I seem to be seeing more and more examples of aspects of the digital world entering the real world. As digital becomes commonplace, looks like it’s becoming cool to do digital things in the real world.

Really Angry Birds

Some examples are just plain silly. Like this Mattel plastic version of the game. Hard to believe this will the cool toy of the year!

Mattel Angry Birds Knock on Wood Game. Fire plastic birds

A mere $17 (about 8 time the cost of the app)

 

 

3D Angry Birds

If you’re in Changsha, Hunan province, at the WIndow of the World theme park, the you can fire real plush Angry Birds at a wooden structure, in “The 3D Angry Birds Game“, an unlicensed knock-off of the game.

Rovio Entertainment Ltd, the makers of Angry Birds, are in talks to regularize the licensing arrangement. They view their status as the third most copied brand in China as a compliment. Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

They’ve also just announced they will set up their first overseas operation in Shanghai, hoping to be operational by the end of 2011. There are already almost 40 million downloas of Angry Birds in China, with deals now in place to make the app playable on feature phones (86% of China’s reported billion mobiles are feature phones).

 

 

 


Theme park creates real-life Angry Birds game by Zoomin_UK

Meanwhile, in Barcelona…

At least this version uses a smartphone as the trigger:

Then there’s Chelsea

Using football skills to repulse Space Invaders:

Honda’s Interactive Ads

More directly related to digital marketing, is Honda’s Interactive Dream Wall. This was the talk of the Australian International Motor Show in Sydney late last year.

One of the first large-scale advertising installations to incorporate facial recognition software, using 6 cameras to look for smiling visitors, with each smile triggering part of an animated story on the display. This seems a promising way to anchor digital in the real world.

Facebook friends in lights

And lets not forget the brilliant installation art piece by  Obscura Digital. As you’ll see in the video below, they  created an augmented reality experience (“Connections”) at the F8, Facebook’s developer’s conference last September. Users swiped-in with their RFID event badge.

Multiple overhead projectors tracked people on the floor, and projected  ”radial visualizations”, representing the social graph of each person. Colored lines extend to join the visalizations of friends.

Just watch the video it’s easier! I can imagine one day soon this will project onto my eye as I walk along, and I’ll never (unintentionally) cut a Facebook friend again.

Connections for Facebook from Obscura Digital on Vimeo.