Another “innovation” that should/might/probably won’t be adapted by the print media, although they are in a prime position to do so. It’s all to do with what’s called Augmented Reality and aided by Image recognition.
The principal is straightforward enough, although I’d suggest that the technology is not. It’s similar in function to QR codes, but probably suits the newspapers a little better. The company that seem to be grabbing all the headlines in this arena is Aurasma who recently linked up with the Daily Mirror to show how a paper, stuck at a point when it was printed, can avail of this technology to stay “live”.
An app is downloaded to your smartphone (Apple or Android) from Aurasma which allows you to point your phone at an image in a paper or a static real ‘image’ like a building or a shop front for example.
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The app then recognises this particular image and will allow the app to do its work – this could be to show a video on your phone or superimposing an image in something real-time.
In the case of the Daily Mirror, they used an image in their Football Spy page to trigger the app to show hourly video updates of transfer news at the close of the transfer window in January.
The Daily Telegraph used it in their motoring column to watch a video of a Ferrari FF, which the papers was reviewing (as you do!).
It’s simply a variation on the theme, the QR style theme, but it doesn’t infringe on the look and feel of a page as it doesn’t have to accommodate a specially contrived QR code. This time the images or section logos on the page can be used in conjunction with the app, with a bit of manipulation beforehand.
