RnaLabs

Imagine your Web browser was a window onto the real world. Instead of seeing Web pages inside that browser window, you see the environment around you–except with an added layer of data on top of it. Layar’s AR is a bit like that. “We’re like Firefox, we’re a window in an operating system,” says Lens-FitzGerald. Only this one works through your smartphone camera, where its on-screen viewfinder displays the camera view enhanced with extra information connected with exactly what you’re looking at, or the direction you’re looking in.

Layar

Layar: The Web Browser for Reality – Coming Soon to iPhone | Technomix | Fast Company

Dan McKenzie has a nice post on how the mobile app phenom is a party Like It’s 1999 – Why Mobile is the New Internet

Mobile apps are an extension of your company’s brand

It’s no accident that brick and mortar companies like Taco Bell, Lacoste and Whole Foods have mobile apps. Mobile apps are another “touchpoint” for their brand where they can interact with their audience. Marty Neumeier in his book Zag writes, “Traditional advertising is in a death spiral”…”But the root causes for the death spiral are twofold: 1) People don’t like one-way conversations, and 2) People don’t trust advertising.”

So how do you extend your brand and not use advertising? One idea is to build a utility that your customers find useful…like a mobile app.

Sherwin-Williams designed ColorSnap for the iPhone to help their customers match colors they like with Sherwin-Williams paint color. Pizza Hut launched their iPhone app that lets their customers order their favorite pepperoni pizza in seconds. Pizza Hut promotes their app with words like “easy”, “fast” and “fun”. In short, they’re making it easy for their customers, and promoting their brand in a way that doesn’t come off as being intrusive or forceful. Best of all, their icon gets to live on the customer’s mobile device helping to establish a connection between Pizza Hut and their customers.

Get into a car anywhere in the world and you are pretty much guaranteed that you will understand how to drive it. Cars have the ultimate user interface and Formula 1 cars perhaps represent the pinnacle of this UI, with the most demanding requirements.

As recently as 1992, F1 steering wheels were round with 3 buttons (neutral, drinking water supply, radio), but since the advent of paddle gear changes there has been a sudden explosion of electronics and feature driven complexity.

The complexity is ubiquitous, all 11 Formula 1 teams produce cars with more or less the same multi button design allowing adjustment and tweaks of traction and aerodynamics from the wheel itself. Unlike a road car, space and focus constraints mean that the entire dashboard is on the steering wheel. This is something that will no doubt be copied, unnecessarily, in consumer cars in future, but would that be a UI improvement?

Read full article at OObject

Chrysler Concept Imagines a Car Without Buttons – Wheels Blog – NYTimes.com by Azadeh Ensha

“You won’t see a single button on this vehicle from the doors to the interior to the infotainment system,” said Jason Monroe, a spokesman for Chrysler, while demonstrating Chrysler’s 200C concept, a four-door electric car.

Mr. Monroe helped lead the electronics development of the 200C’s iQ Power touch-screen system, first introduced at this year’s Detroit auto show.

The production-ready system was patented by the Nartron Corporation, which also owns the technology for the human-interface design used by other companies, including Apple. That may help explain the iPhone-inspired features behind iQ Power. “It’s what Apple did with the iPhone,” said Norman Rautiola, Natron’s chief executive.

Specifically, iQ Power lets drivers use any smartphone as a virtual key fob to control a host of functions, including locking and unlocking the vehicle’s doors and trunk and rolling the windows up and down. With their smartphones, users can also access a live interior shot of the vehicle as well as check on the status of their home’s security alarm, carbon dioxide and smoke detectors.

By touching and dragging a virtual trackball on the car’s curved dashboard, the driver and front-seat passenger can also control the vehicle’s music library, which replicates Apple’s album art cover-flow feature. The media library moves with the phone, so users can customize and take their settings with them.

The passenger side of the 200C deploys a UConnect tablet so passengers can access the car’s entertainment features and send recommendations to the driver. Passengers can also access the settings through a console-mounted passenger interface.

According to Mr. Rautiola, the 200C is expected to be released in 2012.