The Web is Flat - New Studio IMC Whitepaper

Email us for a copy of Studio IMC's new whitepaper:


The Web is Flat
How the WWW Will Merge With Public Spaces, Promote Free Speech, and Map New Frontiers



Thesis
Social media in public spaces such as interactive displays, mobile devices, and social software can greatly enhance communication and strengthen urban communities. Though these technologies currently utilize billboards, projections, and plasma displays, the emerging ‘OuterNet’ or ‘Next Net’ will eventually seamlessly infuse the capabilities of the Web within the very fabric of urban architecture and daily life, creating an “interactive network” filled with diverse and creative installations ranging from advertising to maps of the city and art works. This interactive network will inspire a sense of magic, promoting innovative info-mapping techniques, new business opportunities, and new art forms that will completely transform our experience of the city. In this paper, we discuss the history and future of these new technological techniques, art forms, and business opportunities.

Keywords/Tags
The Outnernet or Next Net
Mapping/Cartography
Public spaces & free speech
Technology, art, & advertising
Urban screens, mobile technologies, and social software
Video games and virtual worlds
The ancient art of memory- mapping knowledge/info
The Semantic Web- IBM, 2L, XML etc.
IMCtv, IMCmobile, IMCspace
Mapcidy

IMCtv & IMCmobile in Minute Maid Park for Houston Astros

IMCtv is used by the Houston Astros on their jumbotron in Minute Maid Park. The audience can send pictures, text messages, and votes to screens all over the stadium.

From Fluxus to Media Art

March 6 - May 24, 2008

Maya Stendhal Gallery is pleased to present From Fluxus to Media Art, a special selection of artists working in a range of media including film, video, sculpture, conceptual performance, and digital technologies. On view will be work by Jonas Mekas, George Maciunas, Fluxus, George Brecht, Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, and Studio IMC.

http://www.mayastendhalgallery.com/fluxus_to_media-page.html

Introducing IMCmobile

Over the years, Studio IMC has developed a range of mobile applications from voting and mobile video download services to text2screen applications that promote free speech. Clients have included Absolut, NJ Nets, National Amusements, NBC/Universal, and many others.

These mobile applications are now being brought under one easy-to-manage application suite called IMCmobile.


Introducing, the IMCmobile management system.
With our system, mobile marketing campaign management becomes easy. Using a secure website (pics to be posted soon), you can create new keywords tied to our shortcode or to your own.

Here are just a few of the features offered by IMCmobile:

Management of Three Types of Keywords
1. Premium Keywords
Used for contests and voting that requires payment. The carriers collect payment.
Example. Vote for your favorite Rodeo act…. $.99 per entry

2. Standard (Vanity) Keywords
They can be used for any kind of campaign and are usually meaningful names or words.
Example. Text to receive $500 off a 2007 Mustang…

3. Value Keywords
Used for bounce back information. It can’t be used for contesting, voting, couponing, etc.
Example. Place a Keyword on a particular home being sold. The response is only for that home and returns only information about the home.

Integration with Billboards & other Digital Screens
IMCmobile integrates seamlessly with IMCtv through features like Text2screen, Pix2screen, and voting. Add-on mobile gaming also available with IMCtv and IMCmobile for real-time control over screens from user cell phones.

Special Keyword Features
1. Clients can enter some information into a link to the text message and a bounce back is created that is specific to the information entered. (assumption is that all data will be provided by client) Example. Enter your zip code for your closest. Alternatively this could be hit reply with your zip code.

2. Standard API to link to third party systems to pull dynamic data (i.e. zip code filters, special price takedowns etc)

3. Call Back feature - Divert the return message to a third number for immediate response. Example. Text YES back if you would like someone to contact you and show you this home today.

Contesting
Random Code Generation with link to Website.
Instant Winner (based on nth criteria – i.e. nth = 10th person or every 10th person)
Delayed Instant Winners…one an hour
Single Winner Drawings
(subject to carriers local laws and restrictions

Welcome Message
An option to turn on/off a customizable welcome message to all first time texters of an advertisers campaign. This is sent in addition the reply text.

Return Messages
Timing of the return messages is flexible. From an immediate bounce back to five hours later and even the next day.

Sorting of Database
Keyword/All of part of the keyword
Timing of Opt-in
Type of Campaign
Sub-Groups—back office sorting for each keyword that is not obvious to consumers.
Example. Keyword BMW…internal sort…premium product

Alerts
Alerts are sent to one keyword or a group of keywords. Sort the groups when you set up the keywords so you can send alerts by sub-groups.

Detailed Reporting
A 24/7 report feature that shows number of texts received or texter responses to a keyword, alerts sent to keyword group so we can track for billing purposes. Also has additional features including – time of day concentration, day of week concentration and top area codes. Graphs for visual reporting are also built-in.

Custom Skins
Some clients prefer to have their mobile application management portal with a custom look and feel that associates with their brand. For this reason, IMCmobile has customizable skins as an optional add-on feature.

More IMCspace 3D/2D Visual Search Maps

3D You Tube User Search Map
Yet another IMCspace 3D search map. This map (requires a VRML viewer) shows a cluster of You Tube user's videos in comparison to their friends video clusters. The longer the video cube the more views it has gotten. This is a very easy way to search and compare large numbers of videos and users in a single visual map.




















2D You Tube Keyword Search Map
This is another IMCspace video search maps. This one is 2D but has the added benefit of zoom and floating info when the mouse rolls over a video. It's a basic idea that is being used more and more on the Web. But compared to traditional YouTube search results in list format, this "dynamic grid" search map approach is clearly a more efficient and fluid method of exploring a large pools of video search results.

