Evolving into Immersive Consumerism

People are facinated about knowing what the future holds. This infographic video, “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow" projects what life will be like in 4 years from now in 2015. It makes some interesting points about our daily lives being immersed with technology such as social media and mobile computing.


Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.
This made me think of how marketing will evolve in its application of geo-targeting of the publically available information we post up about ourselves on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. How will this effect the everyday lives of people when exposed to omnipresent branding? The video below explores coruption of the technology like we have already seen with Spam email and viruses.


Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Then there's the scientific side of enabling technology and how we would go about if we could evolve to develop a Sixth Sense to access the meta data without using a smart phone. The next video is of Pattie Maes talking at Ted about SixthSense. Is this part of Homo Evolutis? as Juan Enriquez puts it that humanity is on the verge of becoming a new and utterly unique species.

Square Up Dot Com

The latest idea from Jack the inventor of Twitter is called Square. Its a dongle that is attached to the audio jack of your iPhone that allows you to swipe credit cards and make a secure payment on the iPhone. Its like PayPal in the way there are contracts or monthly fees just a percentage is taken from the transaction.

The creditcard owner gets a receipt sent to their email address or mobile phone straight away and cabn access them securely online at the squareup.com website. You can SMS to authorise every payment in real-time.

In addition to swiping your credit card using the Square dongle, authorisation of the card is also verified by using your finger to electroinally sign the screen of the iPhone as shown in the image below.

The YouTube clip below demonstrates the Square in a beta mode being demonstrated at a tradeshow.

Iphone Apps helping you to shop

Last month I signed up for an Apple iPhone just like over 20 percent of other mobile phone owners. The Australian smartphone market share in the past 12 months has placed Apple in 2nd place behind Nokia and ahead of Blackberry.

Living in Melbourne I was in the position to take advantage of a competitive data rate offered by a telco carrier focused mainly on metro areas, so it was an easy decision financially for me when rolling over my mobile contract to go iPhone.

What has been great entertainment and a great distraction to my blogging is the awesome number of free local applications that are available to download. My partner was quick to point out that our local supermarket had an app and we could create our weekly shopping list.

So I went off to the Coles website to find dedicated section promoting the application with in depth details on its features and how the app works. Basically the Coles ShopMate for iPhone allows you to plan your shopping, learn about weekly specials and search for recipes which can be shortlisted with your favourite dishes at the moment I've only loaded Lamb Vindaloo or Spaghetti Bolognese because I could live off theses two staples all week. It also has the ability to find your local Coles by your postcode and proves directions for those who don't live across the road to find your nearest store with a list of individual specials available to that particular location.

Using the ShopMate shopping list you can automatically build as many shopping lists as you like for any occasion such as your weekly shopping, a party list or summer holiday shop.



I envision this ShopMate feature may one day connect with the smart shopping trolleys currently being tested by Coles, Woolworths and IGA that have their own checkout consoles attached to allow you to download your iPhone shopping list to the smart trolley connected via a WiFi network with in-store sensors that alert you when you are approaching an item you wish to buy, as well as providing you with targeted advertising specials as well and an online guide for navigating a shopping route of the store so you don’t have to wander up and down the isles.

This hi tech consumption leads me onto another new technology that allows shoppers to aggregate prices from different shops or retails also using a iPhone app called Lasoo. In essence Lasoo is a search engine that displays current specials from participating catalogues from around Australia. Via their website or iPhone app, Lasoo provides consumers with pre-shop assistance to allow you to compare prices and specials.

Use your iPhone to search and compare products across catalogues, brands and offers from retailers when you are out shopping or just laying back on the couch. Ylike the ShopMate it also has a find the store locator to identify the closest stockist and also get a map view, opening times and retailer contact details so that way you don't even have to go into the shop to start shopping which is perfect for a hunter style consumer such as me who likes to get in and get out of the shop as quickly as possible.