Giving Your ‘Touch’ Screen Real Feelings

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

You may never have heard of haptics, but you come into contact with it every day. When your phone vibrates to indicate an incoming call, that’s haptics. When you’re playing a video game and your controller rumbles along to an explosion in the game, that’s haptics. Haptics is any technology that connects with the user through the sense of touch.

GE Looks at the Future of Flight

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

Check out out this website - Future Flight - for a look into the future of aviation from GE.

The real treat on this particular website is the interactive airport map. You'll find it about halfway down the page. Check out such lists as "World's Oldest Airports" and "Most Scenic Airports". Our hometown San Diego made the top of "World's Most Urban Airports". Choose the "Remote Airport" list and then zoom out on the map to see just how middle-of-nowhere some airports are! You can also make a custom list - maybe all the airports you've flown into, or ones you'd like to visit - and share it with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Maybe you should activate the out-of-office manager on your e-mail...this site could have you busy for a couple hours.



 Picture credit: GE

Pull Up a Chair...to your iPhone

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

Is the iPhone screen just too small for you?

You've tried upgrading the iPad, but still not getting the screen clarity you desire?

Maybe you need to pull up a chair to the iTableous!

Creator Benjamin Bachmeier took a 40" screen and designed an Apple-style table around it. In addition, it runs the Mac operating system (and Windows 7!), rather than the iOS (the operating system for Apple phones and tablets).

Check it the iTableous here, and watch a video tour of this custom job!

Online Shopping, Tablet-Style

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

Online shopping changed the face of retailing, but what will change the face of online shopping? The clear candidate is the touch screen computer – more specifically the tablet. Devices like the iPad and Galaxy can recreate the feeling of flipping through a catalog to shop a retailer’s inventory, giving a more personal, or maybe a more familiar, touch than scrolling down a list in a browser window.

QR Tech Alert: SnapTags Become Fashionable

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

You may have seen QR Codes and Microsoft Tags here and there in print magazine ads. But fashion magazine Glamour is looking to ratchet up mobile tagging in print media with their fall fashion issue. The magazine has partnered with Facebook to add “SnapTags” to the cover and inside ad pages of their September edition. Readers with smartphones will scan the SnapTags and be encouraged to “Like” either Glamour’s or a relevant advertiser’s Facebook page.

Introducing the Next World's Tallest Building

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

New concept pictures have just been released for the Kingdom Tower project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The one-kilometer-tall skyscraper will dwarf the current place-holder, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, by nearly 200 meters. Within, 59 elevators will race you to the observation deck at 10 meters per second. This is not a building for the easily queasy!

Check out the website of Chicago's AS+GG Architecture, the firm designing the tower, for awe-inspiring renderings of what the completed project will look like. Construction is expected to start no later than this December, and take about five years to complete.

Remember, while these are computer renderings, this is a building they are really hoping to build - not a piece of CGI scenery for the next Star Wars project!

QR Tech Alert: Subway Shopping

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

UK-based retailer Tesco is bringing the store to the shopper using QR codes. In South Korea, the supermarket chain has set up a virtual storefront in a Seoul subway station. Wall-length advertisements were designed to look like market shelves, displaying product images and price tags featuring unique QR codes. Shoppers, while waiting for their train, can scan the codes, adding them to their online shopping cart. Once the transaction is complete, the order is processed at a nearby Tesco Homeplus and the real groceries are packaged up and delivered to the shopper’s home by the end of the day.

The approach lets consumers who may feel that they do not have enough time to go to the grocery store make ample use of their waiting time during commutes.

Click below to see a video of the set-up of the virtual supermarket:

Bringing Social Media Into the Office

by Harris Cohen, The PromoGuru

Social media sites can be a great way for businesses to reach customers, but it’s hard to keep an open forum like Facebook anything but informal. So how do you utilize social media in your business and still keep an aura of professionalism?

iPhone 5 Update

by Harris Cohen, the PromoGuru

Looks like it won't be until October that we see the release of the next generation of iPhone.

See this story at All Things D for details, including how Apple employees have been blocked from taking vacation the last two weeks of September in preparation for the iPhone 5 release!

Photo Credit: All Things D

Tablets Are From Mars, eReaders Are From Venus

by Harris Cohen, The PromoGuru

Is the battle of the sexes spilling over into our tech preferences? It’s about more than just a choice between the pink or blue iPod Nanos. A recent study found that women are more likely to own an e-reader, and men more likely to own a tablet.

Research firm GfK MRI polled more than 26,000 adults in the U.S. and discovered that women are 52 percent more likely than men to own an e-reader, and men are 24 percent more likely than women to own a tablet.