Here are some awesome examples of tablets and readers. Could these be the future of publishing?

With augmented reality being the buzz word in digital at the moment (and some saying that it’s the biggest hype as well as the biggest opportunity), it’s great to start seeing applications of the technology that are actually useful, as opposed to simply showing you a 3D model of a shoe.
Zugara has brought augmented reality into e-commerce by layering the clothes you select over your body, and also allowed for a number of hooks on the screen. Suppose if you have a small netbook this is going to be so exciting, but imagine this on a flat screen TV – it’s like a mirror! This surely makes online shopping a lot less daunting for consumers who were previously worried about e-commerce.

Skip through the first couple of slides, it starts getting interesting after slide 20.

WordPress has just released a few mobile themes that will make the execution of mobile sites even faster and easier than before. The themes allow you to use WordPress as a platform for building a mini CMS/publishing tool, and rendering it properly on mobiles.

Read through Mashable for more info.

Youniqe also has a mobile plugin out called MobilePress that does something similar

Another great presentation from the guys at Razorfish.

While social media isn’t completely mainstream yet, it has reached a certain critical mass. More and more marketers are looking into this new advertising model and growth in this sector seems inevitable.

Below are some graphs to show how South Africa compares to the international growth rate in the Social Media sector (based on Search volumes)

World wide one can’t ignore the the massive shift away from Direct Marketing and the huge growth spurt in Social Media.

World Wide
South Africa

Interestingly enough it seems that South Africa is a few months behind, but the trend as shown word wide seems destined to do the same. This means that South African consumers can expect a wide variety of brands soon invading their “personal space” as well as South African Digital and Social agencies (like ours) will see a large growth in business while the more traditional agencies will see a definite decline in direct advertising.

The big hope here is that the brands that enter the market realises that the central idea of the new age of advertising is not to interrupt your consumer with your message, but rather to co-exist no a shared platform for mutual benefit.

While this microsite for Naked Puppetry doesn’t have an overtly visible brand attached to it, it is a pretty cool example of ways to use web cam technology. With webcams becoming ever pervasive with new laptops, and also as cellphone video camera’s become more sophisticated, we should be seeing more innovative uses of real life motion sensors. Similar to what’s happening with augmented reality at the moment.

MRM Worldwide recently completed the Calling All Captains campaign for Captain Morgan. Read more about it here:

MRM Worldwide created a customizable voicemail tool, which allows consumers to set up Captain Morgan-branded prank calls. From the Web site CallingAllCaptains.com, consumers can choose from three personas — the cute girl, the angry boyfriend or the unpaid bartender — to make the call. Using an online form, users can also customize the call with a friend’s name and details of their night out. At the end of the message — which goes directly to voicemail or to voicemail after one ring — the recipient is informed of the prank and directed to the “Calling all captains” site.

Click here to visit the Calling All Captains campaign.