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

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!

One of the questions we constantly asked ourselves was how we could utilize Microsoft Surface as an easy and collaborative sharing platform. Surface is a product designed for social environments, attracting and engaging people to take a seat around the table and interact. As smartphones take over the mobile market, it’s important to recognize that people expect to have intuitive ways to connect their handsets and share pictures, information or other data. But we still haven’t seen a solution which leverages the whole Surface potential to create a compelling mobile sharing experience.

This is where our newly developed Amnesia Connect platform comes in. It demonstrates the most seamless and visual sharing opportunities a Surface table can probably provide. With support for any number of mobile devices, users can literally see-through their device and share content as easy and tactile as it can get. It is perfectly suited for sharing visual data like images and video, but works for any other type of content as well.

At the moment we support iPhone and iPad devices and are currently evaluating other platforms as well. But we can already tell that it’s heart-warming to see Microsoft’s and Apple’s devices playing so nicely together and we can’t wait to throw other players into the mix as well.

Read the full press release here.

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!

The Razorfish team in Germany partnered with Realtime Technology AG to build configuration experiences for the Audi A1 world premiere at the international motor show in Geneva. They are designed to attract and engage young people and to demonstrate the wide range of customization possibilities of the new Audi.

The first experience is located on the main stage, featuring a 24″ Multi-Touch display allowing users to interact with the car configuration and an additional 65″ display with synchronized high-definition 3d-rendering in real-time to garner even more attention. The complex configuration scenario is wrapped in a simple and easy-to-use interface. The application is based on Windows 7 and the Razorfish Touch Framework.

The second configurator runs on Microsoft Surface and is based on the Audi A4 configurator. The multi-user environment allows individuals to place physical tokens on the table and configure their favorite A1 in a collaborative way. The extravagant competition kit adds exciting new possibilities to spice up the user’s virtual car.

Both configurators can be seen live at Geneva Motor Show until March 14, 2010.

Neue Digitale / Razorfish developed the first realtime 3d configurator for Microsoft Surface which was showcased at this year’s IAA – the world’s leading automotive fair.

Developed in collaboration with Realtime Technology AG, the application allows multiple users to configure an Audi A4 simultaneously by changing the car’s paint finishes, rims and by selecting and coloring style package components. The configured A4 is experienced in an immersive 3d environment, in which users can navigate seamlessly by zooming and panning using a multitouch-enabled interface. Special perspectives allow a more detailed view for specific components, for example for configuring rims or taking a closer look at interior details.

To control the actual car configuration process users can place multilingual tokens on the table. All available options appear around the token and can be selected by touching or rotating the physical token.

The final car configuration is projected on an external High Definition display, attracting and engaging other visitors.

Iain McDonald with Amnesia Razorfish introduced the Lonely Planet Surface application at Remix Australia – check out the video!

Fast Company, after a couple of “Killer Apps” articles (11 Killer Apps and 5 More Killer Apps), has finally compiled a Complete Guide for everyone to enjoy. Obviously this list will probably be outdated in a week with all the cool stuff coming out (hehe), however we’re proud to announce that 3 apps from the Razorfish Emerging Experiences teams have made the list!

For more info on each app …

• Surface Table Toss
• DaVinci: Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator
• Amnesia Razorfish Staff Directory on Microsoft Surface

Congrats to all the other companies that made the list too. Keep up the good work!

Check out the above technology demonstration of the multi-touch Virtual Earth control and the Razorfish Touch Framework. This video demonstrates a weather experience and the cross-platform capabilities of the framework on Microsoft Surface or other touch-enabled devices.

Extending social experiences to the digital out-of-home and retail environment is a growing trend. One of the advantages of Microsoft Surface over other technologies is supporting engaging social experiences. The table-top form-factor and massively multi-touch input (more than 52 concurrent touches) lends itself well to support multi-user social interaction. Here are some of the ways we have used Microsoft Surface to support social experiences.

At the 2008 Razorfish Client Summit, the Seattle office created a social experience that allowed attendees to place their badge on Surface to enter a raffle for a free XBOX and bid on guitar signed by the “fifth Beetle” George Martin. In addition, attendees could form connections between eachother using the Surface table – as connections were made, behind-the-scenes we would e-mail each attendee the other person’s contact information. The client summit experience was extended for the Razorfish Atlanta Open House. Badges were tagged and guests congregated around the table to exchange information and connect with people that shared similar interests.

Recently our friends in the Neue Digitale / Razorfish in Germany created a social application for the Microsoft Xtopia conference named “Event Connect” that allowed attendees to access their Facebook account on Surface. Users could exchange photos of the event and send friend requests to eachother within the experience. This same experience was recently re-skinned by the Austin office and featured at the 2009 Razorfish SXSW party.

The Amnesia Razorfish office in Australia printed Surface tags on their business cards . When placed on Surface, these cards can access a variety of social feeds, including blog posts, Twitter updates and photos from Flickr. Check out video of the application here.