Congratulations OldSpice Guy. Apparently you won The Game.

“According to Japanese trade paper Nikkei (via Andriasang), McDonalds will indeed soon be using the DS to train their part-time employees in Japan, using a proprietary program called “eSmart” that they’re developing themselves. This will mean installing around two DS handhelds in every McDonalds store in the country, which apparently totals 3,700 locations as of the end of February — meaning as many as 7,400 DS handhelds McDonalds is about to purchase.”

The thing is…this is smart.  The main concern of many businesses right now is how to cut costs.

“The total cost for this initiative (excluding the cost of developing the eSmart program) is said to come out to around 200 million yen ($2.2 million). But McDonalds expects the DS training system to save money by cutting training time by half compared to traditional methods”

Given the age of most new McDonald’s employees, they will be very familiar with this gaming device.  The Nintendo DS is popular in U.S. but it’s CRAZY popular in Japan. I almost tagged this post with Pop Up Lifestyle™ because it really meets these kids “where they are.”  But it really is a great example of Virtual Forest™, which is all about “Where the virtual world meets the actual.”  With this wave of new employees entering the job world…there might be many ways of training that utilizes their innate web and gaming savvy.

Is Google Street View the new barrio brick wall? Let me expand…

Throughout history individuals have left their mark, quite literally, on the walls and streets of their cities. Whether it is sprawled on the subway cars of New York, the Catacombs of Rome, or the bathroom of your local quickie mart,  individuals have long used public space to make their opinions and selves heard and seen.

In our increasingly digital world, applications like Google Maps and Street View are ripe ground for expression, and have the advantage of being able to be viewed by over 1 billion persons, and growing.
In the last few days I have stumbled upon several examples of people using Google Street view as a canvas. I would assume that if Google were to start this project from scratch, we would see a lot more graffiti on the digital urban landscape.

As it stands now, there were a few innovators who were able to make a “permanent” mark on the Google streets, by setting up installations and scenes that were intended to be captured by Google’s cameras as they slowly proceeded up and down local avenues, steadily inching towards the goal of recording every street in America.
The best example of this that I have found is explored in the exhibition,” Manipulating Reality”.
Regina, author of “We Make Money Not Art” blog, had this to say about the exhibit, “The worst way to kick off a new year for an art blogger is to see an exhibition so good you’re left wondering if the rest of the year won’t be a 12-month letdown”

Here is brief description of the show from her blog:
With the complicity of both the inhabitants of Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh and Google Street View, artists Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett staged collective performances and actions that took place just as the Google Car was driving through the neighborhood: a 17th-century sword fight, a lady escaping through the window using bed linen, a gigantic chicken, a parade with a brass band and majorettes, the lab of the inventor of a laser that makes people fall in love, etc. The images that document the events have become an integral part of the Google image archive.

Deeper issues explored in this exhibit include; media driven culture, globalization, and the notion of visual truth (is seeing still believing?).
It is interesting to think of what sort of individuals, groups, and corporations might conspire, for better or worse, to manipulate the digital record in such ways. I think of the Beijing Olympics and their effort to literally cover up blighted areas of the city.
Will popular locals become the staging grounds for activist groups and NGO’s to leave a permanent record of their views and or promote their cause? Will corporations and governments make efforts to boost their image or spread their brand through this medium? Will brand logos show up in yards, much like they showed up on people’s foreheads a few years back? Will individuals use this to promote themselves, their personal beliefs, businesses etc.?
I would love to hear some feedback on this one.
In what ways can you envision this media (medium) being used and abused?

So China will become a focus market for cutting edge consumer technology.

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the short lived Sci-Fi television show “Firefly,” but it’s set way in the future and apparently humanity’s universal culture is Chinese. They curse in Chinese, as it is the universal language, and Chinese iconography is everywhere. So this build up, this culmination that seems to be leading up to a broader acceptance and recognition of Chinese Culture and China in general (rather than just lumping it together with Japan, Korea and Vietnam as Asian as many Americans are prone to do) could be the start of a complete makeover of the world as we know it. Probably not as extreme as a total cultural overhaul as far as we in the states are concerned, but never-the-less important to our way of life since our world is feeling the effect of it’s virtual counterpart to a greater extent everyday

To be sure, I’ll keep one eye on the East in the next few years, as I think things are just starting to get exciting.

What I find really interesting is we seem to be edging closer and closer to everything in digital formats. I myself still find digital copies of films to be bizarre, because I like having them all lined up on the shelves at home. But as our virtual world merges more and more with our physical, we’re going to keep seeing these things happen. People are slowly surrendering real world objects and tasks to virtual spaces and ease of use. And who knows where it will keep going? This is just one example, and aside from it being a wonderful bargain, all I have to say is a short message to people who have painstakingly hunted down each printed copy. Ouch.

Our Google Overlords are turning their sights squarely on the local ad market, with plans to promote its local business listings in storefronts around the U.S.

“Stickers bearing Google’s logo and a QR code have been distributed to 100,000 of the most popular businesses in Google’s Local Business Center database, and starting this week consumers will be able to use code-scanning applications on modern phones to look up the Google listing for that particular restaurant, store, or dry cleaner. The stickers will be prominently displayed in store windows of participating businesses, and represent a shot across the bow of companies like Yelp which offer similar branded services.”

Yelp has so far cornered the market of customer review based services and done a great job.  But since moving away from the States I have found that sites such as Yelp and Craigslist haven’t “caught on” in other countries.  This is where Google will have “pole position” so to speak.  EVERYONE knows the name of Google.  So there will be no qualms putting this sticker in shops all over the world.

