Today, I gave a presentation to the Marketing Association on various digital technologies that I think are going to become common place. It's a brave person who predicts the future, so I took the "safe" path and stuck to things I see are coming in the short term. Many are technologies that we are getting an increased interest in from our clients - so it doesn't take a genius to see they will become a reality.

Au Naturale

My first "next big thing" is about how we will all be interacting with technology in a much more natural way. That means bye-bye to the mouse. We have blogged about natural interfaces before, and the first example that comes to mind are touchscreens. We made our first touchscreen in 1994, and today touchscreens are about to become part of our normal computing life with the introduction of touch enabled Windows Seven (out here in October) and new computers such as this HP that bring a different style of computing to our normal everyday lives. That means that touchscreens will be very accessible, as an available tool to use in public spaces too. Touchable interfaces are now being seen on tables, including our own award-winning example (this is what Razorfish are doing with their digital table), and the surfaces themselves are getting bigger. Interactive walls will become more commonplace, and we love what the New York City Visitor Centre has done with both table, wall and RFID (or optical) technology to allow visitors to create their own plan to experience the city, review it and take their visual itinerary away with them.

The real excitement  in natural interfaces comes with gesture based interaction. Our experiment earlier this year with the Suite Spot at Webstock showed how people LOVED interacting using gestures, several commenting that it was just like "Minority Report"! The use of the Wii remote and some reflector pads meant the hardware addition to a normal screen set up was around $200. A cheap way to taste the future. It all gets really sexy though when you take away the need for anything but literally the wave of a naked hand. When Rex attended SIGGRAPH last year he was thrilled to see this latest interaction (pictured above) in use. To fly the plane, you simply walk up to the screen; hold up your hands as if you already have your hands on the wheel; the system recognises that form/gesture, and bingo - you are flying. Turn your (naked) hands and the plane turns.

Real time data

We've seen some great uses of real time data all over those place and I predict they are simply going to get more interesting. The Internet is bursting with examples of bringing together data and technology from various sources. For today's talk however, I deliberately steered away from the Internet, simply because I wanted to broaden our collective thinking about digital marketing. 

The billboard that physically snows when the skifields are filling up with the white stuff, the t-shirt (above) with an augmented reality picture that shows up as a real time twitter feed from the wearer, and the cute as a button teddy bear that recognises and greets it's (elderly) owner, yet lets the nurses' station know when normal routines are not being followed, are all excellent examples. I think we'll see a lot more of all this.

The great outdoors

I showed an example of an outdoor campaign (I don't mean billboards with a clever line on them - though we have been known to produce those too) in France which encouraged users to text a message onto a wall. The messages show up looking like fridge magnet poetry stuck to the top of the building, then gravity takes over and they tumble down, responding to the facade of a building and bouncing off doors and windows as they do. It's quite mesmerising to watch and you can see why it was successful. Adding that kind of beauty to a simple idea lifts it to a level where it can really connect with an audience - it's worth remembering the need for form as well as function. I also showed a sneak peek at a concept we've done for an intriguing electronic facade to a building here. Watch out for our new website which will include this in more detail.  

There's so much more that we (marketers) could be doing, in shop windows, on floors, on water - you name it. The tricky bit is getting the content right - projecting onto a surface is not the end in itself - it's the content, the idea, that will captivate an audience. Judging by the growing interest in this area, I think we're going to see some fascinating responses to this opportunity.

More mobile

Apart from all the great things happening in the world of smart phones (made particularly sexy by the i-phone), the next big development is the mobile breaking out from the restraints of a hand-held size screen. The January release of a Samsung phone, for example, came with a projector built into it. Point your phone at any surface, and you have taken the phone from a solo experience to a shared one. That's going to have major implications.

In the portable department, just for fun, I also showed the Siftables which I saw demonstrated at TED earlier this year. They intrigued me and really got me thinking in a new way.

The sixth sense

Finally, I blogged about this from TED when I first saw Patti Meas from MIT demonstrate this portable technology, the Sixth Sense brings all these concepts together. The use of natural gestures (draw a circle of a watch on your wrist - and voila, the time is projected onto it); combined with projection, mobile and bringing in real time data (the Amazon rating of a book you pick up on the bookshelf is shown in real time) is the beginning of a very exciting time in technology. What makes that technology incredibly interesting is the projected cost to the consumer for this new phone will be $350 US$. Breathe.

I have the best job in the world, still true to my television roots, but with access to an incredible range of ways and places to entertain, inform, surprise and delight audiences. All I need is people like you, prepared to come on the journey with me. 

Fasten your seat belt...