Tesco launches virtual fitting room

Online clothing retail is big business, there’s no doubt about that, but there are some things where even the convenience of online shopping can’t beat being in the store and tying the products on yourself... or can it?

Back at the tail end of February this year, Tesco launched a Facebook based virtual fitting room, with the intention of helping customers find the perfect fit for the brand's F&F clothing online. Of course this is by no means the first venture of its type; it’s been over a year now since eBay did a similar foray into augmented reality themselves.

Similar to the eBay Fashion mobile app, Tesco’s virtual fitting room uses a photo of yourself and your body measurements to try on various clothing from their range, much like a figurative paper doll. Though unlike eBay, rather than a stand-alone mobile app, Tesco instead opted for a Facebook app, linked in directly with their social media strategy. Incorporated in this is the ability to easily share content via Facebook.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is any statistics currently available, but there are some other similar ventures we can look at. Fits.me launched their virtual fitting room in 2010 and currently reports to have a 57% increase in sales and a 28% reduction in returns and associated costs. Whether these augmented reality fitting rooms for the will prove to be useful or just another modern technology gimmick remains to be seen.

Of course, bespoke software and applications doesn’t have to be all about fitting rooms and augmented reality! Why not look at what we’ve done here at Rocktime and get in contact with our sales team.  


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

This month we’ve got a tech focus and our Geek Video this time takes a peak into the world of 3D displays.

It seems that 2011 is turning into the year of 3D; we’ve had 3D televisions, an influx of 3D films and even 3D hand held consoles, and that’s just the start of it all. Before feeling the need to splash out on any new 3D devices that are inevitably going to crop up in time, why not take a look at Global Wave's fantastically simple solution.

Their ‘Pic3D Sheet’ demoed at the 3D and Virtual Reality Expo in Tokyo last month, uses a lenticular lens system (which also means you don’t need 3D glasses), then using the company's app to output a video in a side-by-side format, it simulates a 3D image. The sheet is simply placed over your device’s screen, with sizes ranging from an iPhone or iPod touch sheet, up to a 23” desktop monitor.

Of course, it’s hard to see how successful it is without seeing it with your own eyes, but with prices ranging from about £17.00 for a small 3DPic sheet, it’s still a lot cheaper then splashing out on a new phone or tablet. See what you think about by watching the above video.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Augmented reality and Aurasma

Aurasma is powered by pattern recognition technology; it represents the future of how we use our mobile devises, using some of the most advanced systems in the world to bring the physical and virtual worlds together.

It has been described as the latest ad recognition technology to challenge QR codes, it has the ability to bring static content / print materials to life.

PR Newswire reported early this week that, Aurasma had passed one million installs (PR Newswire, 10th July 2011), indicating that this is set to be the most broadly deployed mobile platform of its kind.

For more information visit the Aurasma website, which states that they have over 1 million users, over 100 partners, featured in major publications.


There is huge potential for social commerce and advertisers in using augmented reality technology, for example: if you hold the phone in front of cereal packets and get a lot more information, recipes, nutritional advice etc.

There is also huge potential for brand building too, where on holding the phone in front of a product a number of unexpected but brand building things can happen i.e. launches a video on how to use the product, how the product was made. The first ever print advertisement to come to life was in a national UK newspaper for a luxury yacht company, which you can find out more about here.

It's not just magazines and papers looking into promotion through augmented reality. London based football team Tottenham Hotspurs, with their new sponsors Autonomy, the owners of Aurasma, are in the process of giving their own team kit a touch of augmented reality.

We also had a go at the Aurasma located in the last weeks Stylist magazine, after seeing this tweet.


The Flashlight Search Marketing team are very excited about this technology and urge you to go and find out more over at the Aurasma website. If you would like to find out more about how your brand can integrate with Aurasma please give our sales team a call, who are watching Aurasma developments with interest.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

This month’s Geek Video combines one of our themes of the month, social commerce, and our love of anything Smartphone and App based into one neat little package.

Last month saw the release of Pizza Express and PayPal’s innovative new app, combining the physical retail industry with online payments for the first time in the UK market. As demonstrated in the video above, it’s not just about paying! You can also find a restaurant, book a table, see the menu and keep track of receipts for purchases.

Currently the app can be used in all 370 Pizza Express restaurants in the UK, and will ultimately be supported by a company-wide roll-out of free WiFi in each restaurant. Depending on its success and uptake, perhaps we can look forward to seeing versions developed for other operating systems and maybe even other retail companies taking a look into integrating their online-offline shopping experience! Well done Pizza Express ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

How can Foursquare help your business

You may remember us talking about Foursquare before; we’ve even done an introductory post on Foursquare for businesses here on the blog.

