The Dutch public transport travel planner 9292 is organizing a contest that challenges students to create the ultimate public transport (web) application. They get access to a special server that sends them XML-code which they can use to connect their application to the public transport databases. They can win 1500, 750 or 500 euro.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All companies will open their databases. First they were the web 2.0 companies, but now also traditional companies with a lot of technology, later you’ll get insight in every detail and into every company. That’s called transparent working in the network economy. And that process of change is called the brand coming out. A nice example.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

This March, NIGZ-Donorvoorlichting will start a recruitment campaign (for organ donation) under all 18-year-old Dutch people. Beside a letter to the home address the webcam is central to this campaign. All youths born in 1990 will receive a donor form and a pamphlet at home in mid-March.

Both the pamphlet and the form have a spectacular 3D animation. This animation will come to life if the form or the pamphlet is held in front of the webcam. That makes the NIGZ-Donorvoorlichting one of the first parties to use web based augmented reality, or combining the real world with virtual data.

A preview of the campaign can already be seen on www.donorformulier.nl. Click on through to the webcam part and an ActiveX-application will appear. The installation will take about 10 seconds.

Then the webcam will be recognized. When the webcam is activated the donor form and the pamphlet can be shown to the webcam. The 3D animation will then start on its own. When the form is taken out of the webcam's sight the effect will disappear.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands will bring to life anything they can produce physically. Not just products, but flyers, forms and their products. This is a nice example.

Related trends

• Product activation

The amount of time that people spend daily in physical contact has been reduced from six to two hours in the last 20 years. In the same period the amount of hours people spend practicing activities like watching tv, playing video games, or being active on the internet – and thus are prevented from having physical contact with one another – has doubled to 8 hours a day. That concludes a study by Aric Sigman, a member of the Royal Society of Medicine, which will be published in this month's issue of Biologist.

The study, which uses data gathered in Western industrialized countries, shows that the lack of 'real' interaction combined with the dependency on technology bring a change in human physiology which stimulates diseases like cancer, dementia and strokes. The diseases are also getting more severe and the death toll linked to this lifestyle is evolving in a rising line.

'Apparently people have a protective evolutionary system that starts working when we work together and connect to each other physically. Although internet is a beautiful medium, it cannot replace real relationships and our use of internet has fallen completely out of balance,' says Sigman. Research shows that practically all nationalities are reducing the amount of physical meeting hours in a manner never seen before. (From: Express.be)