http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0pjD4qpIpg

Siri is the world’s most famous smartphone voice assistant, but she’s hardly the only game in town. In fact, one of her rivals, Windows Phone’s Cortana, thinks she can do a better job.

In the latest ad from Microsoft, Cortana shows off her big differentiators over Siri. First, the owner creates a “person reminder,” a type of reminder that’s tied to a specific person instead of a time or location. Next, she creates a reminder tied to a generic location — in this case, a flower shop — which will push an alert when the user gets close to a business that meets the description.

Cortana saves the best for last, though. An alert pops up saying that, with traffic, the owner needs to leave for his next appointment in the next five minutes.

The traffic alert illustrates the “special sauce” that makes Cortana different among personal assistants: That because she’s aware of both personal data (your calendar, contact list, etc.) and external factors such as traffic, she can combine that knowledge and proactively alert the user about unforeseen factors.

Why it’s hot?

Although, Siri is the world’s most famous smartphone assistant and is more polished with regard to funny “chitchat” answers, I found Cortana to be pretty great out of the box.

Mr. Sketch Scented Markers ad is a twist you may not see coming and is running on cable TV channels and online. This 30-second spot is the first advertising for Newell Rubbermaid’s classic drawing pens in nearly two decades. Ad agency BBH NY, now working with a variety of brands under the corporate banner like Sharpie, Paper Mate, Rubbermaid and Calphalon, is leading the reintroduction of the aromatic markers for the key back-to-school buying season. The ad, has a British voice over, and with using a little bit of toilet humor, shows how the fruit scented coloring pens supposedly got their smell.

“We wanted a simple, entertaining concept that people would get right away,” Creative Director, Caputo, said. “And since the name of the product isn’t intuitive to the benefit, we wanted to do a little education.”

That led to the “smell extraction room” in the cartoon-like ad, which, purely for storytelling purposes, captures the misty fruit fart and adds it to a bright blue pen. (The Mr. Sketch multi-packs also contain green apple, raspberry and other scents. That fruit apparently breaks wind, too, but with more discretion. The act is implied in the ad, not seen)

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xogtneVeflI

Why it’s hot?

Mr. Marker has not had a commercial or any type of ad in nearly two decades. This comeback has gotten plentiful comments on YouTube and iSpot.tv that lean mostly toward the “this is marketing genius” opinion. In addition, most talk about their kids’ delighted reaction to the ad, at least one parent posted a Vine video to illustrate the point. The ad is a great way to target kids, especially with back to school season approaching.

Source 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xogtneVeflI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scV5cV44gWI&list=UUqhnX4jA0A5paNd1v-zEysw

Picture: Fireman Cory Kalanic rescuing a kitten from a burning house. This video was one of the first user generated videos that went viral; it has more than 23 million views, which convinced GoPro to release more submitted videos.

The camera company GoPro has become the leader of a new trend among businesses to market its product and build a brand through online videos. Though many companies are using the strategy of creating viral videos to garner attention, no company is doing this more than GoPro, which is releasing multiple videos every day after stumbling on a technique that leads to thousands of hours of free publicity a week.

The marketing campaign started with hiring professional stuntmen and extreme athletes to show off the capability of its small high-performance cameras, which GoPro markets as the “world’s most versatile.”

But it has now become a new trend that sees an estimated 6,000 videos shot with the unique camera every day — with people mentioning the company’s cameras in hopes of becoming GoPro’s next star

The figures only continue to grow as GoPro reports the amount of video views on YouTube for its own generated videos has tripled in 2014 compared to the same time in 2013. Almost 100 of its videos have reached more than 1 million views.
They are starting to accommodate the contributions with plans to change their website to make it easier for people to know how and where to submit videos, Dornbusch said. There is also a new “bonus program” for users whose videos are licensed by GoPro, he said. They will receive $1,000 if their videos reach a million views, he said.

 Why it’s hot?

The San Francisco-based company launched its channel four years ago and started producing videos as a way to promote its cameras. But the popularity of the campaign took a life of its own, and now GoPro is taking a cue from its customers and producing many of its own videos as well. The change has tripled their amount of views so far this year. GoPro recently created an entire team of about 30 employees whose main focus is to search online daily for user-generated content featuring GoPro cameras and determine if it would work for licensing or marketing, Dornbusch said. Before the company had one or maybe two people who would do this, he said.

Read more

This is the functioning Jibo prototype.

Jibo is a desktop robot created by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, who was always interested on how to build a robot that could work and live alongside humans. It took her about twenty years to finally deliver the world’s first family robot.

When Dr. Breazeal asks Jibo to introduce himself, Jibo’s face lights up and its 11.5-inch body turns to face her. Jibo’s screen shows a large “blinking” ball, which is like the closing of an eye, and it responds “Hi, my name is Jibo.”

Jibo can also dance to a short tune. Jibo’s eye then changes to an image of a large camera lens, as it explains how it can capture and share special moments while its body reorients itself to face Breazeal. Then it starts to tell a story and the screen changes again into images for a tale about the three little pigs. Jibo doesn’t not only reads the story in its friendly, male voice, but also uses its body to act it out.

Built by a 20-member team with off-the-shelf mobile components, Jibo will cost $499 (in the Indiegogo campaign) and $599 for the developer edition (with SDK).

Why it’s hot?

One thing Breazeal wants to make clear is for people to see Jibo as a companion, rather than an appliance. It will be very interesting to see how people interact with Jibo. In addition, Breazeal also wants to build the developer and user community and inspire people to build apps for Jibo. “We want to engage our community with people who want to make Jibo part of their lives and with people who want to develop for Jibo early enough in our development cycle that we can really engage them and get their input and feedback.” said Breazeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1Q8oFpX1Y

Read More

When an airline losses your luggage, it can take hours or even days to get someone to tell you where it ended up, that is if it ever turns up at all. Hearing from the luggage itself would make things a lot more convenient for passengers.

The plan is to have GPS tracking chips embedded in bags in order to transmit their locations to travelers and even contacting airlines directly when they get lost.

Why it’s hot? 

I think this concept of having lost luggage direct carriers to its location would be super convenient. Also, it would make customers really happy to have their luggage delivered to their home, instead of them having to go on a search for their own luggage. There have been many scenarios where bags have gotten lost and are never returned to the owner.  U.S. airlines mishandled over 141,000 bags in April, according to government statistics, or about three bags for every 1,000 passengers. It will be very interesting to see how it will impact the airline industry.

article