May 14, 2012 at 11:21 AM by Tom | 0 Comments

Win a trip to Tampa Florida with Edelweiss and kooaba Shortcut


Today the Swiss airline, Edelweiss Air, started their new APG out-of-home campaign in Switzerland. They use kooaba Smart Ads to make it interactive and we believe this is a very interesting campaign because of 3 reasons.

1. Great incentive

The first reason is the great incentive that people get when interacting with the advertisement. You can actually win a free trip to Tampa Florida! That is something worthwile.

2. Great communication

The second reason is the fact that it is very well communicated (something that is not always as likely as it should be) on the advertisment. In a huge font-size consumers are told that you can win a trip, and then how they can win it “Jetzt plakat fotografieren und gewinnnen!”. In English this would be something like “Take a picture of this ad and win!”. And on the white part below the 3 steps you need to follow:

1. Download the Shortcut-App
2. Take a picture
3. Win a flight to Tampa

Not only is the incentive very, very attractive, it is also communicated as clear as it can be. This is what we believe, an interactive campaign at its best.

3. Great mobile pages

The third reason why we are happy to report about this case is the mobile result Edelweiss uses for this campaign. After someone takes a picture, they will end up on our brand new Smart Ads modules. In this case, a landing page, a sweepstakes and some extra information! Easy to set up, and branded in the Edelweiss identity.

 

 

If you want to see it for yourself, simply take a picture of advertisement with Shortcut. Don’t forget to join the contest. We wish we could ;)

 

Posted in Cases

May 11, 2012 at 04:57 PM by Tom | 0 Comments

kooaba Interactive Print case: twen. Read a chapter of a book and buy it directly on your mobile


Sometimes it can be a bit complicated to explain our product to people. Therefore we decided to create a series of cases where we demo the product with real life examples. Every week we shall post a new case, explaining a different part of what you can do with our app kooaba Shortcut in combination with our Interactive Print service for publishers.

This time we take a closer look at the Swiss magazine twen. When they review a book, they offer their readers to read the complete first chapter of those books. And if you like it, you can buy it directly. Isn’t that great?

Meet our video-man Lawrence (Larry) Grimm himself in this video where he demonstrates the case.

If you want to try it out, take a picture of this digital version of twen and experience it yourself.

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed the case and got inspired by it.

Have a great weekend, and we hope the weather is as nice at your place as it is here in Zurich. In fact, the weather is so nice that Till decided to offer his garden for a friday afternoon kooaba BBQ! Nice :)

Posted in Uncategorized

May 03, 2012 at 03:00 PM by Tom | 0 Comments

A great case of interactive advertising by real estate king ImmoScout24



With Smart Ads advertisers get the possibility to offer their customers more information on their mobile phone via their printed advertisements (without using QR or other connectors).

In Ringier’s Blick am Abend, one of kooaba’s long time partners, and Switzerland’s only evening newspaper with over 600,000 readers, ImmoScout24 repeatedly shows a collection of their real estate as you have probably seen more often in periodicals. With only that much space, it is not possible to show (many) images of each property, though that is one of the most interesting things when looking for your new home.

Therefore our partners at Publicitas Publiconnect decided together with ImmoScout24 to enhance their print ads with kooaba Smart Ads.

As of today their advertisements – as shown below – are interactive. With shortcut you get directly access to more information about the real estate mentioned in the ad. We would like to mention that the readers of Blick am Abend are already familiar with Shortcut because of Interactive Print.

The mobile page of ImmoScout24 is a pleasant example of how mobile pages should be optimized! This is a crucial part of having a successful print-to-mobile campaign. Unfortunately most cases (often with QR) lead the readers to a poor mobile page that discourages them to every try it again on another ad…

Have a go for it yourself whenever you see some houses in Blick Am Abend. We think this is a great case of how what you can do with Smart Ads.

Oh, and when you are there anyway, we suggest to take a look at the ImmoScout24 app if you live in Switzerland. They used Augmented Reality to point out all the houses that are for sale or for rent.

Always fun to look around and see what the market has to offer!

 

Keep up the innovating work ImmoScout :)

Posted in Smart Ads

May 03, 2012 at 08:37 AM by Tom | 0 Comments

Adding image galleries to your publication with Google Picasa


The Dutch newspaper “Barneveldse krant” found a way to easily add photo albums to their publication. To do that, they used the free Google Picasa, a great tool for this purpose as it turns out.

The pictures were taken during the Dutch Queen’s day. A national holiday celebrated on April 30th. Try it out by taking a picture of the page below with Shortcut.

Screenshots of the photo albums.

