Monthly Archives: June 2017

Online shopping is on the riseits fast and ships directly to your doorstep, sometimes overnight. But with online shopping, you miss the experience of going into a store and picking up items. Enter virtual reality shopping, which tries to give you the convenience of online shopping and the experience of being in a store.

People are already shopping through virtual reality, but its still in its beginning stages. In late 2016, Chinas Alibaba launched Buy+, a virtual reality experience that could be accessed with a virtual reality headset. With Buy+, people could wander around a store, look through items, and add things to a cart by staring at a product for long enough. According to Vice, 30,000 people had already tried Buy+ an hour after its launch.

To use virtual reality shopping, youll need a virtual reality headset, which could range from a $10 Google Cardboard to hundreds of dollars for an Oculus Rift. Like online shopping, theres usually a virtual shopping cart and you can buy things by giving your credit card information upon checkout.

Big companies like Amazon are also working on adding virtual reality shopping in an attempt to increase sales. In May 2016, Ikea let users design their own kitchens with a HTC Vive. Audi also used the HTC Vive to present cars in showrooms. Later in 2016, eBay Australia teamed up with Myer to create the first virtual reality department store, but it simulated a web of floating objects rather than a physical store.

Earlier this month, Ikea started using virtual reality in Australia. You can see the experience for yourself on Android, iOS, and desktop (though the desktop version doesnt have virtual reality).

The Ikea version of virtual reality shopping feels like a more immersive version of Google Street View. You can wander around the store and in between furniture. You can select objects marked with floating blue dots, revealing the items description and price. Most of the furniture isnt marked, though, so youll have to zoom in on the tags and remind yourself to search for it later.

Smaller companies like Gatsby, a startup that creates virtual reality stores, are also looking to create virtual reality shopping experiences.

Were really trying to get close to what its like being there, and we want it to be very intimate, said Anastasia Cifuentes, co-founder of Gatsby. All the little details on how you move, were really focusing on how to have that just right. Gatsby has been experimenting with virtual reality for less than 6 months but hopes to launch an app in the fall.

Using Gatsbys shopping app to buy furniture feels like playing a game. You can look around a room from a fixed point (you cant move around the space yet). Theres a button that let you click on objects and rotate them. Once you select an object, details about the objects length, width, height, and price appear. If you want an item, you can add it to your cart.

The demo I tested was animated rather than based on real photos, which made the experience less realistic. The app is still in development, but Gatsby hopes to use real photos of objects and rooms once the app is finished. Gatsby will be free to everyoneyoull only need something, like a Google Cardboard, to view it through.

Theres an efficiency factor that being online satisfies, but weve lost something in traveling to that, which is just being able to hold the product, said Cifuentes. There are still things we need to see and touch that we have to go to the store for, like furniture.

Virtual reality doesnt completely replicate the in-person shopping experience, but its getting there. Its also getting cheaper and more accessible: now you only need your smartphone and a $10 Google Cardboard set to experience it.

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Virtual Reality Is the Future of Shopping - Lifehacker

ALL VIEWS

This year the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was the worlds largest gathering of digital creators and innovators from the communications and advertising industries.

A multitude of speakers were at the festival, and there were a multitude of prizes for Film, Film Craft, Media, Press, Outdoor, Cyber, Promo & Activation, Direct, Design, Radio, Mobile and more.

So what was the next big thing everyone was talking about? That would be Virtual Reality although the technology is still in its infancy.

VR makes life virtual, it mimics real world scenarios, usually in a 3D environment, so that people could potentially walk around the Louvre Museum in Paris, without having to physically be there. Or they can learn how to operate in a hostile environment, such as one of the frontlines of the conflict in Syria, without having to put themselves in danger. And thats not to forget the most obvious VR vehicle computer games where the technology is at its most advanced.

Virtual reality is dominated by visual media, and for most people youtube is currently the main platform people go to to look for video on the internet. Debbie Weinstein, the managing director for YouTube and video solutions, told Euronews what this brave new world might be like.

I think the possibility of virtual reality is really having these deeply immersive experiences. Its as if you are there, as if you are in the front row at the concert So its as if the two of you, or three of you, or a group of you are at the front row of a concert of your favourite artist. Youre all experiencing virtual reality at the same time, but you are not actually there, she says.

