Anticipation has been building for years.

The expectation has always been that our lives will be transformed by new technologies. Everything from travel to sports and entertainment would be made new again…redefined.

And now, thanks to Delta and Madison Square Garden in partnership with Razorfish, that time has finally arrived.

Delta Air Lines’ Touch the Future of Travel and a newly refreshed yet still iconic Madison Square Garden is here.

In addition to the 11,000 square foot lounge which features select menus, multi-screen event coverage, and a clear view of professional athletes entering the arena through a glass hallway, we’ve created a unique experience for VIPs.

A personalized, curated way for travelers to discover new destinations, collecting content from around the globe and enjoying fantastic vistas that transport them into the magic of destination travel and discovery.

Delta’s Touch the Future of Travel is about unique inspiration, easier access to what you want, when you want it, and sharing travel ideas with friends…and Razorfish with Delta is making it all happen.

Fresh out of R&D from the Razorfish Emerging Experiences team is a product code-named “5D”. 5D started out as an idea to re-invent personal shopping. Our goal was to create a retail experience platform for both consumers and sales associates that enables multi-channel sales through immersive and connected digital devices in retail environments. And the only way to do it is to seamlessly integrate five key components – devices, content, experiences, analytics and CRM with a touch of digital magic!

The team announced 5D at the 2012 NRF Convention & Expo in New York City in partnership with NEC and Microsoft. Leveraging Windows Embedded, Microsoft Surface, MS Tag, Windows Phone and Kinect for Windows we created a prototype around a fictitious brand “Razorfashion” that demonstrates how various touch points along the customer journey can attract consumers into the store, drive product engagement and arm store associates with more contextualized digital tools.

You can read the full press release here

AT&T’s Small Business division asked the Emerging Experiences Group within Razorfish to create an in-store experience as part of a 30 store pilot program to create better awareness and engagement with customers as well as provide associates more powerful sales tools. The project has been a big success and you should be able to take a spin in a store near you soon.

Last month, WIRED magazine published an article entitled “A Thousand Points of Infrared Light” which highlights the effect that Kinect has had in transforming the way that we interact with digital experiences. Timed around the announcement of the official Kinect SDK, the article focuses initially on how this revolutionary device allowed researchers in robotics to take their experiences out of the lab with little cost (the Microsoft Kinect is an add on peripheral that costs $150).

It’s a great read on the subject on how a company can embrace the “hacker” community, thereby supporting innovation well beyond a products’ intended use. The first couple of weeks of Microsoft’s stance on Kinect hacks was uncertain, however Microsoft soon embraced the community.

WIRED researched the thousands of Kinect hacks in the wild and invited a handful of researchers, visual artists and technicians to be included in the magazine. We were excited to be included. Check out the iPad version of the magazine to see video of our DaVinci Kinect experience.

Thanks again to WIRED for the props and we look forward to sharing more experiences with everyone in the near future.

Back in November 2010, we posted a video of a little Microsoft Kinect app we called “DaVinci Kinect.” It’s a prototype we originally built for Microsoft Surface that blurs the lines between the physical and virtual world.

But as soon as we got our hands on the Kinect hardware, we updated the app to take advantage of the new platform and interactions –  as well as extended the technology to recognize hand/figure gestures. With our latest iteration, hand gestures are used to create objects and control the physics of the environment.  The user’s hands appear in the interface which allows one to literally grab objects out of thin air and move them in the environment. Additional gestures allow folks to affect gravity, magnetism and attraction.

After the blog was posted, we received a ton of attention from the likes of Gizmodo and Engadget. And now, we have an opportunity to demo the app at E3!  We’ve been working on a version for the Microsoft Surface v2 as well, so we’ve integrated the new graphics, interactions and a fun little homage to Mr. Lucas.

We’ll post footage of the event next week. Hope to see you there!

When it comes to travel, people care more about where they’re going than how they’re getting there. Delta Airlines understands this and asked Razorfish’s Emerging Experiences team to create an engaging experience for the WIRED Holiday Store in NYC. We wanted to tap into users’ imagination and sense of playfulness so that they walk away from the experience thinking about what kind of destinations they want to go to next and, of course, Delta.

In four (4) weeks we concepted, designed, developed and launched The Untravel Idea – a new, personal way for leisure travelers to encounter destinations. We wanted users to touch the future of travel.

The experience gives people an open-ended, creative experience that puts the user in control. First users choose the type mood they are looking for on their next getaway. From there users can select from a wide variety of relevant words that match their mood, and when put together, show them a range of destination possibilities. The result is a beautiful montage of photographic imagery that will transport the user’s imagination.

To extend the experience beyond the store, users are prompted to use their mobile device to snap a pic of a QR tag associated with each destination that allows them to explore additional destination info, video and travel packages.

