Mobile World Congress 2012

We are excited to be attending the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona.  As well as soaking in the joys of the beautiful setting, we are looking forward to seeing some great exhibitions and sharing ideas with attendees.

Scribble: are a digital agency based in Brighton.  We enjoy seeking out innovative solutions for our clients and for our own endeavours in the world of apps.   Some of our main interests include creating cross-platform solutions that integrate apps, web and social media, 3D graphics, augmented reality and social media integration.

We love augmented reality and are really excited about what the industry will have to offer in the coming years, so it is nice to see that the conference will be enhanced by a number of augmented reality experiences to show people about the conference and to guide people to different areas.

The conference will host a pretty comprehensive list of players in the mobile world and will include keynotes from Facebook, Google, eBay, GMA, Visa and many many more.  As well as major keynote speakers and exhibitions, the conference has ‘App Planet’ a large section dedicated to mobile apps, where developers, operators, manufacturers and service providers will be exhibiting and sharing knowledge.

This year’s conference will be split up into a number of different ‘zones’, all related to different aspects of the mobile world, here’s what we are most excited about:

Cloud technology has been taking off over the last few years, and with demand for mobile services surging and 4G networks just around the corner, cloud technology is set to become an essential technology in the mobile world, so we will be taking a great interest in the exhibitors on the “Cloud Pavillion”.

We’ll also be checking out m-Commerce developments in the “Mobile Money Pavillion” – the coming years will see many big changes in this area as mobile banking, NFC and the like start to take off.

The “mPowered Brands Zone” will be dedicated to mobile marketing, and we will be interested to see how companies are making use of mobile technology to spread the word about their brands.

We love to share ideas, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to meet up at the conference, we look forward to seeing you there!

If you’d like to meet up at the conference, drop us a line at hello@scribbleuk.com and keep up to date with our tweets @scribbledigital

Check back here soon for our report of the conference!

Here at Scribble, we think games are great.  And of course, one of the things that makes being involved in the smartphone industry fun and exciting is that each of our fancy mobile smartphones is not only internet ready and full of useful tech, but they are also pretty spiffy handheld gaming devices that would give our childhood gaming systems a thrashing!

Smartphones, and in particular the iTunes app store, blew open a whole new market for small-time developers in a gaming industry where most games take millions to develop – harking back to the good old days of bedroom programmers and unique and interesting game concepts.

But games are not just great for fun, they are a great way for brands to promote their products and services.  Games rate highly in terms of engagement for apps: people play games for longer at a time than any other type of app – this is a great opportunity for you to get your message across.

Check out some great stats on mobile gaming put together by Geekaphone.

Today, we would like to focus on a particular category of games: the quick-fire arcade game.  This is our favourite way to play : the kind of simple game you can pick up and play for a minute, or even less.  The key to these kind of games is that they are instantly satisfying, and addictive, enticing you to keep coming back.  But more than just being great fun, there are many reasons that this is a great kind of game to make.

For first time developers, this kind of game makes particular sense.  The classic quick arcade game does not require a large amount of asset generation: rather than spanning multiple ‘levels’ or ‘stages’, quick fire arcade games often take place in one area – perhaps with the possibility of the player getting slightly further each time, or just bettering a high score.  The gameplay is usually simple and repetitive, often involving quick reactions.  This type of game means that the developer does not need to create large amounts of assets, or code governing gameplay.  Instead, they can focus on refining the small number of elements involved in the game.  It also makes it easier for the developer to test and change parts of the game, because there isn’t a huge knock-on effect to other parts of the game that is a risk in larger more complex games.

The key, then, is to make the gameplay simple and repetitive, but still incorporate some way of advancing.  These kind of games often involve trying to beat high scores, getting a little better each time.  A clever mechanic is to incorporate achievements or items which once reached allow the player to get further or get a higher score.  This means that while the game is essentially the same, there is still an incentive for the player to keep coming back.

The ‘feel’ is essential – the playing experience can be very short, but the player must still feel satisfied and want to come back.  This makes the use of sound and graphics very important – but a limited scope means that the developer is more free to refine the little details.

In-app purchases are common in this area – the game will often present you a choice: earn coins to buy items which give you a better chance of beating your highscore… or just buy the items with money and skip the hard work.  If the game has got you hooked in it’s addictive grasp, these little in-app-payments can be very hard to resist sometimes.

