Microsoft's Kodu Turns Programming Into a Kid-Friendly Creative Medium

Thanks Next Great Thing for this on microsofts' KODU. This kind of thinking would do well applied to adults!

Do you think HTML is short for Hotmail? Is Java something you drink in the morning? A computer-savvy kid would instantly recognize these as programming languages. So while we have long joked that kids and adults speak different languages, thanks to computers this is becoming quite literally true. Now, a new programming language from Microsoft will make these even more of a reality, deepening the “digital divide” and preparing our kids for the Information Age.

The new language, called Kodu, is made specifically for creating games and is designed for kids. The language is simple and entirely icon-based. Kids program using the Xbox and use the game controller for input. The Kodu language is designed specifically for game development, and programs are expressed in physical terms, using concepts like vision, hearing, and time to control character behavior. While not as general-purpose as classical programming languages, Kodu can express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct, and intuitive manner.

So the idea is simple; kids can create their own game, play it, and even distribute it to the Xbox live community. In this way, Microsoft is looking to further “programming as a creative medium.” So just as the “creative class” could create their own blog or avatar, now they can program a game and share it with the community.

You can compare this Microsoft move to what Apple did with the desktop and then the iPhone. They basically turned widgets into giant icons, simplifying the idea that the web could fuel lots of individualized utilities. Thanks to computers and phones—and the quickening pace of our lives—we are becoming an increasingly visual culture. The graphically-driven interface of Kodu just reinforces this.

The implications of this and similar efforts will be quite remarkable. Kids today are growing up in a world where they have complete control over their media and experiences with it. As previous generations witnessed the release of the CD, the boom of the Internet, or the emergence of mobile phones, this generation is actually taking part in it; they are protagonists, the programmers of progress. They are learning the tools they will need to further shape the future, to craft and direct our increasingly digitized world.

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The microsoft research post on Kodu: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

Kodu

Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.

Programming as a Creative Medium

The core of the Kodu project is the programming user interface. The language is simple and entirely icon-based. Programs are composed of pages, which are broken down into rules, which are further divided into conditions and actions. Conditions are evaluated simultaneously.

The Kodu language is designed specifically for game development and provides specialized primitives derived from gaming scenarios. Programs are expressed in physical terms, using concepts like vision, hearing, and time to control character behavior. While not as general-purpose as classical programming languages, Kodu can express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct, and intuitive manner.

Screen Shots

(Click to open a larger image a new window.)

Game load / community screen.

"Physical" sensors are used as rule input.

Yes, we have a turtle.

Stick can't walk but he packs a wallop.

Key Features

Kodu provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games.

• High-level language incorporates real-world primitives: collision, color, vision
• Uses Xbox 360 Game Controller for input — no keyboard required
• Runs on XBox 360 and PC
• Interactive terrain editor
• Bridge and path builder
• Terrain editor - create worlds of arbitrary shape and size
• 20 different characters with different abilities

Great use of Facebook Connect

Facebook connect as the means to automate personalisation and context of a digital experience: http://www.prototype-experience.com/

Found via this post from Jeremiah Owyang. Thanks

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Remember early Jib Jab cartoons where you’d manually upload your own photo and that of your friends? Now, it’s much easier with just a few clicks to Facebook Connect.

Last week, I had dinner with Chris Pan (linkedin, twitter), Head of Brand Solutions at Facebook, who pointed me to a new social interactive marketing advertisement for a video game called “Prototype”. Upon accessing the site, Prototype Experience, (try it for yourself) you’ll be prompted to login with your Facebook account. After a rather lengthy loading period (it’s worth it, hang tight) you’ll watch a short teaser trailer.

This isn’t a normal trailer, as it uses your own social information in Facebook from your profile picture, your profile information, and photos from your friends. Here’s what I saw, see screenshots below.

What’s going on here? This is an example of more contextual ads based off social profiles, which is a trend as you can see my coverage of VW’s Twitter and Facebook campaign). These are early examples of the era of Social Context, where content, media, and ads will be personalized in the future based off your social information, learn more about this in the future of the social web.