The possibilities are endless because ultimately VR is simply another media, but there are some very valuable real-life advantages to contemplate. In medicine surgeons may in the future gain valuable experience practising on virtual organs when its clearly unethical for them to practise on a real-life patient. Or police officers may be able to train in a 3D simulated terror attack environment. It will never be quite the same as real life but technology will bring us ever closer to the real thing in the future.

Other big things to take away from Cannes Lions? Taking data privacy more seriously came up repeatedly.

Today we only need our smartphone to work, to get a car, order food, watch video, listen to music, read and so on. Many of us can spend days with our smartphones only and cant survive for too long without it.

This trend will not change much in the future all the companies at Cannes agreed on that. But it will raise the issue of data privacy soon, according to Alex Cheeseman, the Chief Strategy Officer at Storyful, a company which trawls the internet looking for newsworthy content to sell to its subscribers.

I believe there is going to be a major shift in consumers wanting to own their data. But for now people arent that interested. Consumers dont really care about their data, theylI give it to any website. Theyll tick the box, they dont even read it.

And when people do realize their data has been compromised, or theyre worried that it could be,what can they do about it?

The only way for me to protect that data is to take it back myself, hold it, and wrap it up in my own layer of protection, Cheeseman said.

And when the publics trust in how safely their data is stored by countless web sites and servers begins to erode, many industries may face a sober reckoning.

Once people have their own data, what does that mean for advertisers, what does that means for social platforms? There is going to be a value exchange. Within the next two to five years this is going to be a massive trend. I think it will impact the industry massively.

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Virtual Reality excites Cannes Lions festival - euronews

City Hall and New York University are looking to tag team their way into another realm - a time and place where the citys virtual reality sphere rivals the tech scene in Silicon Valley.

City officials announced Tuesday that NYU Tandon School of Engineering has been selected to operate a virtual and augmented reality lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that is expected to open in late 2017.

As part of its agreement with the city, NYU is organizing a workforce development program with CUNY that will direct graduates from the Lehman Colleges Virtual Reality Training Academy and Development Lab to the 15,000-square-foot lab in Brooklyn.

City officials said the government invested $6 million in the project - making it the first publicly funded virtual reality lab in the country focused on growing the industry - because they believe it will help create 500 jobs over the next decade. These positions are part of Mayor Bill de Blasios plan to create 100,000 jobs that pay at least $50,000 annually over the next 10 years.

By training the next generation in [virtual reality] and [augmented reality], its really making sure that we are having people trained in New York, who stay in New York and work in these fields, said Media and Entertainment Commissioner Julie Menin.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering Vice Dean Kurt Becker said the lab would admit fledgling startups to an accelerator program meant to help them through their first few months and more established firms to a two-year stay.

The accelerator program will help companies conduct market research and glean how their ideas could fit consumers needs, attract seed funding and craft a viable business plan.

All firms admitted to the lab will receive legal, intellectual property, human resources and accounting services on top of help meeting investors, according to Becker.

We will host pitch days; we will host demo days; we will host networking events to bring the companies in front of people with money, Becker said.

NYU will likely charge a per-desk rate for firms using the lab, and will likely receive a stake in the firms going through its accelerator program in lieu of charging for the program, Becker said.

He said NYU has not yet heard from groups looking to join the lab, but has already lined up some partnerships with corporations looking to support its occupants.

NYU and Lehman are still finalizing the details of the workforce development plan.

The university beat out 14 other applicants looking to run the lab, in part, because of its approach to training New Yorkers for the field, according to Ryan Birchmeier, a spokesman for the citys Economic Development Corporation.

One of the foundations of the citys plans to establish a VR/AR lab is to make the industry more accessible to New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds, Birchmeier said in a statement. NYU Tandon was selected to develop the lab, largely due to their commitment to workforce development, and the breadth of significant efforts they outlined in their proposal to drive accessibility.

With Sarina Trangle

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Virtual reality lab in Brooklyn, an NYC-NYU joint, to open in late ... - amNY