Video Projection: When Buildings Come to Life
Video projection has come a long way. Forget about the flat, white screen…that is so last decade. Now you can project a video onto almost anything. One medium that has become an increasingly popular place to put large scale images is on buildings. This started out as a purely artistic endeavor, but has gradually moved into the realm of advertising. Here is a video simulation showing what is possible:
My Top 5 Favorite Video Projections (with quotes from the developers):
Branchage Film Festival 2009
“Using cutting edge 3D Projection mapping techniques the Castle will be showered in light. At first seeming to simply illuminate, morphing over time as the entire architectural form of the castle distorts and morphs. Objects pour out the windows, the walls unravel and energy builds as this logic-defying spectacle captivates and questions your perception. This battle of light and the senses will expose the castle like never before!”
NordCom in Germany
“Pinwall: Facade becomes an interactive gaming board”
Samsung in Amsterdam
“In order to enforce the launching of the new Samsung 3D TV, NuFormer Projections developed an impressive 3D projection on the façade of the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. The projection was implemented on May 20 and lasted till May 22, 2010. Spectators were able to view the projection during these nights. Within one day quite a number of recordings were put on sites/portals such as Youtube and other news sites.”
BMW in Singapore
“This particular 3D projection was done on two identical, adjacent buildings of Sun Tec City in Singapore. The projections were quite large and fitted with matching audio. The entire projection consisted of 3D animation, based on the style and video footage of the latest BMW TV commercials. The projections were implemented on two nights and were part of a special event for the top executives of BMW Asia and their business associates.”
New Year’s Eve in Texas
“3D Projection mapping in the city of Sugarland, Texas for the 25th anniversary of the city.”
- John Boese
My Top 5 Favorite Video Projections (with quotes from the developers):
Branchage Film Festival 2009
“Using cutting edge 3D Projection mapping techniques the Castle will be showered in light. At first seeming to simply illuminate, morphing over time as the entire architectural form of the castle distorts and morphs. Objects pour out the windows, the walls unravel and energy builds as this logic-defying spectacle captivates and questions your perception. This battle of light and the senses will expose the castle like never before!”
NordCom in Germany
“Pinwall: Facade becomes an interactive gaming board”
Samsung in Amsterdam
“In order to enforce the launching of the new Samsung 3D TV, NuFormer Projections developed an impressive 3D projection on the façade of the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. The projection was implemented on May 20 and lasted till May 22, 2010. Spectators were able to view the projection during these nights. Within one day quite a number of recordings were put on sites/portals such as Youtube and other news sites.”
BMW in Singapore
“This particular 3D projection was done on two identical, adjacent buildings of Sun Tec City in Singapore. The projections were quite large and fitted with matching audio. The entire projection consisted of 3D animation, based on the style and video footage of the latest BMW TV commercials. The projections were implemented on two nights and were part of a special event for the top executives of BMW Asia and their business associates.”
New Year’s Eve in Texas
“3D Projection mapping in the city of Sugarland, Texas for the 25th anniversary of the city.”
- John Boese

Have you ever texted a keyword to a short code to get more information about a product or service? Yeah, me neither. It’s not that I haven’t been tempted (especially when I had a chance to win an iPad), but it’s a hassle to type on the iPhone’s tiny little keypad and I don’t even have a texting plan.




Square’s management team has the deep technology and entrepreneurial experience building products that scale that will be necessary for Square to grow. Square is run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The company’s investors and advisors include former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu (in his first investment as a member of Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures), digg’s Kevin Rose, FourSquare’s Dennis Crowley, Napster founder Shawn Fanning, and, perhaps most influentially, Ron Conway (an investor in or an advisor to Google, Facebook, PayPal, and Twitter among many others).
Square was launched in December 2009. It is currently is in a trial run for a limited number of beta testers and currently works just in the United States on iPhones and iPads. To suggest that it will grow significantly in two years is not tough because growing from, say 100 beta testers to 1,000 users is 10x growth. But while that may be called “significant,” it won’t be game-changing unless it’s scalable at the level of, well, the other companies run by its founders and advisors. Given the expertise of this team at marketing products via both traditional and new media channels and growing those products from hundreds of users to millions, I believe that Square can be successful.
With the rise of Smartphone usage and technology advancements, companies and local business now have an additional outlet to increase their exposure to their target consumers. Consumers are always in the market for deals and as a result companies such as Gilt Group and Groupon have emerged to capitalized on this need. In addition to appealing to the rational side of the consumer, companies such as foursquare and Yelp have capitalized on the consumer’s social nature. What if there was a company that not only offered deals but also engaged social interaction all through the mobile channel? There is. A new startup, 

It’s gearing up to be the mobile social “battle of the century.” For the first time, the founders of the major mobile social platforms will be sharing the stage and battling it out to see which platform will eventually win out in the marketplace. The Ogilvy Digital Labs proudly presents “The Battle of the Mobile Social Networks.”
In this corner…weighing in at 1 million users…the badge-awarding…mayorship-crowning…acquisition target of everyone…FOURSQUARE.
And in this corner…weighing in at 3 million users…the first kid on the block…and now the granddaddy of them all…LOOPT.
The iPad offers a lot of opportunities for advertisers. Well, maybe not in terms of driving mass awareness and generating significant sales lifts, but certainly in terms of engagement, PR, and buzz. With just over a million iPads 
TechCrunch deemed it one of the “25 Startups That Will Be Shaping the Next Web.” It’s been described as “Foursquare for the enterprise” and “Ning for mobile social networks.” After hearing a lot of buzz about 
