HATSUNE MIKU

TUPAC

• 79% of laptops now have webcams. (source: PC world)
• 72% of 18-20 year olds own a laptop. (source: Pew Internet & American Life Project)
• 83% of college students own a laptop. (source: Student Monitor)
• More than 50% of Gen Y owns a webcam. (source: Cisco)
• As of March 2011, more than 40% of Skype minutes involve video to video calls (source: Skype)

Furthermore, on recent web-based Augmented Reality projects we’ve launched both on our own (Cannonballz) and for clients, we’ve seen on average approximately 78% of users with webcams enabled.

With the continued growth of video chat and Augmented Reality, it’s an inevitability that webcam’s will be a standard of any PC experience in the near future.  Though most web-based Augmented Reality is a solo experience, with the growing popularity of video chat, we can expect to see Augmented Reality evolve to a one-to-one and even one-to-many proposition.  The following press announcements from Google, Facebook and Skype help to show how video chat is integrating itself into the social experience:

• Facebook To Unveil Skype-Powered Video Chat
• Google’s New Social Effort Google+ Will Enable Video Conferencing “Hangouts”

Social Media is all the rage now, but interactive video chats will help evolve conversations and collaboration to an even more real-time experience.  If you haven’t seen our ZugSTAR prototype, take a minute to check it out below to see how the interactive video chat experience can work from anything to Virtual Dressing Rooms to Telemedicine.

Wherever you fall on this thought, you can’t deny that 3D Projection Mapping is continuing to evolve with some very engaging examples.  The best two I’ve seen to date are for Lexus and Toyota…embedded below.

Today’s launch of  WSS Plug & Play ushers in several key advances to our existing product, including:

• ONE DAY CONFIGURATION – Configuration can be done  in as little as a few hours and without any backend integration.
• MARKERLESS TECHNOLOGY – The first truly markerless product of its kind, the apparel item actually tracks to the shopper (a video demonstrating our award winning markerless technology is embedded below).
• A NEW SHOPPER EXPERIENCE –  Four screenshots detailing the experience are included below.

As “augmented reality” continues to be the hot new buzzword, we’ve seen several companies attempt to compete with our patent pending ecommerce product. The fact is we have several key differentiators that retailers and potential partners should be aware of when doing their due diligence:

Differentiators For Shoppers:

• It just works with a regular computer and webcam. No need for fancy 3-D cameras or souped up systems that shoppers don’t have.
• No annoying downloads.
• No paper markers to print and hassle with.

Simply put, for shoppers, WSS Plug & Play is a barrier-free experience.

Differentiators For Retailers:

• As noted above, configuration can now be done in under one day, and without any backend integration.
• Because we eliminated all shopper barriers, retailers who integrate WSS can reach a higher percentage of their shoppers.
• Technology moves fast, and our constant development cycles ensure retailers will always have access to the most thoroughly tested, and innovative solution on the market.

For more information, please feel free to contact us at info (at) Zugara (dot) com.

To try a live demo of the technology, please click here.

WSS PLUG & PLAY SCREENSHOTS

STEP 1 – An Example Of WSS Integrated Into A Product Page Via A Button (Below The Main Image)

STEP 2 – After Clicking The Button, WSS Is Launched

STEP 3 - The Shopper Has The Ability To Alter How The Image Of The Dress Is Positioned

STEP 4 – The Shopper Can Easily Share Photos With Friends For Validation

Video of our DEMOgod winning presentation at DEMO Spring 2011. It showcases our new markerless technology

This is a huge advancement in online apparel visualization and validation. As always, our product is built in Flash, so for over 99% of the population there’s no download required. By creating a markerless experience we’ve eliminated the last major consumer barrier: the need to print and hold a marker. So now, a shopper surfing on a retailer’s site (that has integrated our product) only needs to stand in front of their webcam to visualize and validate whether or not that piece of apparel’s style and color are truly right for them.

“This is really not about buzzwords like Augmented Reality, or Social Media,” said Matt Szymczyk, CEO and Co-Founder of Zugara. “This is about using technology to create a better online shopping experience for people, and an easy to integrate solution for our clients and partners. Plain and simple. And there’s real ROI here. Results from a recent survey by Limelight Networks show us that for people who shop online more than once a month, 76% of them say advanced product viewing features make them more likely to purchase, and more brand loyal. With there being more Millennials than Baby Boomers, we think it’s time to create meaningful and engaging online shopping experiences for this digital generation.”

We hope to have a live demo of the technology on our corporate site soon. And when the video of our presentation at DEMO becomes available tomorrow, we’ll certainly post it, as we’d love your feedback. Until then though, we’ll be tweeting from the event (hashtag: #democon) so feel free to give @KobraKai (Matt Szymczyk) and @Jack_Benoff a follow.

If you can’t make it though, we’ll be tweeting from the event (hashtag: #democon) so feel free to give @KobraKai and @Jack_Benoff a follow.

Here’s a bit of information on DEMO for those of you who might be unfamiliar: The DEMO experience has helped introduce new products and services that have become well-known brands in both the business and consumer markets including:

• Adobe Acrobat
• Sun’s Java
• Netscape Navigator
• Palm Computing
• WebEx
• TiVo
• E-Trade
• Google’s first venture into mobile search
• GarageBand.com
• Leapfrog
• Shopping.com
• Skype’s first implementation for mobile handsets
• salesforce.com
• Shazam Entertainment
• And many more…