Any View Anytime – Now Showing!

I was amazed to read what Damien brought to my notice through his post “Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen at your fingertips” on Crave - The Technology Blog from CNET Asia. As you'd read in what Damien has written in his post “a passerby at the Hugo Boss store in Singapore, can interact with Lewis and Heikki, access an array of information about Team Vodafone McLaren, F1-related movies, picture gallery and technical data of the race car and steering wheel - and all this from the outside of the store through a large interactive display which has been fused into the glass surface of display window. In other words the plain transparent glass is now reflecting images and is touch sensitive! This seems to be a simple display and to many readers it may be just an extension of the LCD or Plasma displays which are also quite thin. However to me it is no less than a breakthrough! I would not dwell too much on how exactly this technology works. It uses optical technology, you can find out more here Ubiq'window. What I would like to share with you here is what excites me about this breakthrough. I believe what we have achieved here is the ability to project an image on a surface that is transparent! In terms of a parallel, I think it is like having a Television screen that you can see through. This is a significant point of departure. Finally we can give different meanings (project different images) even to transparent surfaces.
I can visualize it being used as a screen that can be viewed from both the sides. I have not seen it myself yet but I assume if the passerby at the Hugo Boss store went inside and looked at the screen he still would be able to view the screenOne of the most potent applications that I can think of is Windows with a view – 24x365. Be it a cloudy say or Beijing haze, be it sharp sunshine or a heavy downpour – this can give us the choice to adjust the view from our window as we wake up in the morning and look ‘outside’. . It can mimic nature and display different things to trigger different views. The simple analog window can now even be a digital photo album.Other than these novel applications, I can see this as a smart move by Hugo Boss because not many luxury/fashion brands are seen to be high tech or innovative in that sense. This kind of initiative helps them be perceived as being ahead of others on the digital curve.

To me there is one more thing that Ubiq’Window’s new technology brings about – it turns the concept of outside and inside or the idea of front and back on its head. Imagine how a television based on this technology might be placed in our home. It no longer would have to have its back to the wall. Now it can very much be in the center because there is no blind spot the way present day TV sets have. It can bring about a dramatic shift in the way we lay out the sitting/viewing space in our homes. The couch, sofa, chair, bed or anything to sit or lie down no longer needs to look towards the TV set. I can free home décor from the shackles of traditional viewing paradigm. Freedom!
To me this tehnology seems to be more domesticable than multi touch breakthroughs like the one you see in the video below. Becasuse thse multi touch technologies still look at the screen or display from one side. The other side is assumed to be for wires sockets so on an so forth. ">
This technology from Ubiq'window. is still in its early days and I am sure there is time before it can stabilize in more ways than one. For example the projection apparatus hanging from the ceiling can get smaller. However I feel that this technology has the potential to bring about dramatic change in the way we live and hear and watch and feel - sounds, images and life!

Meaning is empty without Belief

Look at these two pictures. I captured these two moments at Luoyang (a place of great historic significance in China). The girl is sitting atop a lotus and trying to mimic the Buddha pose, just for fun. Her friends, who are not in the frame, were clicking and cheering her. The man is looking at a very old rock carving of Lord Buddha as he takes a drag and reflects (perhaps).
This shook me, more than many of my Chinese friends – may be because the beliefs imbibed in me from childhood about paying respect to God. However if I were not aware of the concept of God, or may be not aware in the way I have been told, then this statue would not have been anything more than a relic of historical value or a beautiful creation that has been preserved. And may be I would also be sitting atop the lotus with my shoes on, doing something similar.
I do not intend to pass a value judgment on anyone here but I believe it is worthwhile looking at things from the other person’s point of view before classifying their behaviour as good bad or anything else. To me things or people do not mean anything without being founded on an underlying belief. A belief, in turn, is based on knowledge and experience. To be able to have an objective point of view about anyone, we perhaps need to make an attempt to tap into their experiences and knowledge and then things look a lot simpler to understand and relate to.
I am not well read so I do not know how many religions already say something like this, but to me this is the biggest religion.
There is no walk like trying to walk in another man’s shoes for a while..
When I step back and look at this from the consumer understanding perspective– the analogy of walking in another man’s shoes comes in very handy. When I try to fathom the knowledge and experiences of the person who I am speaking with I start looking at the world as s/he sees it.
The intersection of the way he looks at the world and the way we as consumer behaviour professionals look at the world is the place where insights opportunities and breakthroughs live.
This sure is an amazing experience!

be inspired

Focus groups, colleague rants, song lyrics on my mp3 player, workshops, meetings, empty can of diet coke in the trash, all doors opening outside, or the pack of tissues in your top drawer – no matter what you are doing, where you are, who is staring at you and no matter what you are feeling - just be inspired, always. It is this spark that keeps the creator inside all of us fired up!
Sometimes I feel that the world around me has so much to offer, show, share, tell that I do not have hands, eyes or grasp to soak it all up..
The last 60 days of being in Beijing have been quite patterned. Other than the fact that I am in a new place – nothing is new. Wake up; dress up, hail a cab, ‘ni hao’ to the cabbie, xie xie to the security guard at office for opening the door, elevator to 9th floor, good morning to colleagues, work, work, workshops, researches, meetings, presentations, work more...raving the hits and ranting the misses everyday, shut down, wrap up, swipe the access card head home, swipe into home again, freshen up, eat (and miss Indian food), restart, connect with parents and all other mails that could not be read and written at work…but with all this serious monotony around why do I still feel inspired? How do I still have fresh insights and ideas waiting to be deployed?
I am sure all this is not because of the mental disequilibrium caused by the strange smell that stays with you hours after you have stepped away from the fresh food section of all hypermarkets in this city!
I believe it is more to do with what is cooking between my ears than what is happening around me though I would never discount the importance of the latter.
The world around me is just the firewood but sadly or otherwise the firewood does not always come with a spark.

Here is what I am beginning to understand - no matter where one is no matter what one is doing, the single most important thing is to be always inspired, be bullish, be natural, connect with the air you are breathing, listen intently – even if you do not understand the language – soak up everything that comes your way and keep thinking (questioning) and feeling all of it that you see, hear, touch, smell, taste, do, imagine and everything else, believe me sparks will fly. It is simply amazing there is so much one can learn all the time even or especially when one is not actively trying to learn something.
Also, the best things we know and feel are never documented – my favourite one on this that the real wisdom is the operating system of our behaviour and most of the time it is not documented. I suppose it is the subconscious or perhaps something that we never bother to think about. But this is it – this is the most critical link between our understanding of self and the world around us. It is not fixed but that should not stop us from capturing it. If we try and keep documenting it every time we get an opportunity – we might end up discovering a gold mine in our own backyard. Needles to say this is not the only goldmine known to mankind but none the less it seems the most accessible one.
Here’s perhaps one way of doing it – just replay your daily movie. I mean just play the whole day in front of your eyes and you'll see sparks flying.
There's something more on this that can be said here but I guess this has already become too big for a bite, so perhaps more on this in the days to some i.e. if it stays as exciting as it is now.
I sincerely hope I have been able to express myself accurately and wish that you can also experience what I am experiencing– because it is truly amazing and very-very satisfying!