The repetitive nature of these kind of games makes them a great opportunity for  getting a brand message across.  If the formula is right, a well designed mini-game can be a perfect way for a brand to get their message out.

We’ve done some painstaking research in this area…. But don’t leave all the hard work up to us, find out for yourself.  Scribble have put together a beautiful list of fiercely fun and addictive arcade games – and the beauty is you only need a few seconds to enjoy these titles, but be warned , you will become hooked!!

There are of course many other games in this area, but we’ve picked out some total classics which are also our favourites.  These are the games that we just keep coming back to no matter how many times we play them!  Click on any of the image banners above to find out more about these fantastically addictive games and  see if you can figure out the perfect ingredients to chucking together the perfect addictive arcade game…  but you’ll have to put the game down at some point if you want to get round to making your own and reaping the rewards!

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!

Technology on the move in 2012

2012 will see technology continue to become more mobile, whilst web and social media will integrate further into our lives and the devices around us.

Increased processing power for smartphones and tablets will see mobile devices moving closer to fully-fledged computers and super lightweight and portable laptops will make computers more mobile.  Cloud storage and sevice-based software will continue to grow, making less reliance on local storage, and allowing content to be easily shared and viewed across multiple devices.  Social media platforms will be introducing more apps to broaden their experiences and engage us for longer, and ‘clickstreaming’ will allow users to constantly log their activities, creating a seamless web narrative, while web and social media platforms will be spilling over into smart TVs and the upcoming next generation consoles.

SocialMedia

Predicitions are that social media adoption will begin to slow and level out in 2012.  The buzz word for social media in 2012 is “engagement”.  Instead of harvesting more users, social media platforms will be looking for new ways to keep their users interested for longer, with platforms like Spotify and Twitter introducing apps to broaden their service.  Meanwhile, Facebook will extend it’s reach to more rich media such as newspapers and video channels, with the aim of keeping people on the site for more of their web-browsing time.

Nokia Windows Phone

Microsoft have had little success so far with Windows Phone.  Perhaps this is because the Microsoft brand association is not particularly sexy.  But we like Windows Phone, with it’s colourful box menu, reminiscent of the Xbox live interface, it’s a refreshing change from the iPhone-style rows of icons.  Having joined forces with Nokia, many are predicting that 2012 will be an important year for Windows Phone.

 Ultrabooks

Netbooks received a lot of criticism when they were introduced due to the heavy sacrifices made to performance, memory and screen-size in order to make them portable and affordable.  Whilst sounding good in theory, for many, this was not an acceptable trade-off, a point that Steve Jobs emphasised when he announced the first iPad.

Intel has put a huge amount of effort into developing a laptop which retains portability as the focus, but without the sacrifice in performance, coining the term ‘Ultrabook’.  Intel are not alone in this category, with other PC makers producing thin lightweight models.  Apple clearly see that the future of computing is in portability and mobility, with their entry level range of Macbooks being replaced with the Macbook Air, arguably the first ‘Ultrabook’.

Storage

One of the key space-saving measures for these devices is the removal of the optical drive.  This comes as the industry continues to move towards digital distribution.  Digital stores such as Steam, Xbox Live, PSN, the Apple AppStore will become more dominant for software distribution, and Microsoft will release their own app store with Windows 8.  Cloud storage and services, and streaming media will also take the burden away from local storage.

iPad 3

Many competitors have jumped into the tablet market, notably Samsung and Amazon, bringing some choice and variety to the category.  But Apple still remain ahead by some distance, the iPad being the most desired.  The iPad3 will be announced this year.  Apple are fairly good at guarding the secrets of their products before they are released, but some of the most popular speculations include a higher resolution ‘retina’ display, possibly that runs right to the edge of the device (ie, there is no border around the edge of the screen), more powerful processor and greater graphics capabilities.

 Augmented Reality

Faster processors, graphics capabilities and better cameras in smartphones means that we can expect to see even more exciting augmented reality apps on mobile devices.  As more developers are being attracted to the technology, we will start to see more exciting and practical applications, such as virtually trying on clothes or makeup.  Here at Scribble,  we love to hear about new AR developments, and we can’t wait to try them outfor ourselves!

2012 is going to be an exciting year of Scribble, as web and social media evolve and spread onto more devices and platforms and as digital technology becomes increasingly mobile…. watch this space!