“Much has been made of Google’s interest in courting the big-name advertisers of the corporate world, but the company is also very interested in the mom-and-pop stores of the world, which fit nicely into its strategy of delivering targeted advertising to specific niches. Later this week, Google plans to hold an event in San Francisco for small business owners in hopes of educating them about the services that are available on Google.”

Shoppers who walk by the store can scan the sticker to bring up the business’ Place Page with listing information as well as reviews, photos, and links to sites with more information about the business.

I’m sold and ready to point my 3G phone at QSR codes…are you ready?

Twitter Hunts are fun way to engage people in their social networking world and have it translate to real world interaction.

Currently, Tooheys, an Australian beer company, is launching a new product called 5 seeds by hiding 5 giant apples in secret locations around Sydney.

“Clues as to the apple’s whereabouts are given out through the 5 Seeds Facebook page and Twitter stream where you can also follow the tag #applehunt. It’s nice to see agencies blurring the line between online and offline, utilising the increase of web-ready mobile devices, allowing people to take the campaign with them onto the streets and away from their computer.”

We’ve seen Lily Allen and The Ellen Show have fun with their fans by hiding free tickets near their show location and tweet clues as to where they are.

Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk did a massive world wide Easter egg hunt that includes USA, Australia, Ireland and a ton of other places and instead of eggs he hid autographed decks and tweeted where to look.

Location based, augmented reality games? Yep. There’s several apps for that.

Here’s a company that has capitalized on the fad: “Tweet-A-Prize takes its followers on a scavenger hunt across the web every week. The idea is simple: this scavenger hunt will immerse the contestants in the sponsor’s website, creating a click-through-rate and level of brand-interaction for sponsors that is second to none. Everybody wins: the contestants get an exciting hunt and the chance to win a great prize, and sponsors get thousands of eager Tweet-A-Prize followers digging through information on their brands. Is this sort of social interaction the future of advertising?”

Check out my Collection in CultureWaves® called “Twitter Hunts” to check out some different examples of how companies, events, organizations and celebrities are using this trend to further their brand.

They have taken it upon themselves to engage in a war against the net; either seeking to control access to it or possibly control of it.

To them, the internet is a dissident voice, except magnified to a global scale and able to be everywhere and anywhere at once. It is the ultimate tool for fighting propaganda and getting your voice heard. Which is the problem: If you’re a heartless genocidal dictator, the last thing you want is an extremely mobile, fast, global outlet for your competition.

Culturally, signs are beginning to point to a new era of technology and corporate interaction. One that closely resembles Cyberpunk, or Shadowrun from the outset. We will start to see corporations privatizing hackers and hacker groups much like mercenaries in previous conflicts. The world governments will try more and more to restrict access and limit resources pertaining to the net. Jobs, international conflicts, guerrilla warfare and entertainment is already moving in the direction of total online immersion, whether they’re aware of it or not. Technology is starting to adapt to the need for more mobility and personal use with the acceptance of Augmented Reality and it’s emerging practical applications, the shrinking design of portable wifi and all of it’s peripherals, and a new generation growing up with a greater understanding of technology than the previous generations who happen to be in power.

With that kind of disparity growing wider and wider between a mindset of ever increasing restrictions, paranoia, profitability and blind ignorance of something they simply refuse to accept vs a growing number of younger, more adept and understanding people who are getting increasingly agitated with said restrictions, paranoia and profitability, something is bound to happen sooner or later.

The new battlefield is one that surrounds us at all times and we look across it everyday. It is populated by not just millions, but billions of people, worldwide. You cannot bomb it, you cannot make it surrender, you cannot buy it off. But you can use it; you can accept it, embrace it, and realize the full potential that the web offers.

Gamer’s guide Kotaku broke news that

“Swedish-developed Ghostwire will let you use the DSi’s camera to hunt ghosts in the real world through augmented-reality gaming…In the adventure title, gamers will use the DSi as a portal to the astral plane to find and collect ghosts that exist all around them. The game will also use the DSi’s built in microphone” –via

The idea behind Ghostwire is to figure out why the ghosts are haunting our world so you can help them, you know…cross over. As lead game designer Anders Bergman describes the beauty of the game is that it “allows us to enhance the integrated real-world experience with the combination of camera, microphone and touch screen.”

We were wondering earlier this year just how useful a camera would be to handheld video games, we’re suddenly enlightened. Let’s just hope the integration of fake on real doesn’t lead us to ghosts in my toilet. Check out the Ghostwire Trailer
for a demo.

On Memorial Day, Google engineer Sean Askay released the “Map of the Fallen”, an Interactive map that uses Google Earth 5.0 to show the locations of the birth and death of each of the 5700 US servicemen and women that have died since the beginning of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the website, http://www.mapthefallen.org ,

Askay says, I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.

The map creates an interactive portal into the lives of each fallen soldier. Each Icon on the map provides information about the man or woman who died, where they are from and provides links to other sites such as The Iraq Page and Legacy.com; where friends, family and comrades can share stories, thoughts and feelings about their lost loved ones.

The Map of the Fallen was a personal side project of Mr.Askay, who has worked on numerous other mapping projects that were created to demonstrate how Google Earth could be used to help Charities and non-profits promote their cause.

By adding the element of place, the Map of the Fallen, removes the abstraction from the unfamiliar names of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. It empowers anyone who is interested to gain a stronger idea of who these individuals were, what they looked like, where they died and where they came from.

Askay says,

Although this map only shows the hometowns and places of death for these soldiers, it’s important to remember that each of these servicemen and women have a rich story in between, which leads me to something a Gold Star mom recently shared with me:

“There’ll be two dates on your tombstone

And all your friends will read ‘em

But all that’s gonna matter is that little dash between ‘em…”