Denny |
February 11, 2014
The massive online marketplace has brought in AR tech for even faster buying abilities.
The iOS version of the Amazon app is now giving customers the opportunity to take advantage of Flow and augmented reality to help shoppers to be able to shop even faster and easier by scanning items in real life so that they will be able to instantly buy them from their own mobile commerce shelves.
This is making mcommerce headlines around the world as it changes the entire nature of shopping.
The idea is that a consumer at home would be able to spot an item that needs to be replaced or replenished and could simply pick up their mobile devices to scan it so that it could be automatically ordered. Undoubtedly, Amazon must also be hoping that consumers will also use this opportunity to order products from them while they are standing in another company’s brick and mortar retail stores.
The company expressed that using this augmented reality experience could make shopping as short as two seconds.
In fact, through the use of this technology, the shopping experience could be even shorter than that, once the consumer is truly familiar with this new version of mobile commerce. The Flow app was first launched in 2011 as a form of augmented reality software, and now its integration with the iOS version of the Amazon mobile app makes it possible for an item to be identified by aiming the smartphone camera at it so that Amazon can then find its replacement in its massive product inventory.
This image recognition function has been upgraded from previous techniques that involved barcode scanning, or searching by entering a product name and conducting a query using a manual search function on the website. If the image recognizer is not capable of identifying the item, the users are still able to fall back on the old fashioned searches or barcode scans. Reportedly, some of the most Flow compatible products are DVDs, CDs, video games, and books.
Once products have been scanned through this augmented reality mobile commerce experience, they are saved into a search history, which will make them even easier to reorder.
Passengers on public transit in Aberdeen are now taking advantage of new technology based entertainment.
Commuters taking the public transit buses in Aberdeen, Scotland now have a brand new augmented reality experience available to them that will allow them to gain a great deal more entertainment out of their rides.
Through the use of mobile devices, they can now enjoy high tech entertainment while onboard.
Using smartphones and tablets, passengers on these Scottish are able to open up an interactive video channel that gives the viewer the choice to view a range of different content, including information about the transit services, interviews with staff, movie trailers, and even the ability to purchase tickets or surf the web.
There are 35 First Aberdeen buses that have been equipped with this augmented reality feature.
To make this service more readily available to a larger number of mobile devices, the buses also feature free WiFi for riders. This initiative has been generating a considerable amount of activity from passengers. In fact, since it first launched in November, there have been thousands of individuals who have accessed the content available through this AR channel.
All that riders need to do to access the AR material is to follow the instructions on the bus seat backs for downloading the free First Scotland app from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The app makes it possible to aim the mobile device at the seat back to trigger the video channel so that it can be streamed into the smartphone or tablet.
According to the General Manager of First Aberdeen, Duncan Cameron, “Our new augmented reality channel brings our seat backs to life and I hope makes bus travel that little bit more interesting and enjoyable.” He also went on to say that the transit system believes that they are the first company of that nature around the globe that has implemented AR tech on the backs of bus seats in order to help to encourage ridership on their vehicles. The sheer number of uses that the feature has seen until now has revealed the type of interest that this can, indeed, draw.
