Scattered in the landscape of the SXSW trade show, companies from around the world planted their flags to claim different digital plots of land as their own. Some of these companies were more successful than others and we’ll likely see them show up again as either helping to revolutionize the way we think about X or as simply a cool novelty item quickly making the social network rounds. Techcitement had the opportunity to play with some of these tech toys and talk to a few of the people responsible for making them. Here we present a list of some non-U.S. companies and their innovations you might find yourself talking about in the (maybe not too distant) future.
Quebec
Lucion Media bills itself as a multimedia installation company, specializing in that most tossed around phrase right now of augmented reality. On the trade show floor, Lucion showed off a cool piece of software that allowed people to point their phones at pieces of paper marked with large circles, embedded with code to create different augmented reality experiences. The augmented reality-launching paper shown would bring up an animated jet fighter taking off or a hanger whose bay doors would open to reveal two jets ready to fly. Watching the jets fly off through the use of a phone and through the real surroundings, they seemed to go on forever until receding out of site, much like a real jet would. Unfortunately, the company didn’t have a video or image ready to share at the time of this product as it’s still so new. Instead, enjoy this video of Merton, the interactive improvisational pianist of YouTube fame, playing in front of public installations the company created from December 2010 to February 2011 in Montreal called Sphères polaires, which generated sound and images in response to peoples movements.
Singapore
Coming from much farther away (but with a soon-to-be-open office in Brooklyn, N.Y.) comes Kindernomics. The education-based company says that it wants to “help kids develop a sense of independence and make sense of the world around them by introducing them to essential and easy to understand economic concepts.” However, instead of using flashcards to teach children about math and its everyday use, Kindernomics uses the PixelSense feature of the Microsoft Surface to create an interactive and immersive experience for children.
Tokyo
From the same company that brought you Necomimi, the cat ears that respond to your brainwaves, comes Mico. Also billed as giving the user a feeling of music serendipity, Neurowear says that Mico “frees the user from having to select ‘songs’ and ‘artists’ and allows users to encounter new music just by wearing the device.” What that means is that the device detects music tastes from your brainwaves, and then Mico selects music from its database that it thinks best fits your mood. Hear more about this mindreading product of Neurowear’s from a calming, robotic voice.
South Korea
Korea had quite a large presence at SXSW Interactive, but there were two apps that stood out among the rest.
Flitto — pronounced fleeto — works like Twitter, is user defined, and can currently translate up to 14 languages. Right now, the application only works for Twitter, comics, and travel information. While the uses for this app are somewhat limited at the moment, the company hopes to widen the scope of Flitto much more in the coming months. For an example of the product’s current use, if you wanted to follow Nam Woo Hyun, member the South Korean pop boy group Infinite, you can do so and it would look like this.
Between* is a one-on-one messaging system that’s much more than just a messaging system. The app also has capabilities for chatting, voice messages, chats, photo albums, and a memo board for longer messages. Essentially, Between* can act as a beautiful scrapbook and private space for two people to store memories of how much they love each other or a full-featured sexting warehouse. The app is currently available in the iTunes App Store and in Google Play. You could watch the promo video that fully explains the product, but what fun would that be? Instead, here are videos of what looks like an incredibly awkward date and another one that makes the app seem like it can magically produce items out of thin air.
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