As it is operation sharing useful content on the blog this month, a couple of days ago we found this great article from Mashable on how to set up a Foursquare Special, which we just had to share with you.

How to: Set up a FourSquare Special by Lauren Drell, Mashable

We have also provided our own take on FourSquare specials for your review. Enjoy ;)

So what are the advantages of registering your business with them?

For starters, it’s a popular service, growing in numbers; in 2010 alone on their official blog, Foursquare reveals they experienced a 3400% increase in growth, and a staggering 381 million check ins.

Not only does signing your venue up on Foursquare open up a huge potential audience, but you can actively encourage visitors through Foursquare via the use of their ‘Foursquare Specials', from a Friends Special encouraging groups to a Newbie Special to encourage newcomers through your doors, there’s a wide range of potential deals to set up with the aim of encouraging people to check into your venue.

When it comes to promoting these specials, Foursquare can lend you a helping hand providing you with official window stickers, encouraging visitors to check in.


In addition to Specials, ownership of the venue on Foursquare will allow you to view a full set of real-time data about your customers. Imagine it like a real-life analytics! On your dashboard you’ll be able to see statistics such as total daily check-ins over time to viewing your most recent and frequent visitors and even whether they are broadcasting their check-ins to Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, whilst Foursquare might be one of the larger and (currently) in our opinion the best established of these services, it is by no means the only option! We’ve covered other location based marketing services as MePlease and Facebook Deals among others, in previous blog posts, both of which are more than worth a peruse. Enjoy ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

As our blog focus in May, is all about sharing useful content. This months’ Geek Video of the Month goes to all the videos produced over at Lady Geek TV. The Rocktime ladies regularly check in to the site, which offers an online series of shows aimed at making technology accessible, fun and useful to women. The websites objective being to highlight the very best in smart phone apps available, the Lady Geeks state that they are "on a mission to find the right app for you".

In an interview with the Guardian, the founder of Lady Geek TV, Belinda Parmar, states;

"We put an end to the cliches and stereotypes in the tech world by helping companies understand women (beyond 'pink it and shrink it'). We offer three things: Lady Geek TV (bespoke content), Female Immersion Days (workshops on how to connect with women) and Lady Geek Panel (collective voice of powerful women in IT)."



Here’s the first episode of their web series focusing on useful apps across a range of handheld devices, if you’re interested in checking out more, then why not look into either their main site, Lady Geek TV or their YouTube account.

In extention to the above Fiona here at Rocktime, recommends you read this post from the Mobile Entertainment site, which references a new report from Lady Geek TV.

Keep up the good work girls ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

Intro to Google Apps for Education

As we have clients in the education market, this morning we have taken time out to find out a bit more about “Google Apps for Education”, which offer free (and advert free) set of customisable tools to enable faculty, staff and students to work together more effectively. More than 10 million students use Google Apps.

A quick scan of the news and official posts from Google shows that this is really taking off.

The 3 key benefits are listed as:
• Communication – Enhance your community's dialogue with hosted email, shared calendars and integrated video chat.
• Collaboration – Google Docs and Google Sites enable students and teachers to share documents online, at any time and from any location.
• Customization – Easily integrate your existing IT systems with Google Apps while keeping your school's domain safe and secure.

On quick review it appears to have mainly taken off in USA; however, we did read a blog from a former UK header teacher who had become a certified “Google Apps for Education trainer” via The Google Teacher Academy and set up her own business to push technology innovation in the education field. So it is happening here people. We also found this statement from Leeds University, there are further case studies on the Google Apps for Education website:

Leeds Metropolitan University Higher Education "We had Microsoft Exchange but we found that it wasn't being used by students. They preferred Hotmail or Google Mail. We're trying to be very contemporary and that includes our IT strategy. We believe in working together with organisations that complement us and can add value. That was a big part of moving to Google."
Barbara Colledge, Dean of Partnerships.

The Google Teacher Academy (mentioned above) is “a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies”. There are several videos on YouTube on Google Apps for Education, here is a video from the Google Apps Education team: If you go to YouTube and search Google Apps for education and you will find several videos from Head Teachers.

