Interactive Mona Lisa

Coming to a living room wall near you. Out with velvet and glow-in-the-dark.

Interactive technology has brought the Mona Lisa to life – and Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic 16th Century portrait now speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. A digital version of the work is the star attraction in a new exhibition of classic artworks recreated in multimedia form in Beijing.

Exhibition organiser Wang Hui spent two years preparing the collection. He says it is the first time 3D, holographic and voice recognition technologies have been fused like this. Visitors can also listen to Jesus Christ talking to his disciples and watch him move around the table of The Last Supper, while life-sized replica statues of Roman and Greek gods and goddesses strike provocative poses in a multimedia play.

Watch a video on BBC News

How Americans spend their day

The New York Times put together an interactive graph based on The American Time Use Survey. The survey asked thousands of American residents over 15 to recall every minute of a day.

See the graph on New York Times

Next generation of barcode technology

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games.

The work will be shown off at Siggraph, a conference in New Orleans next week.

“We think that our technology will create a new way of tagging,” Dr Ankit Mohan, one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers behind the work, told BBC News.

Read the rest on BBC

Google launches interactive 3D Moon

See it for yourself via Google Earth

IAB releases interactive mobile ad guide

IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) released a simple guide to interactive mobile marketing. It can serve as a base for a very simple introduction for first-time mobile advertisers. Some compelling stats that highlight importance of interactive mobile marketing are mentioned (most are based on U.S.mobile marketplace):

• Mobile phone penetration is upwards of 4 out of 5 people in the United States and more people now have a mobile phone than have PC-based Internet access. This is especially true for older adults and lower-income individuals.
• Mobile Internet usage continues to grow. Over the last three years usage has grown approximately 25% per year. With smartphones becoming more affordable, advanced, and widely adopted, we’ll likely see a greater increase in 2009. Currently, 40-45 million mobile subscribers use the mobile Internet regularly.
• Minorities are significant mobile data users across all features and applications.
• Mobile is not just youth-focused – texting behaviour may skew a bit younger, but the bulk of the mobile Internet usage comes from 25-44 year olds.

As any stats, these are more likely skewed to reflect IAB views on the topic – it would be nice to see some true number-based stats of mobile Internet users in North America as opposed to rates of regular mobile users who might be accessing online content. And I am sure that these stats are lower in Canada (and a lot of other parts of the world), but the rate of growth in mobile Internet usage provokes some thought. My take on it – the usage numbers  and rates of growth are astounding. No wonder lower-income and minority groups are adopting mobile Internet at a great rate – there is not much need anymore for a bulky hardware investment to access data and information.

I foresee a greater investment in corporate web infrastructure and content compatibility for mobile in the next few years coming from some of the more progressive brands out there. However, much more needs to be done in Canada to allow for more transparency in mobile Internet penetration. Canadian mobile industry is driven by a few telecommunication giants like Rogers (Fido), Bell (Solo) and Telus (Koodo). Canadian mobile Internet access costs are still pretty steep, considering the lack of truly competitive mobile market – so this change in medium habits will most likely be staggered in Canada.

You can find the complete downloadable guide on IAB website.