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User Experience: Screenshot Storyline
Here’s the blow by blow, with my thoughts.
Above Image: First, users are encouraged to login with Facebook Connect –a few clicks. If you’re already logged into Facebook, it’s just a few clicks –all without entering a password. Expect more people to interact as there’s less commitment and up front investment than finding photos and uploading them –Facebook already has the inventory you need.

Above Image: Promo video includes my profile pictures –making things a bit more interesting and personalized. As this evolves, imagine how your face and profile info will populate other experiences and content –we’re instinctively drawn to look at ourselves.

Above Image: “Is that me?” Yes it is, this promo video includes information from my profile –I’m right in the game. In consideration of my friends, I didn’t include their photos –which you’ll see in your own trailer video. Expect future ads where friends ‘promote’ or even sponsor content –some opt-in, some not.

Above Image: Participants are ‘hooked’ into the registration form in order to win in the sweetstakes, a good example of gathering leads from an engaged audience. Facebook isn’t a great way to generate leads, while you can get users to be ‘fans’ of your Facebook page, getting their true identity and email is often limited –as dictated by their Terms of Service.

Above Image: The participants are encouraged to share the campaign with their Facebook or Twitter friends, thus staring a “Viral Loop”. It spreads.

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Key Takeaways

• This is clearly a trend, expect many interactive and digital agencies to offer this social campaign to their clients.
• Consumers will initially ‘freak out’ and be concerned that big brother is watching them –then will accept this as mainstream media over the next few years.
• At some point, nearly every campaign will have social content influencing the content –hitting a saturation point that disinterests users
• Expect site wide Facebook Connect initiatives to happen, allowing all of the media, content, and ads to be socially contextual. Expect media sites and eCommerce sites to launch this first.
• Expect recommended products and ads to appear from your friends and those connected to you in your social network.

Be more human....pleeeeease

Thanks a bunch to FutureLab and David Armano for this post. Lets never forget to be ourselves first and foremost.

How to Be More Human

This morning a couple of things came together for me. The first, was that I unfollowed a company/individual on Twitter because the volume they were producing felt automated and not human even if there were college interns manually updating it (or maybe just a script). It just didn't feel right. The second was reviewing a deck where it talked about the need for "being human" on the social web.

But it didn't get into how exactly, and that's where my gears started turning. Right now the biggest challenge to being successful on the social web is through high quality micro-interactions with high quality human beings. But organizations will find this difficult to embrace. The industrial revolution has taught us to mass produce and move away from human dependency. ATM's have replaced the need for that local bank teller in most places and call centers are known as cost centers, so companies face a bit of a problem here. But if they can figure out a way to make the numbers work, organizations who put a human face to themselves stand to become the industry leaders in a space that's still in it's early phases. Here's a few ways to be "more human".

Don't Automate
Automated interactions are done by machines and people know it. Right now, we're flocking to the social web because we can get a personal touch that cannot be gotten elsewhere. While the "masses" deal with terrible automated phone services etc, we feel privileged to be able to interact with the real people behind an organization. This presents scaling issues to the organization, but the average customer we just like it and will come back for more.

Don't Strive For Perfection
People aren't perfect, and that's expected in the social web. In fact, the more perfectly something is written, produced, or executed—the more suspicious it becomes. Communication and interactions on the social web should be similar to those in real life. Imperfect, messy, spontaneous, and occasionally personal. Zappos understands this well. After a conversation with one of their representatives from their call center, we received a handwritten note that referenced something personal that was discussed during the call. You don't get more human than that.

Talk Back
In a scene from "I Am Legend" Will Smith talks to a mannequin to try to emulate human contact. Of course this fall short and it's exactly the same dynamic that exists on the Web when organizations refuse to talk back to the people who they want to talk to. The substitute doesn't work and all that's left is something that looks alive from a distant, but really isn't.