The event was a complete success. People couldn’t wait to see where Delta would take them next. The Takeaway – Delta is not just an airline; they’re giving me new ways to discover travel destinations.

This is the future of travel … and it’s just the beginning.

EE is once again in Europe and this time we brought RockstAR to Cannes Lions.

The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is the world’s biggest and most prestigious international advertising award festival, with more than 22,500 entries from all over the world. The Festival is attended by over 6,000 delegates from 90 countries.

Microsoft Tag recently came out of beta and the team asked us to help them make the announcement at Cannes Lions with the RockstAR experience at the Microsoft Experience Center (shown above). Microsoft Tag is a QR code technology that allows you to scan Tags from your mobile phone for instant access to information, websites, videos, reviews, and more. You can design custom Tags (color or b&w) and through the Microsoft Tag online tools you can manage and track analytics on their performance. It’s a great tool for advertisers across multiple channels.

As you may already know we integrated it into RockstAR so that users can snap a pic of the Tag in the experience and instantly download their RockstAR photos. It seemed like a good fit given the nature Cannes as an entertainment destination. And of course we integrated the usual social components like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

In the spirit of the World Cup we’ve added players from all over the world for users to interact with.

Despite Fedex losing some of our equipment, the event was a huge success (good thing Steve always has a backup). After all this isn’t our first rodeo with the Microsoft Tag team.

Luckily we didn’t blow up any computers, however we did have a blast getting exclusive access to experience the new Xbox Kinect technology! We can’t wait to get our hands on this technology, the possibilities are endless.

Check out the rest of our photos on Flickr. (even more photos and videos coming soon!)

Viva la France!

Our team was asked to help launch the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 project at Mobile World Congress 2010. The project was a whirlwind experience – starting with 5 weeks of design/development and 11 days of deployment and support that spanned 2 continents and countless late nights. It was all worth it when Steve Ballmer made the introduction and we were all a part of history as the next generation in mobile experiences was announced to the 50k MWC attendees and a larger worldwide audience.  The people lucky enough to be in attendance couldn’t wait to get their hands on the experience we built.

We setup 10 touchscreens in 2 locations and the experiences were in constant use. Microsoft has since taken the touchscreens to countless other events including MIX10, SXSW 2010, CES, CTIA and many many more.

In addition to the touchscreen experiences, we also worked with our Seattle team to produce a microsite experience that would allow those not in attendance to get a taste of the phone.

We recently created an experience named RockstAR which features augmented reality and multi-touch technology. It is the classic photo booth experience taken to the next level with interactive technology, social integration (currently the experience posts to twitter, twitpic and flickr), good ole fashioned Rock n Roll and a little 80s video game nostalgia. We also can’t leave out the pink rug – one of the most important parts of any experience.

The application is the first demonstration of the Razorfish Vision Framework (RVF) and it is integrated with our Razorfish Touch Framework (RTF). The experience was featured at several SXSW Interactive Conference 2010 events including the Razorfish and Microsoft parties.

Stay tuned as we’ll be posting a behind-the-scenes tech walkthrough in the next week.

We’ve been very busy since the Windows Phone 7 Series experience launch in Spain, and there’s plenty more excitement over the next couple of weeks. We will be announcing the Razorfish Vision Framework at this year’s SxSW Interactive Conference. We have created a prototype application that is a mixture of Augmented Reality and Multi-touch called RockstAR and will be showcasing it at the Razorfish hosted cocktail party on Saturday the 13th at the Paradise bar. Come by and augment your reality!

Also …

Below is a quick list of the conferences we’re at in March. Please let us know if you are also attending and we’ll make sure you get a chance to check out our experiences.

• GDC 2010 (March 9-13, SanFran) – Lesley just returned from San Francisco, CA where we helped Microsoft showcase the WP7S experience in their Game Developers Conference booth.
• SxSW 2010 Interactive (March 12-15, Austin) – We’re hosting a panel on the 12th, please come interact with us as we discuss “Touch + The Holy Grail of Delight” at 2pm http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/6124. We are also launching a fun new AR experience for the Razorfish cocktail party. Finally we will be at the Microsoft Speakeasy event showcasing the WP7S experience.
• MIX10 (March 15-17, Vegas) – @stevedawson and @hulljon will be attending the conference. The WP7S experience will also be making an appearance … with updated content!
• CTIA (March 22-25, Vegas) – WP7S experience will be out in force at this international wireless conference.

A quick thanks to all the peeps that helped out with RockstAR:

• Steve – @stevedawson
• Luke – @lhamilton
• Alex – @alexn
• Dung – @dungtienle
• Sara – @saragiessen
• Heather – @heathergately
• Jonathan – @hulljon