It combines an iPhone, a remote control car, an on board microphone, a Virtual Reality headset, Wifi and an Arduino board to create a top driving experience for its user! Gavin is currently developing the project as his major for his degree in Interactive Media Production, and invited me along with his course mates to beta test in the University sports hall (which made the test even better with its slippery surface!).

He has two key objectives for the project:

• WiDrive’s primary objective is to allow a user to control a remote control car using a mobile device, currently this is an iPhone. The user is able to steer the car by tilting the phone using the iPhone’s accelerometer to measure the amount inertia being exerted at each axis of the iPhone. This is then translated to an integer value of which the car can respond to. This data is sent to a third party module on the car using a wireless socket connection, this module takes the place of the standard remote control receiver and sends a pulse width modulation signal to the car’s onboard servo which steers the car from the left to the right. This same method is used to increase and decrease the acceleration of the car.

• WiDrive’s secondary objective is one of immersion. A driver can be mentally transported into the car using a combination of an onboard wireless camera and a pair of video glasses. The aim of this is two fold. It allows the driver to drive out of line of sight and covertly into areas of interest. The second aim is to immerse the user within the driving experience offering something not currently found on the market today.

Having had a play with the it myself, I can say I have not experienced anything quite like it! Initially, I had a go without the headset, but found that I was a little heavy handed with the turning and speed. Once I had the headset on, I found that I was much more aware of the sensitivity of both the acceleration and of the turning.

After a bit of practice and getting comfortable, you become well immersed in the experience and despite crashing it twice (on one occasion the camera flew out like a passenger not wearing a seatbelt), it was still a hell of a lot of fun too!

Gavin Williams is an extremely talented developer on the Interactive Media Production Course at Bournemouth University, a course which continues to produce some truly brilliant design and development talent. I have an array of students I can recommend for placements, grad schemes and internships, so get in touch and I will try and put you in touch with some quality candidates.

In the meantime, check out the awesome video of WiDrive in action below, and pictures of the project in development in Flickr!!

WiDrive Open Beta from Gavin Williams on Vimeo.

I have rapidly established a reputation for ‘iPhone bashing’, which is nothing to do with not owning a suite of Apple Products or disliking Steve Job’s hair. Oh no. For those of you that are not aware, my main ‘beef’ is with brands who do not consider other platforms simply because its a) too hard, b) too expensive/not as cheap as iPhone or c) just want to tick a box that says ‘We have an iPhone app’.

There is a wealth and breadth of great (and some not so great) operating systems out there that can offer brilliant, rich and engaging experiences for their users, that despite having a substantially larger market share than Apple, continue to be overlooked. For a long time I have wanted to put together a presentation to demonstrate this very point, but Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review has pulled it out of the bag.

When it comes down to offering consumer utilities or CRM extensions, it is important to closely consider which platform to employ, but whether you should even consider the mobile web before apps! The iPhone is just 4% of the UK mobile handset share, so can you really justify spending a vast amount of your marketing budget on an app that might reach only 4% of your target audience (assuming your brand is a national brand with a fair reflection of the British population). The most likely scenario is that you cannot.

As mobile moves from ‘bit-part’ to mainstream, the importance of understanding this audience, their handsets and how they interact with brands via their mobile will be of the utmost importance. Mobile ’strategists’ and planners will, like social media this year, start cropping up at agencies all over the world, and become an integral part of the planning and creative process. And this here, this is your first free piece of advice, condensed into a succinct yet effective presentation from Ewan. Enjoy.

p.s. still need more convincing? Martin Wilson and Tomi Ahonen can offer further support

After the recent iPhone OS4 announcement, I felt a strange sense of excitement which I had never had after previous announcement by Apple (mainly because it was bollocks like ‘we’ve now got MMS!’). This was very very different indeed, and had nothing to do with the long awaited introduction of multitasking. No, for me, the real excitement was relating to the mobile advertising platform ‘iAd’ that comes pre installed in the OS. So whats the big deal? And who will it benefit? Its a big deal because it is approaching mobile advertising in a format yet to be experienced by the average mobile user, and by embracing the rich content ability of the platform, allows for some real cool creative to be employed. This means happy Apple, happy agencies, happy brands, and most importantly, happy users! Here is why I think it is so good:

• Emotion and Interactivity…together – Apple have recognised that digital display advertising in its inherent form allows for a degree of interactivity, without evoking much of an emotional response, whereas TV advertising can make a significant emotional connection with its audience without much interaction (ok, maybe a call to action but no direct interaction). The iAd platform appears to allow for a substantial dollop of both. Gaming, content and utilities are crammed into what should be a direct link to a web page, but in essence, its an app within an app. This allows for a broad spectrum of interactivity, as well as the ability to make an emotional connection through video support.
• Ads keep you where you want to be – So you are served an ad within an application, and for once you are ever so slightly interested/intrigued by what the ad is offering (surely it isn’t a RELEVANT ad?!). However, you know that if you click it you will be removed from the application you were originally intending to use, and are then dumped on some random usability nightmare of a web page in Safari. Not with iAd. The ads remain within the application, which means you can engage with the ad and its key messages, before returning to exactly the same place you were before. No more re-navigating back to your ex-girlfriends facebook page, or having to work your way back to Level 34 on Paper Toss!
• 60% of revenues into developers pockets – If your App opts to host some ads, you get a cut of 60% of the revenue – Brucey’s Bonus!  And knowing the ads will be interactive and engaging, it can only encourage developers to consider there inclusion. And we knew Apple had to make some money out of it somewhere, so as well as Apple selling and hosting the ad space, they take the reasonable 40% cut.