Talk Like A Human
People can spot robots, artificial intelligence and a fake a mile away. Talking like your legal team, your PR agency or a computer will get you unfollowed, unfriended or ignored. If we wanted to hear from machines, robots or legal eagles, we'd watch more advertising or interact with your organizations mainstream touch points. We're on the social web because we want to connect with other human beings and we want them to act like them. Being human means talking like a human. Conversational style trumps dictation because human beings only dictate when we're in very specific situations. If people walked around all day dictating as opposed to being engaged in human conversations, it would come across as very odd. Interestingly enough, many organizations don't have people who know how to communicate like this. In the coming years, you may have to find some.

Avoid Artificial Additives & Preservatives
Until someone invents the perfect android, there's not much that's artificial about being a human being—we make mistakes, are fragile and the good ones know when to say "sorry" and try harder. Anything else comes across as artificial and less than human. Being more human on the social web means doing all of these things because it's likely that you'll make mistakes and that's part of the process. It's OK, because you'll be interacting with other humans who also make them. An artificial presence is unlikely to succeed because it will feel too much like the way your organization presents itself traditionally, and again—that's not why your customers are engaging on networks. They want a more human approach.


Original post found here

Mobile -- the perfect direct medium?

Thanks IDM Institute

Robert Thurner M IDM, Commercial Director of mobile agency Incentivated, explores how mobiles could revolutionise direct marketing. The first mobile phones were nicknamed ‘bricks’ because they were huge and unwieldy, with big handsets attached to briefcase-sized battery packs.

But now, the latest mobiles are barely bigger than a credit card, and the mobile has become the one item that the majority of us say we cannot do without – and the first item we would grab if our houses were on fire.

Our mobiles are always on us, and usually on. That makes mobile the perfect medium for marketers.

Since the mid 1990s, the reduction in size and cost of mobile phone handsets has led to penetration levels of almost 90% across Europe.

According to statistics from Ofcom, by the end of 2007, there were almost 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK, an increase of 3.7 million connections since the end of 2006. The total number of mobile connections increased by 48 per cent in the five years from 2002.

Text explosion

In the UK, nearly 60 billion text messages were sent in 2007 -- an increase of 36 per cent since 2006 and up by 234 per cent since 2002, when UK mobile users sent 17 billion texts. The average mobile phone user sent 67 texts per month from each mobile, compared to 53 texts per month in 2006.

The majority of children have access to the internet and most have a mobile phone but they use them in different ways. Boys aged eight to 11 are twice as likely to use the internet every day than girls of the same age (45 per cent compared to 22 per cent).

However, girls aged 12 to 15 are more likely to use a mobile phone than boys of the same age (74 per cent compared to 65 per cent).

Instant messaging is more popular than email among children, with 62 per cent of 12 to 15 year old sending an instant message, compared with 43 per cent of them sending an email. Adults prefer to email – 80 per cent of adults sent an email compared to 34 per cent who used instant messaging.

Is email failing?

Yet according to the IAB, only 25% of emails are opened: the remainder are either filtered out by anti-spam and anti-virus software, or get deleted. By contrast, 95% of SMS are opened, reflecting the expectation by consumers that those contacting them by text have their consent to do so.

Long may this practice continue!

The mobile is a highly personal device, and brands should earn the right to be there by ensuring customers opt-in to receive branding or customer service messages. The mobile industry has established best practice guidelines which should be followed closely.

The ubiquity of the mobile phone has led to a revolution in mobile interactivity. For organisations in general and marketers in particular, it offers the chance to interact with their customers efficiently and regardless of place or time.

Mobile exciting medium

That creates exciting new opportunities in Mobile Marketing (for customer acquisition), Mobile Customer Service (for customer retention, CRM and loyalty) and Mobile Commerce (for transaction purposes).

For direct marketers, the benefits should be obvious. The mobile phone is the only media that consumers will have with them at all times; it is a superb channel for interactivity, providing an instant response path via voice call, SMS or engagement with a WAPsite (mobile internet site).

Personalised, social, measurable

Mobile is a highly personalised communication channel: one handset has only one user, which makes mobile a powerful targeting medium.

And, for many users, it is a social medium, one which allows files, photos, videos, websites and music to be shared.

