Wayne & Garth Spotted

Alongside the part of my phone that actually makes calls (the old fashioned bit), my Google Maps app is probably one of my most used. It’s become indispensable in the same way that being able to text once was. What would we do without it!

Modern spoils aside, the success of Google’s mapping technology may partly be down to its adaptiveness. As with all good web services, the Google Maps API has spawned a mass of location based mash-ups. Google, for example, recently partnered with We Are What We Do to create the wonderfully rich Historypin. It’s all too easy to forget about the history that surrounds us here at The Partners HQ, but a quick post code look up perfectly placed archived and geo-tagged photos from over 100 years ago. To refer to images like this in isolation is one thing, to see them in context and contrast with our modern surroundings (places we inhabit everyday without considering the past) can completely transform our sense of place. Today, Berg London announced Dimensions. Born out of a series of workshops with the BBC, this set of mash-ups forces us to reconsider our surroundings by overlaying historical, political, and environmental data on to our own neighbourhoods. With these filters and layers applied, mapping becomes less about wayfinding, and more about changing perceptions of our sense of place; both of our own locality, and of others’.

With Google’s Street View, the mental images and memories of our surroundings are at once put to test, and the sheer volume of imagery captured by Google’s roaming cars across the world must represent one of the most significant image archives in existence. It provides us with an almost complete panoramic view of the urban environment, albeit one recorded in 1/100th of a second. For the virtual tourist, or the freeze frame voyeur, street view offers a world of exploration like never before. Last year, Art Fag City bought together snapshots of some of the more weird and wonderful findings. Our treasured Daily Mail more recently got in on the act with the story of a seemingly dead girl laying in the street.

Thank god last year’s AR craze has seemed to have died down, when every brand seemed desperate to get a piece of the emperor’s new clothes. This highly ironic video summed it up perfectly. Why do something that could be much better achieved without the added layer of a webcam? Context, of course, is key. ART + COM showed that there were practical and meaningful applications for the technology when they bought dinosaurs out of their skeletons and bursting into life at Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. And with dedicated hardware in gaming consoles, the opportunities still seem genuinely engaging. Oh to be a kid today!

Of course mobile and augmented technologies are a match made in heaven. Amsterdam’s Layar first launched on Android some years ago now, but the potential still seems to be slowly unfolding, and marketers are quicker now to spot an opportunity. While The Rolling Stone’s take on the Layar app for their Exile On Main Street album may have been overly literal, it’s interesting to think how we can begin to engage an audience not just online, but in the real world too. Over in Japan, where adoption of new technologies is often quicker than anywhere else, the Sekai Camera app spawned an ‘Air tagging‘ phenomenon. Surely it’s just a matter of time before this spreads. Let’s just hope users can learn to leave data behind that actually enriches our surroundings, and resist the kind of comments you’re likely to find in a shoreditch pub toilet.

Yesterday I received a notification from Google informing me I was now being tracked by Latitude. I’d opted in for this some time ago, only to be disappointed to find very few of my friends had shared my enthusiasm. Sharing your location with Google (search now factors in your location) is one thing, sharing it with your friends, it seems, is another.

The social aspect of location awareness is, however growing fast. And while Foursquare’s success may be in part down to its reward schemes and gaming aspects (ultimately, its competitive nature), the check-in concept now seems to be spreading beyond the merely physical, with more & more start ups like Gomiso allowing us to ‘check-in’ to movies and tv shows. It’s yet another way of allowing us digital natives to define ourselves not just by where we hang out, but also by what we consume. In 2010, privacy, and personal space appear outdated concepts, while the commodification of the personal reigns supreme.

If anyone can popularise the concept of location in the social space, it’s Facebook. Sure enough, Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed rumours that Facebook will soon be adding location to its services. Facebook might just show Google how it should be done here. Friends & followers, are you with me?

This companion application is based on the branding and identity work that we undertook for the gallery and allows you to search for paintings tagged under a series of themes. The application contains over 250 works and includes video, audio, zoomable hi-resolution images and image galleries from the likes of Leonardo, Renoir, Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

The application, called Love Art: National Gallery London is available now and is completely free – just like admission to the National Gallery itself. Go check it out.

Identity and branding by The Partners

A cool app just appeared on the iPhone App store: WTF – or to give its full name – What The Font – is a free app that replicates the functionality of the website (of the same name) that can work out what a typeface is, just from looking at a couple of characters. It means that you can take a photo of any poster, magazine or advert that you happen to be going past and find out what the typeface is. Ace! 

But does it work? Well, there are a couple of limitations: firstly, WTF only accesses the library of fonts on the MyFonts website, so anything obscure or from smaller type foundries will probably not be on there. Secondly, the iPhone camera isn’t auto-focusing, so getting sharp images of type is a little tricky. But hey, it’s free — you aren’t going to see me complaining!

Download the app from the iTunes app store here.  

Hot on the heels of Helvetica the movie, comes a new feature length documentary from Gary Hustwit entitled: Objectified – a film about industrial design. It explores everything from the toothbrush to the latest tech gadgets and generally “cool” objects. The film investigates our relationship with form & function and those that are constantly trying to reinvent the way that we use things to make them better. The film features a bevy of  the world’s leading designers, including Jonathan Ive: Senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, who you can blame for such objects as the iMac, iPod and my favourite: the iPhone.

The film is due for release in the early half of 2009, but in the meantime, check out this trailer. You can find out more about the film here: www.objectifiedfilm.com