To give further insight, into potential growth of the 'The Google Teacher Academy' and 'Google Apps for Education', we found a great post , published just yesterday from bclocalnews.com titled “Power of social learning can help students, teachers”; which reported that: “A massive, six-year study was completed in 2009 by Project Tomorrow (http://www.tomorrow.org/), which involved the “largest collection of authentic, unfiltered” stakeholder participation in any known similar study, with the involvement of 1.85 million K-12 students in more than 23,000 schools and including 26,312 parents and 38,642 teachers”.

They also noted that: “The study report revealed three “essential elements” for effective, 21st-century education:

• socially-based learning helps students process and personalize their learning,
• un-tethered learning allows students to not have to rely solely on teachers for information, and • digitally-rich learning enables students to access and process material in a variety of ways, as well as driving productivity”.

Read more about:
Above mentioned post: “Power of social learning can help students, teachers” Google Teacher Acadmey Google Apps for Education

We have recommended Google Docs, which form part of the Education Apps, previously on this blog; read our post on Google Docs just got better.
Also, don’t forget that “We grow our own” at Rocktime, if you have ideas to increase your productivity with an intranet system or application, then talk to us about it, so we can discuss the development further call Rocktime Sales Team, or visit our Intranet / Extranet page for more information.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

eBay Fashion and Augmented Reality

We talked about augmented reality briefly with our Geek Video of the month, and here it is again! EBay has had huge success with its mobile e-commerce and now they’re trying their luck with something new; the release of their Augmented Reality upgrade to the eBay Fashion App last month.




The app is broken down into two main components; the ‘See it now’, as shown above, allows the user to take a photo of themselves, resize different styles of sunglasses to their face and then track the movement of their head, rendering the sunglasses appropriately.

For clothing, the ‘Outfit Builder’ allows users to designate favourite pieces of clothing and save them to their virtual closet. Using a photo of themselves the users can then mix and match clothing over the top of their photo as they please. Once the outfit is created, it can then be saved and shared amongst friends via email.

EBay is by no means the first large company to put together an augmented reality app; when it comes to clothing JCPenny and H&M have both had their respective apps on the market since late 2010. However eBay's venture into the market of augmented reality is one of the most technical so far, using the more conventional approach of real time streaming and rendering.

So what advantage does an app such as this offer the company? When it comes to clothing, one of the huge drawbacks of online shopping is the inability to see how the clothes look on you; and augmented reality could be just the ticket to solve that. Of course, there’s still quite a few kinks to iron out first and augmented reality will never truly replicate going to a shop yourself and physically handling goods.

For the moment, it remains to be seen whether eBay’s venture into augmented reality really hits off, or becomes just a passing gimmick. Nonetheless, given the exponential increase in the capabilities of the average phone and an ever growing uptake in the popularity of the smartphone, I don't think it's too unlikely that we'll be seeing more and more of these augmented reality mobile apps and this makes the Flashlight team at Rocktime extremely excited.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the month

Here at Rocktime we do like mobile apps and here's a pretty innovative one! On holiday abroad and your linguistic skills not quite up to scratch? Bust out your iPhone and let Word Lens take a look at it!

Word Lens by Quest Visual works by looking up translations from its built in dictionary and then using augmented reality to translate in real time on the screen, without the need for an internet connection.
Released in late 2010, Word Lens is still pretty young and currently there's only Spanish and English dictionaries and a few kinks that still need sorting out but maybe at some point we'll be seeing additional languages and possibly a port to Android!


Author: Alice Cheetham

Introducing Foursquare for Business

Early this month Foursquare announced the revamped Foursquare for Business pages, complete with tools for merchants, venues and brands. We have been very excited about this development and thought it was about time to share the news with you guys.

We wrote about Foursquare back in June 2010: with the post 5 reasons hotels should be using the Geo location based portal. As a recap FourSquare allows you to virtual check-in to your location via your mobile phone (GPS), you can share reviews and tips with your FourSquare community, you can earn points, collect badges and discover new things and with your social network community at large. View the video here:

Now you have had time to digest the concept of Foursquare, back to the New Business Pages.

The objective of the pages is to help businesses owners attract new customers and maintain brand loyalty. There are two types of brand pages those for brands which have a physical location and those that are not tied to a physical location such as university, manufacturer.
For those brands not tied to a physical location, here are the instructions for setting up a brand page on Foursquare: http://foursquare.com/business/brands

Currently Foursquare are making the brand pages manually at the request of partners, so if interested they invite you to download a form. News in the self service tool will be available to all very soon.

After your brand page is set up you can start leaving tips for your followers, a few examples from Foursquare are listed below:

The New York Times guided their foursquare followers to the best spots to visit while in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Windows Live Photo Gallery helped their followers locate the best spots in their cities to take photos.