We think this is a great way for publishers to easily add images to your interactive publication. If you are a publisher and also would like to do things like this, take a look at kooaba Interactive Print for more information.

April 26, 2012 at 01:39 PM by Tom | 0 Comments

TheNextWeb Conference #TNW2012


Conferences are always great. Although, the ones we attend! Today starts TNW conference 2012 in Amsterdam, organized by one of our favorite blogs, The Next Web.

If there is anyone that wants to have a chat just about kooaba, Amsterdam, Image Recognition, AR, or anything else, let us know via Twitter or any other medium out there such as Facebook, phone or email.

 

Posted in Uncategorized

April 26, 2012 at 01:04 PM by Tom | 0 Comments

Adapt or disappear. The end of QR?



Those incapable of adapting to changing environment will disappear.

That is the message in this add, created by the advertising agency Publicis Belgium. The creative people of the agency made a series of beautifully designed advertisements using the  dinosaurs as a metaphor.  QR is, just like them, facing an inevitable extinction.

They are also responsible for the RIP QR ad shown in this post.

The ad is published two large Belgian newspapers De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws.

Created by Publicis Belgium

Thank you Publicis for this AMAZING work!

Campaign Name : The end of QR
Title of Print Ad : The end of QR
Advertiser/Client : kooaba
Product/Service : Shortcut
Date of First Appearance : 25/04/2012
Name of Publication : De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws
Country : Belgium
Approx number of Insertions : 3

Agency : Publicis Brussels
Creative Directors : Paul Servaes /Alain Janssens
Associate Creative Directors : Geert De Rocker/Tom Berth
Copywriter : Kwint De Meyer
Art Director : Daniel Van den Broucke
Art Work : Coline Le Houezec
Digital Services Director : Nadia Dafir
Web Production : Bureau347
DTP : Frederic Dupont / Jens Wolfs
Print Production : Marleen Hemeleers

April 20, 2012 at 09:50 AM by Tom | 1 Comment

RIP QR (1994-2012)


Holding on to the old seems to be a natural characteristic of  human beings but truth must be said, it’s only by innovation that our world will become a better place. Sometimes you just have to move on.

QR served its purpose of controlling auto-parts for Toyota. It moved its way up to become a connector to mobile and it has proven to ad value for that use-case. For that we are QR grateful, but innovation will replace what has become old, without any emotion, leaving its predecessor in the hands of a few collectors or hobbyists.

We do not mean harm and we honestly hope QR will get its well deserved respect in the future.

By this tribute, we show our gratitude.

QR, may you rest in peace
1994 – 2012

You have done well.

 

Posted in Other Stuff

April 18, 2012 at 09:33 AM by Tom | 0 Comments

Are you the type that cuts out articles? Do yourself a favor and start using Shortcut instead!


You are reading, lets say, the New York Post and you want to remember an article. What do you do?

Most of you will pick up your scissors, cut out the article and put it somewhere. Chances are big it will disappear on a pile of other articles never to be found again until you clean up your mess and throw it away. Sounds familiar?

Alternatively you could choose to use Shortcut. Simply scan a page and store the original version in Evernote. There you can organize it, tag it and find it. Never again you need to cut out something from a newspaper or magazine. Well, there is one reason we can think of and that is when you want to frame it and hang it on your wall!

Shortcut is not only for archiving articles. It does a lot more. You can share articles via email. You can discuss the content with other readers and you can quickly surf to websites mentioned on the page! Shortcut works on over 1,000 perodicals. Check here to find out which ones.

Posted in Other Stuff

April 13, 2012 at 11:20 AM by Tom | 0 Comments

Collect and organize recipes in your personal digital cook book using kooaba Shortcut



Shortcut has a very vivid and big user-group amongst people that love to cook and collect & organize their favorite recipes. We must confess that using Shortcut for that purpose really works out extremely well. Let us explain why.

For the ones unknown with Shortcut, here is a brief description. It’s an app for your smartphone to combine your offline reader experience with digital advantages such as archiving the original documents, sharing articles via social media and discussing topics with other readers.

And especially that archiving part is what people do with recipes. Here’s how you get the best out of it combining Shortcut with Evernote.

1) Install Shortcut and connect with Evernote.

Install the free Shortcut app on your phone and make sure you are connected with your Evernote account via the settings. Don’t worry, it’s all free and very simple. If you do not have an Evernote account, get one first.

2) Find your recipes in kooaba activated magazines

Now, pick up one of the cooking magazines that is interactive with kooaba. For example here in Switserland we have Betty Bossi, Kochen and Coop Zeitung. Every time you see a recipe that you like, scan it with Shortcut and store it in Evernote. The high quality PDF  of that page now is available in Evernote. Repeat this simple process every time you find a recipe and your digital cook book will start to fill up.

