Recently, Google announced “Project Glass,” a concept for a headset that can visually overlay information on the wearer’s field of vision. Picture looking at a restaurant and seeing a review floating above it, seeing a product in store while your glasses show a list of online prices, or meeting a new colleague with their business card hovering above them. It all sounds very futuristic, but it’s closer than you may think. This is called augmented reality, it’s already built into your smartphone and it’s rapidly becoming ubiquitous.

In 2009, review site Yelp introduced a feature to its iPhone app mirroring the functionality described above. Point your camera at a street, and watch on-screen as restaurant reviews and star ratings appear above nearby eateries. Tap the icon to call and make your reservation. Shortly after that, Google rolled out the foundation for Project Glass called Google Goggles, which will show reviews from sites like Yelp, and will also translate text, identify wine or artwork and add contact information to your address book just by you looking at it.

It’s clear that augmented reality is developing very quickly, but what does it mean for marketers and advertisers? Ubiquity is, of course, a few years out and no one knows exactly how things will look, but it’s worth considering some of the possibilities. For instance, right now Google AdWords tracks your searches for ad targeting, but what if you could track what a user looks at and show them, say, ads for new restaurants if it was clear they were looking at places to eat? Or maybe you have a billboard, and when the user looks at it their glasses show an animated overlay — creating a more engaging experience. There are also some implications for street marketing. A person might look uninteresting walking down the street, but through augmented reality maybe they have a big arrow over their head saying, “Ask me for a free product sample.” It’s sort of a human scavenger hunt that will happen as you walk through the city.

In my opinion, the possibilities for this technology are pretty much endless, but I have one use that I’m really hoping will pop up. Picture this: You arrive at a concert, a packed restaurant or, God forbid, a shopping mall on Black Friday. You scan the crowd, looking for a friend you’re supposed to meet. Fortunately, they have their Facebook tracking on, so you take out your phone, and scan across the crowd. Bubbles with names and profile information appear above people’s heads. You see your friend’s name, stroll over and say hello. Pretty neat.

But it certainly raises a lot of concerns from a privacy perspective. The option to turn it off would have to be there, yet how many people forget about the privacy settings that Facebook already has? Of course, if you value your anonymity, you’re probably steering clear of social media in the first place. I fall somewhere in the middle: This new technology sounds exciting, but maybe a little paranoia isn’t such a bad thing.

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The New York Times recently ran an interesting — and kind of funny — article about consumer “wrap rage.“ Apparently, Amazon has spent two years trying to get the folks who sell products on its site NOT to use clamshell packaging.

What is wrap rage? Anyone who has suffered the humiliation, frustration and, yes, uncontrollable anger, that comes with trying to open a plastic-clamshell encased product knows wrap rage. A person shouldn’t have to wield a knife to gain access to a product they have lawfully purchased.

Amazon.com users agree; packaging is the number one source of angry customer feedback. So the company has asked its partners to rethink their packaging and offer a frustration-free option for consumers.

The article reads a bit like a case study on why companies should solicit feedback and how they can put the resulting data to work for them. In this case, consumers weren’t shooting down stars over service or quality, just the packaging — that’s both good to know and fixable … with the help of a good designer.

Frustration-free packaging (Photo courtesy of Amazon)

Of the companies that took Amazon’s plea seriously, many  found that their new packaging cost them less, was more environmentally friendly and, perhaps more to the immediate point, on average reduced negative feedback by a whopping 73 percent.

And, in a time when consumers increasingly look to each other for purchasing advice, that’s some powerful PR.

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Good web developers break everything into three key layers: structure, presentation and behavior. Understanding the difference between these layers will enable you to organize your web content for a more flexible process across multi-platform tactics.

Structure (HTML) <- content goes here
Structure is the organization of your content into a clear hierarchy of information and differentiating its types, such as title, headline, paragraph and link.

A good structure should not change across different platforms and maintaining that consistency will save you a lot of time and money. Keep style and interaction out!