Havaianas directed their followers to the best local spots to watch World Cup games, where they shared soccer trivia and gave away free flip-flops.

TravelOK.com helps their users unlock Oklahoma’s best-kept secrets, find discounts and discover hidden attractions throughout the state.

We (Flashlight Team) are increasingly being invited to create geo targeted campaigns for our clients. If you are interested in Geo location services or after viewing the above links perhaps you simply want to find out more about Foursquare and how it applies to your business then please get in touch with Rocktime Sales.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Martin shares his thoughts on mCommerce

This year one of our New Year Resolutions is to share with you more content about our personal experiences with online technologies. Martin Bradbury, Business Development at Rocktime is kick starting us off, as he talks about his experience and thoughts on mCommerce, enjoy.


My thoughts on mCommerce

I recently purchased an Android Powered smart phone, and I find myself very amenable to buying apps through the Android Market. The process of actually spending real money through my mobile feels uncannily natural and very easy, leaving me safe that I can trust Google Checkout with my hard earned cash.

So now I can browse through Android Market, find an app or a game worth buying (ok, that's sometimes a struggle!), click click and I've bought it and a minute or so afterwards, it's installed on my phone and ready for me to enjoy. So there you go, Google Checkout has my credit card details and I'm happy for them to have it. So where is this all going?

I'm mentioning this because it's got me thinking about how much mobile app's have done for mCommerce. It's not just Google Checkout or the Apples App store that has got us spending money on our mobiles. Many of the high street retailers such as Marks & Spencer and John Lewis have mobile versions of their websites that not only allow you to browse, but also order online from your mobile phone. So now you really can choose your next pair of golf socks while relaxing in the bath or if like me you have a penchant for neck ties, why not order a couple of Patrick McMurrays while waiting for the bus to turn up.

You may be thinking that these sites are just marketing fluff and should not be taken too seriously. Well you would be very wrong, they now form an integral part of many retailers revenues streams.

In fact one of the Directors at online fashion retailer ASOS recently tweeted that the company had taken in £73,000 in one day from its mobile site alone... no small apples then.

So is it feasible for SME's to develop mobile enabled sites or apps to create this additional revenue stream? Yes of course! Because of the their size, mobile sites are far cheaper and simpler to develop than traditional site and are not only good for extra income, they can add an element of coolness to your business and also allow you to break into new markets and engage with new audiences.

Here at Rocktime we love mobile tech, and we are really excited about the pace in which mCommerce is becoming part of everyday life.

Developing stand alone mobile sites is something our tech guys have been doing for some time now and they will happily talk to you about it until the cows come home. So if you fancy a cuppa (or two) and a chat about mobile commerce or mobile apps then give me a call. Alternatively, browse to the Rocktime mobile site on your own mobile device (it's really easy and quick), just open your mobile browser and tap in m.rocktime.co.uk.


Author: Martin Bradbury

Marketing Mobile Apps

More companies are noting in their web analytics that an increased number of people are using their mobiles to access their site, along side this there are increasing news reports highlighting that more and more people are using their mobiles to perform extensive research before making a purchase. Following these trends it isn’t surprising that Rocktime are receiving an increased number of calls for the development of mobile apps and mobile websites. Talk to the sales team to find out more.


Theses mobile stats help explain the trend further:

- In October 2010, the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau (IABUK) reported that 26.6 million people (59% of mobile phone owners in the country) had used mobile media such as apps or downloaded data to their handsets.

- Mobile web use is up sharply in the UK. About 31% of internet users said they went online via mobile phone in 2010, compared to 23% in 2009, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported

- We also heard today (via: @ITworld) that end users under the age of 35 prefer to use mobile applications, rather than a web browser, to use specific functions on smartphones and other mobile devices. Read more here: http://www.itworld.com/internet/129261/mobile-users-ditch-browsers-use-apps-instead

In following this trend, the Flashlight Team at Rocktime have been putting together a marketing document to help clients greatly improve the public’s interest, engagement and attention for their app / mobile website once it finally launches. They are working closely with the Sales team and Technical team to integrate marketing thoughts into the site build.

They share some quick tips below, and are happy to talk to you to discuss your mobile app / site marketing needs further.


