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First a confession is in order – I’m not a big fan of cell phone cameras. In the corporate world, they are sometimes banned or considered a nuisance. In talking around the water cooler, cell phone cameras are terrific for documenting car accidents, especially when you aren’t at fault. However an exciting use for cell phone cameras has emerged from Europe – augmented reality. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of augmented reality, think of the Terminator movies. When the robot looks at a person, scene or object, there is a set of facts or augmented information presented as a layer on top of the picture. 
For fighter pilots, the heads up display while looking forward out of the canopy is another good example of augmented reality.
The idea that you can point your cell phone camera at the scene in front of you and immediately through a “reality” browser see overlays of information about shops, restaurants and other facts is exciting and potentially game-changing for tourism, advertising, and mobile browsing in general. Using the location-based services for cell phones, especially smartphones with built in GPS features, the software creates a “layer” of information on top of the picture. In fact, the company, sprxmobile, driving this capability has a product called Layar that enables real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of a cell phone. Their web site lists 87 available layers in many verticals including real estate, healthcare, transportation, tourism, entertainment, weather, schools and universities, and local search and directory services. Today, the new software is limited to the Android operating system used in Google-oriented cell phones, but hopefully the idea will grab mainstream attention and move to other major smartphone operating systems.
Clearly, adding this reality layer service to browsers has broad applications beyond cell phones, however there are immediate applications for mobile users that come to mind. Standing in front of a house for sale, pointing the camera at the home and seeing the price, number of bedrooms, etc. would be great. Even better would be the ability to compare augmented information from a snapshot of a home up the street. The application could capture the location based information from the cell phone with the picture and enhance the search experience. Think about the impact of digital photography to grab GPS coordinates for adding information automatically or posting location information to Flickr, for example.
Augmented reality may be the “killer” application for smartphones beyond the obvious contact and calendar management. The ability to add the value of layers of actionable information to where you are immediately located could revolutionize personal computing as well. The ease of adding this type of service to a browser demonstrates the power of both web services and mash-ups. My hope would be that it doesn’t simply add more advertising to our world, but ease traveling, shopping, navigating universities and large sporting venues and bring us actionable information in real time. It is an exciting technology that needs to be nurtured and adopted for mainstream cell phones.
In this lingering recession, everyone is looking for new ways to better position themselves to compete and grow revenue. A lower level of consumer and business spending will require efficiency, careful optimization and leverage of low cost assets and methods. It’s time to get into shape! Here are 6 ways to revamp and strengthen your web sites and infrastructure on a modest budget:
Revamp your web strategy for a web 2.0+ world.
The internet world has dramatically changed in the last 3-4 years. Social networks, user communities, user generated content, twitter, the iPhone and other mobile devices, GPS and location aware devices and the other components of Web 2.0 completely altered the way businesses and users communicate and transact online. Each of the Web 2.0 components come with their own set of opportunities and challenges. They provide new channels that enable communication at a fraction of the cost while demanding a new approach to openness, transparency and interactivity. Regulatory, security and governance concerns are not always easy to address. Chart a path in these new waters by rethinking your Web Strategy and redefine the role that the web and other digital channels will play in the company’s future and put a plan in place for its execution.
Implement a social media strategy and measure its value
Social media tools are a great way to build honest online relationship with customers and other audiences. Doing it right is not always easy. A social media strategy will force you to think through and define where to be and what is to be communicated, set the tone and nature of interactions, set guidelines on how to respond to negative feedback, factor in legal and regulatory implications, address intellectual property and security issues and many other aspects need to be thought through. In addition, measuring the impact of these activities is not always easy. Building a model that can assess and provide value guidelines is very important.
Reduce costs by Leveraging open source and Cloud web infrastructure components
We have a client who recently came to us asking advice after a planned $3M Oracle e-business implementation turned into a projected $15M 3 year project. We recommended they look at OfBiz and other open source e-commerce frameworks. Open source enterprise level software , SaaS and Cloud Computing have matured to the level that major organizations are leveraging these low cost scalable solutions to build a robust infrastructure that can replace big investments in hardware, software licenses and data centers.
Take control of your content – Deploy a Content Management Solution
For many companies, fresh content is key to repeat visits. As sites scale, managing and maintaining them becomes an expensive and difficult task often dependent on IT or external resources. Content Management Systems (CMS) provide business users with the ability to modify and update sites and global structures that make graphical changes easy to implement. They also provide ability to segment users, add personalization and social features such as Blogs and community without the need for additional software and services.
User Experience Redesign
If your website has not gone through a redesign in the last 3 years, chances are that it looks dated. What looks fresh and relevant changes all the time and the key in the last few years has been incorporation of user engagement and interactivity, quality content that speaks more directly to the users, content targeting and using sites as relationship building tools rather than one way communication streams. Sites need to add rich content, video and mobile support as well as dynamic interfaces. All these changes contribute substantially to improved website ROI
Optimize sites for goals and conversion
It’s crucial that every marketing and search dollar is well spent. To do this, websites need strong web analytics so that sites can be continuously optimized to maximize conversion and be careful to avoid the main pitfalls. Web analytics capability allows businesses to test new ideas, layouts and promotions and to quickly refine them to drive sales and traffic as well as optimize search and marketing spend. With Google analytics and other low costs services, setting great analytics does not have to mean big bucks.