The following passage from the book, Mapping Cyberspace, by Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin, makes the important distinction between several key modes of information browsing where search maps can be useful.
"Browsing strategies: scanning (covering a large area without depth), browsing (following a path until a goal is achieved), searching (explicit goal search), exploring (finding the extent of information), and wandering (unstructured search) (Canter et al. 1985, cited in Kim and Kirtle 1995)."

Much of Studio IMC's research on immersive spaces (IMCtv, CINE) and visual search maps (IMCspace) is rooted in our belief that there is a definite need for new visual strategies in mapping information on the Web (and in physical spaces). These new strategies will reach beyond Google's text/list-based search strategy. Modes of experiencing information such as scanning and wandering are made much easier with birds-eye-view visual/image-based maps of large amounts of information. New relationships can be formed and shown in these visual search maps. 2D and 3D graphics as well as dynamic interactive animations, virtual physics, and immersive environments that mix virtual/real can inspire higher levels of understanding for every-growing datasets. These new search methods can provide us with a spatial/mental maps and a more active way of experiencing info space than Google's list search results.

IMCspace - You Tube User Solar System

http://www.movvom.com/rotator9.php?user=lonelygirl15

This is an experimental 3D user map showing a You Tube user's uploaded videos.

Enter a You Tube user name and press submit to see a 3D universe of the user's recent videos. The videos with wider orbits have more views. Move your mouse to navigate the videos. Click on a video to view the video. User stats are made available as is a direct link to the user's personal 3D universe.

This example is powered by IMCspace as well as various open source and creative commons software tools like jquery and the work of Will Jessup's Solar System.

Studio IMC at CMMA Eastern Region Meeting

CMMA Eastern Region Meeting

McKinsey & Company conference center, 55 East 52nd Street, New York - between Fifth and Madison.

Thursday, July 31, 2007
11:30AM to 3:00PM

Eastern Region Director
Frank Ball
Goldman Sachs

YouTube^©, MySpace^©, Podcasting, Second Life^©, Digital Signage - new technologies are creating new challenges for media managers. What are the implications and how managers can make effective use of these technologies to reach targeted audiences will be the subjectc of a panel discussion at the Communications Media Management Association (CMMA) Eastern Region meeting.

The Program
11:30 – 12:00: Arrival and networking

12:00 – 1:00: Lunch courtesy of CMMA partners Crews Control and Team People.

1:00 – 2:30: Evolving Communications Technologies Panel

Christopher King, Associate Director, RD Multimedia and Creative Media Services, Reader’s Digest Association

CMMA member, Chris King will describe the Reader’s Digest Association’s recent podcasting experiences and share lessons learned.

Boris Kizelshteyn - Managing Partner, combinedstory

combinedstory is a media firm specializing in representing business, brand or artwork in the virtual world. The company's principles have over 20 years of combined experience in the interactive media industry creating campaigns focused on virtual experiences. They are actively working in avatar interface based interactive worlds such as SecondLife^©, Kaneva^©, Entropia^© and There.^© (www.combinedstory.com).

James Tunick - Founder and President, Studio IMC

Studio IMC (Interactive Multimedia Culture) is a new media agency comprised of an international team of artists and software engineers focused on innovation. Studio IMC produces a tradeshow called the IMCexpo with the aim of spurring innovation and showcasing its artists. Studio IMC main products are IMCtv, an interactive media player for digital screens, and IMCvote, mobile software that integrates with IMCtv screens & web. (www.StudioIMC.com)

2:30 – 3:30: Technical and Management Issues Topic Go ‘Round. This popular CMMA open forum gives attendees the chance to ask questions or raise issues for discussion. A great opportunity to share in the collective experience of the group.

Where: McKinsey & Company conference center, 55 East 52nd Street, New York - between Fifth and Madison.

Our Host: CMMA member Steve Lackey, Managing Producer, McKinsey & Company

Click here to register. There is no cost to attend.

Parallel Cityscapes

Parallel Cityscapes (PC)
By Jaanis Garancs and James Tunick

Installation part of the show, StereoVision
USF Museum of Contemporary Art
June 15th-August 4th, 2007
4202 E. Fowler Ave. Tampa, Florida

View video walk-through of the show
View images from the show
Download Press Release or view museum website


Parallel Cityscapes (PC) is an interactive audiovisual environment that imagines the future of the personal computing while revealing the "hidden" spaces and relationships between memories. PC depicts the parallels between modern cities and future memory spaces, representing an archive of millions of user-generated photographs, video sequences, drawings and computer graphics from the Web, from mobile devices, and from public spaces. Each scene is a dynamic, algorithmically generated, stereoscopic, urban landscape with multidimensional hyperlinks that offer gateways to "parallel" scenes. This mind-bending journey is a breathtaking visual paradox between real and virtual, imagining a future in which 3D browsers and media spaces merge with real cities and encourage more advanced forms of collaboration.


Parallel Cityscapes is an interdisciplinary project that blends media and genres to create new art forms. Our goal in this project is to research the expanding frontier of the WWW, creating new ways to visualize the huge amount of data that is amassing on websites like You Tube. Our art work pushes this information to cell phones, web browsers, and immersive environments, truly defying classification as a certain type of art. By blending mobile devices, web, and physical spaces, we hope to show how people will one day create, share, and search for content on multiple platforms and in multiple dimensions.