This is the sort of stuff we’ve been seeing in high-tech movie scenes since the late 90’s, but it’s finally becoming realistic at a consumer level thanks to devices such as the iPhone which have built in GPS, camera, accelerometer, and magnetometer (so they know where you are, what you’re looking at, from what direction, etc)…

What this means is that we’re starting to see really functional crossovers between real, physical environments, and virtual ones.

I can’t wait to see this start to emerge in the event space.

This could include things like cameras in a venue that automatically recognise known audience members, and greet them on screen by name, or it could extend to allowing the presenter to show a physical document on screen via a camera, and then ‘touch’ a word in the document to ‘hotlink’ it to a PowerPoint presentation or video.

There are a lot of opportunities to showcase the technologies in events which will ‘wow’ the audiences, but I think we will start to see some real, functional purposes starting to emerge over the next few years.

For now, here are a couple of good examples of what’s possible outside the event world -

petitinvention blog: Future of Internet Search

‘petitinvention‘ discusses a concept towards the ‘future of mobile search’ on their blog – these graphics are great concept renders of what is now possible with a device like the iPhone…

BMW UK – Print out a special square and move it around your desk in front of your web-cam to control a BMW Z4 on your computer screen. GE Money has build something similar, sending the visual ‘key’ to clients by mail as marketing collateral – an interesting way to compel customers to visit their website.

It seems like Google Earth and Maps are playing a huge part in changing this perception. It’s now becoming pretty common for presenters and content producers to incorporate Google Earth ‘fly-throughs’ either as live demos, or as canned screen captures.

I’ve recently come across an Australian company called Pixelcase, which produces similar results using a Flash-based front end, which makes sense for compatibility.

And it turns out that QuickTime VR still exists, and there are a bunch of tools you can use to create VR shots, including software and hardware-based systems.

Pixelcase Photo from AMP Building

We’ve already seen the guys at pptPlex working on using much the same 3D camera technology to control PowerPoint – and I’m sure that it’s just a matter of time before great things happen in this space – I could imagine some really neat interaction with a system like Dataton Watchout. We’ll see…

More information about the Project Natal platform on the XBox website.

Jack Morton released their new Virtual Events platform recently, which seems to loosely resemble Second Life, but built as a virtual ‘convention centre’ of sorts. This is an interesting idea – we’ve already seen companies taking advantage of Second Life itself to differentiate their online ‘events’ from the now-traditional webcast/webinar platform, so it makes some sense that a large player like Jack’s have come up with their own solution in-a-box.

GPJ’s Diretor of Digital Experience in the UK, Kevin Aires has been talking a lot about virtual events lately. I think it’s clear that the big players have all seen both the threat that virtual/online poses to live events (to a limited extent) but also the opportunities attached. Interesting times.

Jack Morton Virtual Experience Platform

Apimac Timer Interface

Apimac makes a great presentation timer for Mac. It’s freeware, and supports displaying the current time, count-down, or a stop-watch. The timer has a great, simple full-screen mode which looks excellent for presenter fold-back or confidence monitors. Tip: press the space bar in full-screen mode to start or pause the timer.

Another interesting presentation service that uses Twitter to interact with your audience is Visible Tweets, which is a free web-based service that displays tweets from a specific user, or with a specific tag using stylish Flash transitions… would look very neat on LCD displays around a conference venue.

Visible Tweets using 'Rotation' effect

The pptPlex team has posted about experiments interacting with pptPlex using a 3D camera and a Wii controller – this really ‘haptic’ approach to presentations is so natural and surely represents the goal for a progression from the standard remote slide advance button and laser pointer.

They’ve most recently been testing pptPlex in combination with the touch-screen capabilities of Windows 7. If used in combination with a multitouch display or touch-sensitive projection screen sensors, this will be really exciting stuff for live presentations.

Touch screen demo (via pptPlex Website)

The idea of taking one ‘slide’ (or canvas), and inserting a whole load of content in different areas, linked together with visual elements, and then ‘zooming in’ to the content you’re talking about is a really cool way to give some visual meaning to your presentation.

pptPlex Demo Zoomed out

pptPlex zoomed into a slide

pptPlex zoomed into details

There are a few ways of achieving the effect – online presentation software ‘Prezi’ offers both free and paid services, which allow you to build presentations incorporating all the usual elements – text, graphics, and video.

There’s also a PowerPoint 2007 add-in called pptPlex which was originally designed with multitouch interfaces in mind – this idea is going to be big in a few years when multitouch becomes accessible for projection screens.

And finally, if you’re savvy with Flash or Director, or even something like Silverlight, you should easily be able to create a similar effect without the need for third-party software.

Links:
pptPlex Add-on for PowerPoint 2007

Prezi zooming presentation editor

A good Prezi demo video

This is especially useful for images with a white-background, which you want to insert into a presentation that uses a coloured, gradient, or image background.

In PowerPoint 2007, the same feature exists, but it’s a little difficult to find.

Click once on an image in your presentation to select it. A new toolbar will become available on the ribbon called ‘Format’. Select the ‘Format’ toolbar and click on ‘Recolor’. At the end of the ‘recolor’ menu, you will see the ‘Set transparent colour…’ option.

PowerPoint 2007: Set transparent color

Here’s a neat way to use these new image effects to create a glossy 3D look for objects in PowerPoint.

1. Create a gradient background with a solid dark colour at the top, and a lighter gradient below the centre – I have used a 4 step gradient to do this:

Gradient Background

2. Insert an image, and a text box, and align the base of each object on the same plane, just below the centre – it’s easiest to align the objects using a drawing guide:

Insert Objects

3. Select the image, and from the ‘Format’ tab in the ribbon bar, choose ‘Reflected Rounded Rectangle’, which should be the 5th preset look in the menu:

Image Effects: Reflected Rounded Rectangle

4. Select the text box, and choose ‘Half Reflection, touching’ from the ‘Text Effects’ menu in the ‘Format’ tab:

Text Effect: Half Reflection, touching

5. Your finished slide should look something like this:

Glossy 3D Slide Example

6. You can create ‘depth of field’ effects by making objects smaller, and moving them upwards, closer to the vertical centre – using a darker shade of colour for text objects also helps to add to the ‘depth of field’ effect:

PowerPoint 3D Depth of Field Text Effect