I've been interested in Disney MagicBands since some of the first descriptions of them came out last year, but it's interesting to see how they're actually being used in parks now that they've launched. Essentially, they're like tracking cookies for live attendees, allowing the park to customize the visitor's experience and increase revenue generation from them. As ever, Pinky and the Brain saw it coming. One interesting aspect of this is that the "magic" in the bands is fairly pedestrian RFID tech. Really, the new thing here is the slick way the data is being integrated into the customer relationship management process in real time. Other Cool Stuff This Week:
- DevArt is a collaboration between Google and the Barbican in London that explores the potential of code as art. Three code artists have been commissioned to create new pieces for the Barbican's upcoming Digital Revolution exhibit. Better, they'll be opening their process up to video documentation.
- I've been using Facebook Paper this week, since I have the benefits of digital dual citizenship on the Apple store. I've seen some coverage calling it Facebook for people who hate Facebook, and I can understand where the sentiment comes from. The design feels like an attempt to shift the focus of Facebook toward content and away from pure narcissism. I'm not sure whether the predefined topical channels are going to retain my interest long term without some options for customization, but as an RSS partisan I'm clearly biased in favor of personal curation.
- The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion's ad Luge is a hilarious poke at Russia's anti-gay propaganda law.
- Free DJ app Pacemaker integrates with your Spotify account. Rather than trying to surpass pro and semi-pro DJing apps, it's designed as a more democratic app for someone who wants to play around with DJ tools.
- Toyota's Try My Hybrid campaign in Norway converted an existing community of enthusiastic hybrid owners into brand ambassadors via Facebook.
- Flora's gestural cooking web app supposedly helps cooks control a device in the kitchen without smudging it with their grubby fingers, which is brilliant. I cook almost every day, and all of my recipes are in Evernote. I need an app like this in my life. Unfortunately, this particular execution dodges every opportunity to be helpful. For one, it's only built to control streaming video rather than scrolling text or images. Do people actually cook from video content in real time? Rarely, I suspect. Worse, it supposedly doesn't work on my iPad2 running iOS7, which means I'd have to subject a laptop to my messy cook surface. One day someone will do this correctly, and iPad cooks will rejoice.