Augmented Reality Pop-Up Stores Near Famous Landmarks @PSFK

For a few days during late October, British department store Debenhams launched an augmented reality pop up store service where shoppers can try on outfits near the UK’s tourist attractions. Shoppers with an iPhone or iPad 2 can use their device to scan the scene around 5 famous landmarks to find the store’s selection of party dresses – and once located, they can virtually try them on a picture of themselves, share and even order. Users of the Debenhams app were also given an exclusive 20% discount and could upload their images to Facebook and Twitter to get feedback from their friends and followers.

The “virtual stores” popped up at the end of last month in London’s Trafalgar Square, Glasgow’s George Square, Birmingham’s Centenary Square, Manchester’s Albert Square and Cardiff Castle in Walkess. Debenhams.com director Simon Forster says about the project:

If you happen to be in London or New York, and looking for a good place to settle down and work for a while, this Web app should help you do just that.

Let’s Meet and Work is the brainchild of Alasdair Monk, a user interface designer and app developer.

 (via Let’s meet and work: Places to work in London & New York - TNW Apps)

via thenextweb:

5 Cities with Congestion Pricing | Sustainable Cities Collective

Congestion pricing is gathering some inertia in cities worldwide for a few reasons; safety, money, and public desire are among the main ones. Unlike traditional mechanisms to deal with more cars such as, well, building new roads, congestion pricing has had a profound effect on the cities it has come to. Pricing schemes operate on the same general platform – charge a car if it passes into a certain zone of a city – but each country has generated an architecture that is influenced as much by culture as it is by need. Below is a list of cities (and in one case, a city-state) that have designed and deployed congestion pricing systems:

All aboard: Wi-fi arrives on the Tube | Networks

Wireless internet access on the Tube network takes a step forward today as London Underground starts a six-month wi-fi trial at Charing Cross underground station. Wi-fi will be available in the ticket hall and on the Bakerloo and Northern Line platforms. The Mayor pledged to ensure wi-fi coverage across London by 2012.

emergentfutures:

RFID Data Reveals London’s Polycentric Pattern of Commuting

Data from London’s commuters reveals travel patterns in unprecedented detail. It also raises privacy fears.

Digital ‘Cloud’ could form over London for the 2012 Olympics: Engadget

…We’re talking about an actual (well, artificial) cloud that promises to be both a real structure and a massive digital display. That’s the bright idea of a team of researchers from MIT, anyway, and it’s now been shortlisted in a competition designed to find a new tourist attraction to be built in London for the 2012 Olympics. Dubbed simply “The Cloud,” the structure would consist of two 400-foot tall mesh towers that are linked by a series of interconnected plastic bubbles, which would themselves house an observation deck inside and be used to display everything from Olympic scores and highlights to a “barometer of the city’s interests and moods” outside (that latter bit comes courtesy of the group’s partnership with Google).

Send your smartest young talent to One Young World - Davos for tomorrow’s leaders.

One Young World invites 1,500 young pioneers from every country in the world and a range of backgrounds to come together to attend the Inaugural Summit in London in February 2010 and help create a global resource of leadership and ideas.

Submitted By: Caroline Hunt
Chief Executive Officer, Energetic Communications