QUICK MOBILE APP / SITE PROMO TIPS FROM FLASHLIGHT TEAM

During build of your mobile app / mobile site

1. Consider your customers online needs in building the app / site review your web analytics

For example: a hungry for Pizza customer may be interested in:
• Order a pizza online
• Pick up the pizza
• Find a pizza takeaway shop
• Pizza offers
• Call for pizza
• Access favourite pizzas


2. Explain the benefits:

For example a news website could push: “This new mobile site will allow you to browse through news and lifestyle headlines or articles on your mobile phone without having to load the full website” “With push notifications, the app will enable you to keep up to date with the latest news in your area”


3. Consider a mobile phones current functionality in the design of the app:

Click to call
Geo location
Camera
Music
Video
Email
Calendar
Payment Devise
Social network sharing


Tips in promoting mobile apps

• Get early attention and grow interest.

• Discuss in your news pages about your work in progress (where possible invite your customers to contribute to the final development).

• Show a teaser video on how the app will work > and how it seeks to make their life better (see above video)

• Possibly create a landing page for the App and if it is very exciting ie: not just a mobile version of the website, then promote it to the App fans out there, see what they think – and let them talk about you some more.


Keep learning

As a final tip, we recommend you read this article here from Marketing Week 'Are you making the most out of mobile?' which looks at how four retailers have brought their brands onto our handsets: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/digital-strategy-supplement/are-you-making-the-most-from-mobile?/3020898.article

The Flashlight team are pretty excited about mobile developments and if you are a current client then I am sure you will hear from them soon, as they determine how mobile can fit with your overall digital strategy.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

iPhone Applications on the move

Expect over the next six months to start to see a major growth in development of iPhone applications.

The stats to support this include:

607.5 million people globally accessing social networks by 2013, which is 43% of all mobile internet users (eMarketer)

50% of mobile phone users will access the mobile internet at least monthly by 2013 (eMarketer)

Also recent studies (from America) shows the % of people accessing websites via mobile phones are increasing: in January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. Twitter also experienced high growth attracting 4.7 million mobile user in Jan 10, up by 347% versus previous year. (Source: ComScore, Feb 2010, Facebook and Twitter Access via Mobile Browser Grows by Triple-Digits in the Past Year).

Content on the go

If your consumers/clients would benefit from content on the go being pushed to their phone (via 3GS) then talk to Rocktime Sales about Mobile Application development. We can create mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, Windows mobile and more. A benefit of working with us is that as we develop everything in house you will also be able to have complete control of the look and the feel of the application. The main design considerations we review to in creating your application with you, is to make sure it is easy to read, easy to navigate, fun or/and extremely useful to target market.

Recent iPhone development

Rocktime recently developed an iPhone application for Local Food Advisor linking into their site database, to share 4000 award winning producers, suppliers and farmers markets in the UK & Ireland read more about the iPhone app integration here>


How to get your app noticed?

There are over 100K 3rd party applications available to download, so the big question is how to get your application noticed? As part of social media optimisation we would advise you to network with your communities on social networks before launch and during launch. If the application development was based on feedback from your community then thank them and make them feel involved, they too will then share the love of your new application. If you have employees on Twitter talk to them about the new app let them know test dates, let them spread the word too around their own networks. Join in with application developer forums, get their feedback and continue to spread awareness of your application once launched.

Location based apps growing

Tech journalists and bloggers anticipate an increasing number of iPhone applications will become location based: so as tweets, blog posts, site content are based on a specific area the content will then be delivered to the iPhone application when required. On upload of the application it will ask “would you like to use your current location”, you may have already seen this already on sites such as http://gowalla.com/ and http://foursquare.com/ (see above blog post image).

Via 3GS and interaction with the location targeted apps, local businesses are benefiting as they are able to serve up adverts that are specific to the application users location ie: a coffee shop may tweet out to Four Square members, “Why not pop in to our branch on the High Street around 3pm and have Coffee for half price”. Pretty amazing yes, indication that web technology is continuing to empower the consumer even further, as they not only check for real time offers whilst on the move but receive them automatically too (Push & Pull notifications).

Be inspired

It is worth your while exploring iPhone applications even if you don’t have an iPhone, what works well on a phone could work for your site. The application store is also a great place to help create or build on new ideas, especially if you read the feedback pages.

If you are totally new to mobile phone applications and would like a little insight into how they function. look and the benefits to the user, we would recommend you go visit this post at Mashable, who in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, shared their top 10 free iPhone applications that promote continued environmental awareness, hopefully they will be of interest to you. For extra advise and guidance in this growing market of mobile phone applications pick up the phone to talk to Rocktime Sales.


Author: Sarah Griffiths