I believe that this has been well thought through by Apple, with a view to making a bit of pocket money, but by also offering a proposition that is attractive to developers, advertisers and consumers. Very clever indeed. The key challenge facing Apple, who are selling and hosting the ads, is to ensure the quality of the ads is maintained to a high standard, and to make sure all the ads that they serve are RELEVANT to the users. This relevancy, where it can, must be focussed not on the specific app that the ad is served in, but take a deeper look at the variation of apps loaded on the users device in order to create their ‘preference profile’. I don’t believe this challenges privacy too much, but as long as it is well executed all will be fine. Take a look at the iAd section of Mr Jobs presentation in the videos below.

There are a few noticeable and obvious trends (namely rise of RIM, Apple and Android, fall of Windows and Linux), but I honestly believe this year will throw up several more surprise. Keep an eye out for:

• The rebirth of Windows Phone – This will depend on the time of its official launch, but after the positive reception at and post MWC, it is clear that it will start to reclaim some of that last market share. This may not be too evident until 2011 however, with a proposed Q4 2010 launch.
• The Android explosion continues – 2009 was very much a testing the water year fro Android, with the high profile Motorola Droid, Nexus One and HTC Hero all contributing to a jump in share, however 2010 will be the year when Android is a success based on the broad range of other handsets it will feature on. I expect an even more significant leap this year.
• Symbian stability – Despite receiving several body blows in the form of the iPhone and Blackberry, I still expect due to their huge huge sales figures for Symbian not to make its fall from grace just yet. It will take a lot more than a few rivals to bring down this behemoth.

Have brand managers and marketers completely forgotten the reasoning behind communicating with their audience, and the fundamentals of marketing?

I get furious when I see pointless applications hit the market from short sighted brands, with no consideration for market segmentation or consumer base, and the latest is no exception.

The Conservative party has just launched its iPhone application which will supposedly “help both existing supporters and floating voters learn more about their policies, connect with them on social networks and share political news with their friends.”

So the dramatic insinuation is that all (or a large proportion of) their existing supporters and the supposed ‘floating voters’ have iPhones. Utter morons.

As Paul Lomax, CTO at Dennis Publishing kindly argued “The Conservatives *are* a short sighted brand”.

With an increasing number of emerging and established mobile operating systems and app platforms now available, the invalidity of this application becomes even more apparent.

I am not just angry that they have done what so many brands have done and just jump at the chance of exhibiting on the platform; the anger is more directed at the complete disregard for the people they are trying to win over in order to ensure that they can run this country.

As far as I am concerned, if they can waste valuable donations on an app that segregates and isolates their voters, what will they do when it’s our/your money they are using?

So if anyone from the Conservative team in charge of this application should read this, I would love you to share all your research which showed that you needed to develop an iPhone application, and ignore the other platforms.

Don’t get me wrong, by even looking at mobile I agree it’s a step in the right direction, but this is without a doubt a box-ticker, and no real thought has gone into the parties objectives and how they can harness mobile to achieve those goals.

Any alternative views gratefully received.

Some smart alec Apple fan boy has replied with their very own take on the Droid Does viral.

The iPhone/Android battle is heating up, and with analysts predicting the open source OS to overtake Apples 2nd place slot behind Symbian on OS market share, its going to get very interesting over the next few months!

Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone in 28 countries and territories. Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesales channels, as well as selected high street partners. A pre-registration site for customers to log their interest has been launched at www.Orange.co.uk/iPhone.

This signals a major hit for 02, who in recent weeks had reaffirmed their exclusivity as the UK’s iPhone stockist. It will now be interesting to see what impact this has on the UK market share for the Apple handset, because with Android handsets making ground and fast, this could be just the boost the iPhone needs to maintain, if not increase its percentage share of the lucrative British market.

What are your thoughts? Are you an Orange user that is going to drop everything to get your hands on an iPhone? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: 02 have made a statement (taken from the 02 blog)

We’re proud that we’ve been able to offer an exclusive iPhone deal to our 20 million customers for the last two years. We always knew that iPhone exclusivity was for a limited period of time, but our relationship with Apple continues and will be an ongoing success. We have over 1million iPhone customers and they remain very important to us.

We aim to offer our customers the best devices on the market, including becoming the home of Smartphones and we are really pleased to now add another device in the Palm Pre. We also offer award-winning customer service and benefits, which is why more people choose O2 than any other network in the UK.

Update 2: Vodafone have now announced that they are set to also offer the iPhone 3G and 3GS too!