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Last year during the holidays, social media sites like Facebook experienced huge bumps in traffic. People are off work, away from home, and are — sometimes — bored. So they head to social networks. According to Mashable, last year during Christmas, social networking sites saw huge surges in traffic. On Christmas Day 2008, Twitter saw 35 tweets per minute, You Tube saw 600,000 videos tagged “Christmas,” and (according to Google) over 60,000,000 blog posts mentioned Christmas.

So what’s a good social media plan to get in front of all those eyeballs? At Go East, we are looking at the three most obvious places to make your mark this holiday.

Social Media Holiday Plan, 2009

1. Get your hashtags ready and tweet this holiday season. It will be important to get your brand out there by offering holiday specials or expressions of good will. Twitter is great for trending what people will want for Christmas, as well as seeing who is already out there tweeting about their holiday offerings.

2. People will connect on Facebook over the holidays. That’s just a fact. Long-distance family and friends will go there first to find out who did what and who got what over Christmas break. It makes sense for brands to be there. How can brands successfully integrate on FB? Right now, it is up for grabs. A quick search shows 500 Christmas applications on FB, none of which are all that compelling. However, Coca Cola already has over 58,000 fans on its Christmas advert page. That’s a wide open field of opportunities for the next “elf yourself,” and FB is the place for people to have fun with your brand this holiday.

3. Flickr now offers sponsored groups. Some, like Kodak’s “What’s our story?” group, make an obvious photography connection. Others, like the “Western Union Yes!”, start to meld social sharing and cause marketing. Now things are starting to get interesting! Imagine the possibilities for images and brands that visually bring the holidays to life. Asking group members to show how they use a product during the holidays, with the most “favorited” photo winning, is an obvious way to connect with Flickr’s users.

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A group of Boston geeks helped Barack Obama turn the Web into the ultimate political machine. A recent Boston Globe story discusses their cutting edge social network, which helped elect the new president. I think the astonishing results that can be achieved by a very small group of programmers and visionary developers highlights what a democracy is really all about. Making change — both socially and politically — can happen quickly and from a “grassroots up” foundation. It is exciting to see  the actual and real results of an effective social networking structure.

(See also MyBarackObama.com)

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A recent Adweek article discusses how difficult it is to create social media applications — especially the corporate branded apps in Facebook. It underscores the essentially flighty and viral nature of social media; like pop music and reality TV stars, there is a limited appeal to many of these efforts.

Brands, in general, have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing. It’s well known, for instance, that banner ads perform poorly on the site … But the Facebook Platform, launched 18 months ago — which lets developers create social applications for users — was thought to offer the perfect opportunity to move beyond banners to provide “branded utility.” So far, however, Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands.

Read the full article.

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Spam was once a simple annoyance, but its exponential growth has led email users to mount intensive efforts to block unwanted messages and incited companies to circulate blacklists of alleged spammers. As he tries to comply with all the details of spam laws, newsletter publisher James Morris wonders if free speech might be an unlikely victim of the Internet age.

Here at Go East, we’ve been seeing very interesting results from our newsletters and email marketing efforts. Spam laws and compliance can change quickly, and an email that sailed through spam filters one month may be unexpectedly flagged the next. As Morris points out, the culprits can be an innocuous word or an innocent turn of phrase. Keeping a vigilant eye out for these items and vigorous testing can help mitigate these problems.

(If you’re interested, have look at our newsletter series.)

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How does a person catch a break on cash these days? I would imagine we are all thinking about ways that we can make an extra buck, given our economic situation and the fast-approaching holiday.

Maybe you should set up a lemonade stand. Imagine the looks from coworkers passing by your desk as they notice your newly decorated office space with a wooden stand, a pitcher of lemonade and some plastic cups neatly stacked beside it. That would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it?

But seriously, there is a website called Lemonade.com, where you can set up your own “lemonade stand” and promote products that you like and make money when people buy those products. Crazy!

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