3) Organize your recipes

Now, it is time to start organizing your recipes to simply find the right recipe amongst hundreds or thousands of recipes (last step) when you need it. Open up your Evernote account on your computer (or iPad) and click on all the new (and un-organized) recipes. The trick of this all is to wisely tag your recipes.

Give your recipe a name and some tags with all sorts of characteristics of the meal, for example:

  • Asian
  • Pasta
  • Spicy
  • Vegi
  • Lemon Grass
  • Summer
  • Lunch
  • 15-30 minutes

4) Search for the perfect meal at the right time

And now, whenever you are in the kitchen, looking in your fridge, wondering what you could make within 15 minutes that fits your mood. Simply open Evernote on your iPad, Computer or Smartphone when you are – for example – in the kitchen. Type in some key words such as Summer, Lunch, Asian, Fish and/or Pasta and the recipes will show up that match your criteria.

Of course, another smart way is to search by ingredients. Just see what you can cook with with the stuff you have in your house.

Enjoy your meal :)

Posted in Other Stuff

April 12, 2012 at 06:02 PM by Till | 2 Comments

Why we think the Facebook and Instagram deal is awesome


On Monday the news spread like a shockwave through the intertubes: Facebook to acquire Instagram. Not only that – but with a price tag of 1 Billion USD. The talk of the town. Disappointment with (some) Apple fans – first Instagram cheated on its loyal iOS following by offering an Android version! And now the sellout to Facebook!

Among the more balanced commentaries we liked Om Malik’s analysis. And Robert Scoble’s commentaries are to the point as well. Of course there was the danger of competition for Facebook. Of course there was probably a bidding war going on. But first and foremost it’s a manifestation of how important visual data has become to web and mobile. Quoting a great analysis carried out by Jonathan Good: there are now more than 100 billion photos created yearly, with a strongly growing trend. We take 4 times as many photos as 10 years ago. And 200 million of them are uploaded to Facebook – per day! Naturally others have noticed and covered this trend as well, a particularly nice post is the one by Erika Ogg at Gigaom.

What does all of that have to do with kooaba?

While the data that is shared on the Internet is clearly moving from text to visual (photos and videos), the tools to handle these visual data lag behind. It is simply not as easily possible to analyze the contents of an image on a semantic level as it is to analyze a text document. (And even this is pretty hard, too.)

Why should Facebook care? Or Instagram? Because this gap between image creation and analysis inhibits them from making money off that data. Facebook’s business model is advertising. Instagram didn’t have any business model (yet). Of course they could use advertising as well. But: we know that advertising works best when it is contextual to the content. If the content is an image you can’t analyze, you got a problem.

Observing and predicting these trends (smartphones, digital imagery) early on was the leap of faith kooaba was founded on in 2006. Our mission is to “connect images to information”. Anywhere where a picture is taken, uploaded, or processed. Visual recognition platforms will allow the established advertising business model of the Internet to stick around. On mobile, but also on the desktop. We build the technology for that. Of course, much still needs to be done to provide useful information for any image. A daunting pile of work in fact. But that’s what drives us every day.

Why should you care?

Trying Grandpa's new iPad

While handling large amounts of visual data is certainly becoming challenge for the large Web-platforms such as Facebook, a similar trend can be observed on your personal computing devices (smartphone, tablet, desktop). The number of pictures you take is ever increasing. Digital cameras have been around for only 10-15 years. Smartphones with decent cameras even only 5 years. Suppose you are 30 now, imagine how many pictures you will have collected by the time you retire. You want to show your grandson that special picture of his at the time 5-year old mother your paris trip of 2012? Good luck with finding it! You remember you took a picture of that great bottle of Whisky in Scotland in 2020? Keep digging!

In fact, our product Déjà Vu is a very first step towards solving this problem for you. It is powered by the same kind of visual recognition platform that could in the future label any picture that’s generated in the world.

Last but not least, visual recognition could also benefit Instagram directly, as observed by others as well.

In short: we are pretty excited about the Instagram acquisition. Things start to fall in place. Time to roll up our sleeves and provide the tools needed for the future.

Page 1 of 2112345...1020...Last »

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Recent Comments

    • Bart Nelis: So … QR code has error correction built in … ( check http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
    • nic: Great post. If they are really going to be concerned about that interpreting all their images, I hope that means...
    • Tom: It also works with the key board arrows…
    • Nyall Cook: All you need is a webcam and a can of Suremen
    • Robert: thanks SO MUCH for using readable contrast on your website! (Although contrast in this comment box is a bit...