The Austin Convention Center is packed; not with suits and ties, but rather with hipsters in skinny jeans and plaid flannel shirts. That’s right, we’re at SXSW. The weeklong celebration of interactive technology (as well as BBQ, beer, music and hard to get Foursquare badges), draws entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, and minds to Austin.
Today’s highlights ran the gamut from payment apps to digital wallets, location-based services, and social gaming, to mobile apps for social good.
No more Seinfeld Castanza wallet – money holders go digital
Christina Nguyen White from Sapient thinks the growing hole in your back jeans pocket is getting a bit too personal. And swiping your card is so 2000-and-late. Why swipe when you can just scan? She asked in her panel “Thin Is In – The Future of Digital Wallets.”
In the name of better figure hugging jeans, when will we be able to lose those bulky wallets without losing the cash? The answer? Apparently digital wallets are within very close reach – with RFIDs, QR codes, and Big-Brother-like tracking all stepping up to the payment plate.
Forget checking in, we’re talking about checking out
Checking out with your phone is becoming almost as cool as checking IN on Foursquare, grabbing coupons digitally to take advantage of digital discounts is almost effortless, as is scanning your digital ticket at Friday’s ballgame.
Are you a miser? No problem, you can still digitally split the bill with your friends using your phone. Retailers are edging towards digital, says Nguyen White, who warns that the industry will have to understand that this will have significant impact and completely change the way we interact with our mobile phones.
The UI of a digital wallet will be one of the biggest success factors for adoption, said Nguyen White, noting “Keep it simple. Gradually Enhance.” Indeed, keep-it-simple-stupid seems to be a theme today, along with “patience.”
The digital wallet, we’re told, needs to find it’s relevant place within the shopping Eco-system and while the gap between social and commerce is closing, we’re not quite there yet.
Speaking of checking in, Google goes for title of mayor
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Consumer Products, sounded rather more like a real estate agent today at SXSW with her focus on location, location, location. Mayer said Google was putting heavy emphasis on adding location awareness into its existing apps, and was improving its 3D mapping capabilities.
Trying to steal some market share away from the likes of Yelp, Foursquare and Facebook Places, Google is also releasing its own check-in system, Hotpot, of which Austin is a ‘hot’ test-bed.
Google also wants in on all the augmented reality hype, as well as “contextual discovery.” Confused about what that means? From what we can understand, it’s all about taking a picture of your surroundings and Google understanding where that is and what’s going on at that location.
Contextual discovery also entails a rather creepy notion of Google being able to passively pick up information about people and send them relevant suggestions based on that knowledge. For example, it would know whether you were a tourist or a local in Austin and if you were driving past the Capitol building, it would either be able to bring up the history of the building if you’re a tourist or give you traffic updates if you’re a local.
Cool or creepy? You decide.
Playing Farmville on Facebook – not just for nerds anymore
In a keynote today, Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Zynga, the company best known for Facebook games like Mafia Wars and Farmville, told the audience “social games are not just for geeks anymore.” He described the inherent social nature of humans, a sociability that can extend into gaming and lends itself perfectly to games on Facebook, the mecca of all things social.
He attributed Zynga’s success to Facebook’s ability to create a conversation around a particular action or expression within a video game. For example, sharing a picture of the latest cow you acquired on the farm may prompt your friends to engage in a conversation with you on Facebook, which Reynolds believes further drives your desire to play the game and continue the interaction. That, or your friends will disown you for playing Farmville all the time. Could go either way.
Speaking of social games, what about the social good?
Another big trend coming out of SXSW is the idea of technology for the social good, and nothing epitomizes this more than educational apps.
Boasting an impressive line-up of panelists – including James Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary for innovation at the U.S. Department of Education, Stacey Childress, the deputy director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scott Goldman, VP of the GRAMMY Foundation – the topic turned quickly to how creativity, innovation and technology could address the growing crisis in education.
“The state of education is at a tipping point,” noted Samsung’s CMO, Ralph Santana. “Technology can be an enabler in that change we all want to see happen in education,” he added. This may mean tablets in schools, or video games to teach kids. With a young generation brought up on technology like text messaging, Facebook, and computers, the panelists argued that education needs to keep up.
