.  Push notifications can be used to alert a user when new content has been added – this feature should be used sparingly though, annoy your users and they will simply disable it or remove the app!

Give Incentives

We‘ve found that competitions and exclusive content are a great way to reward users and keep them interested.  You can also reward your users for using the app frequently or for posting messages about the app on their social networks, increasing their engagement and spreading the word!

Measure Engagement

Simple download statistics do little to tell you how your app is being used and how often.  Building measurement tools into the app can give you useful information; such as how long gaps are between usages of the app and how users respond to push notifications.  Getting a detailed picture of how your users are using the app is essential if you are to respond to user habits and tailor updates to your user base.

We love to chat about new and exciting ways to make apps that stand the test of time, come visit us to find out more, or let us know your thoughts.

Many critics were disappointed at the lack of any iPhone 5 announcement from Apple, and whilst there is no flashy new design for the exterior, the iPhone 4S has a number of major new features.  One of the main features being touted was Siri, a voice-controlled software assistant.  Siri allows you to interact with your phone using just your voice.  It can set calendar events, even checking for schedule conflicts, it can check weather and stock reports and find answers to questions using the powerful computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha.  This seems like an impressive offering, but despite improvements in the technology, speech-recognition has not found it’s way into mainstream products so far, can Apple be the first to achieve widespread adoption?

Voice recognition is already well established.  Most people will have encountered, and probably been infuriated by, voice recognition in automated telephone support systems.  But voice recognition is also an important assistive technology.  Both Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX operating systems have extensive built in voice control and screen-reading systems to allow all functions to be automated via voice commands.

Nuance’s speech recognition software ‘Dragon Naturally Speaking’ is the main choice, and has advanced dramatically over the last decade.  Several years ago, their dictation software required a lengthy calibration session of an hour or so to allow the system to learn the user’s voice; today, you can use their free mobile app to dictate text messages and activate functions with no calibration required whatsoever.

But figuring out the actual words that have been spoken is only the first part of the challenge.  The spoken words must then be interpreted into some kind of query or command that the computer can understand and then act on.  Making sense of natural language, with all it’s ambiguities and turns of phrase, has been an incredibly difficult challenge so far.

Recently, IBM’s ‘Watson’ computer software managed to win the popular game-show ‘Jeapardy’, playing against previous show champions.  The game show was chosen because not only does it require a great breadth of knowledge, but the questions are often posed using ambiguous or cryptic language.  The Jeapardy challenge was a great PR stunt for demonstrating the software, but this marked a significant leap forward, opening the door to natural language communication with machines.

Apple has a long-standing tradition of bringing products and technologies into the mainstream and achieving widespread adoption: the iPod was by no means the first MP3 player on the market, but it’s success quickly made the label ‘iPod’ into a generic term for portable MP3 player; the iPhone was the first touch-screen only device; and the iPad still remains by far the most popular and sought-after tablet despite numerous aspiring competitors.  This is not only down to clever marketing, Apple has achieved widespread consumer adoption of their devices for their ‘it just works’ approach to ease of use.  Customers trust that not only will their products be easy to use, but they will also work well together.

So can Apple turn Siri into the first major mainstream voice-controlled application?  People will have to get used to interacting with their mobile devices in a new way, but if Apple can achieve widespread adoption through it’s products, then this will no doubt drive further innovation of the technology and will see it’s implementation in many more products and applications all around us, and we can all look forward to fascinating conversations with our washing machines and public lifts.