Plus it can be measured, and it works extremely well in partnership with other marketing media.

Used responsibly, and with a message which makes the most of the medium and is properly targeted, mobile can deliver very impressive results.

Below, I’m going to discuss a couple of examples of how mobile can be used for direct marketing.

Bookstart free books
Booktrust, the independent charity that encourages people to read, used mobile as part of its latest Bookstart campaign to distribute 80,000 free books to parents of young children.

A DRTV campaign was developed by Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw in partnership with mobile agency Incentivated. Media planning was by Trinity Communications and media buying by Manning Gottlieb OMD.

The TV campaign delivered 1,236 TV spots throughout the day across 34 terrestrial and digital channels for one month. The Bookstart TV ads featured a mobile call-to-action for viewers to request a free book by texting BOOK, their home number and postcode to 80800.

View the Bookstart DRTV.

Bookstart’s target audience of parents and carers were encouraged to respond to the ads by texting free from their mobiles. The book was then sent, post free.

Text messaging was chosen as the sole response mechanism for ordering books because Trinity Communications’ research established that the primary audience had limited online access but high mobile telephone ownership.

Strong response

The campaign generated 79,415 texts, which represents 8 per cent of the estimated one million UK households with children aged three and four. Each TV ad generated, on average, 64 texts.

This campaign demonstrates that mobile can provide an immediate response mechanism for advertising, whether using above or below the line channels, while offering brands true accountability.

Text messages are time and date stamped, which means we were able to correlate responses with the TV spots broadcast.

Terminate a mate
Virgin 1 was looking for a way to promote the UK launch of the TV series ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’.

The series is based on the Terminator movie trilogy. In the US, it was a smash hit, pulling in over 18 million viewers and becoming the highest-rated scripted show on Fox for eight years.

For the UK launch in February 2008, Incentivated and digital agency 20:20 created a ground-breaking viral campaign which used location-based mobile technology and merged in user-input names and mobile numbers to create a personalised video – we believe this was the first time this has ever been done.

A 10-day teaser campaign using TV, outdoor, print, viral and ambient marketing drove people to www.terminate-a-mate.com and www.terminate-a-mate.mobi, where they could enter a friend's name and mobile details.

Personalised mobile video

A specially created personalised video simulating a Terminator hacking into their mobile phone to locate them and hunt them down was then sent.

We made sure there were mechanisms in place to protect privacy and defuse concerns over mobiles being used to track people. Participants who entered details of a friend’s mobile also had to give their own phone number, and an SMS message checking their details was sent. The Termination only went ahead if the sender confirmed they wanted it to.

Effectively, the sender ‘opts in’ their target to receive the geo-coded message.

Personal protection

Once a site visitor inputs a friend's mobile number to target them for “termination,” the friend is then sent an SMS warning them that Terminators are nearby. If they reply and give permission for their location to be shared with the network, they receive a link to a made-for-mobile video. The recipient's current location is highlighted within the video via an integrated mobile map in real time.

Mobile numbers are only used for the purposes of the promotion, and users are assured that their details will not be kept on file for future marketing.

A sample of the Terminate-a-Mate mobile video can be viewed on YouTube

Conclusion
Mobile can deliver enormous impact, and works best when integrated with other media. It is the only truly personal communications channel there is, which is both an advantage and a potential disadvantage.

The advantage is that people are always contactable and can respond instantly – assuming you deliver a compelling, relevant and timely marketing message. The disadvantage is that consumers can see mobile marketing messages as extremely intrusive.

It is up to marketers and their advisers to make sure that they are using mobile properly and effectively.

Robert Thurner M IDM is Commercial Director of Incentivated, and will be delivering the mobile session at the IDM Academy at ad:tech on September 24.

He also presents on mobile at the IDM Diploma and CPD courses at the IDM in Teddington.

Hello John, we know all about you

Segmentation and personalisation seems par for the course in email marketing now - but don't overdo it. It seems that excessive personalisation can create a negative, Big Brother-ish style experience if that personalisation is irrelevant to the email contact. See the article at http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2008/07/can-you-have-too-much-personalization.html