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SHOW, DON'T TELL
Technology continues to change the art of the narrative
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If
we remember one thing from our college creative writing class it was
the repetition of our instructor's favorite axiom, "Show, don't tell."
New technology revolutionizing the concept of interactive narration
probably wasn't what our professor had in mind, but we can't help
feeling that some programmers are evoking that phrase in the most
literal sense. Specifically, with the advent of augmented reality apps and the iPad craze, it seems as though storytelling will never be the same.
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ZooBurst:
Pop-up
books were always our favorite bedtime reading as kids, but this
augmented reality program makes those flimsy cardboard cutouts look
antique by enabling users to create original interactive pop-ups. All
that's needed to create a 3-D storybook
is a webcam and an Internet connection. The 3-D books can then be
viewed online or in the palm of your hand, by printing out the ZooBurst
AR marker from the site.Created by NYU Grad student Craig Kapp,
the technology is being employed by more than 750 teachers to make
things a little more interesting in the classroom. While we aren't
suggesting that schools give up on hard copy books altogether, we do
think we might have ended up in a more advanced reading group if our
books had looked like ZooBurst's.
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VIVmag:
Our expectations of how to read a magazine have been changed forever by VIVmag. One of the first exclusively digital lifestyle magazines for women, the bi-monthly publication recently debuted a concept video for an interactive iPad version of the magazine, complete with an animated cover.
Additionally, a motion graphics feature spread trades photo stills for
moving pictures in the style of shadowy 1940s film noir. (For those who
have yet to splurge on an iPad, a demo of the feature article can be
viewed here.) The days of haphazardly skimming even trashy tabloids may be history soon if more publications decide to follow suit.
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Toy Story 2 Read-Along:
It's fair to say that children's books are getting a makeover
(and not just from Crayon scribbles in the margins). While there's
certainly no shortage of kids' content created for the iPad, the Toy Story 2
Read-Along app takes full advantage of the platform's capabilities.
Each page of the app's book is animated and includes coloring pages,
games, sound effects, movie clips and sing-a-longs. The interactive
application reads the story aloud and also gives kids (or adults, for
that matter) the ability to record their own voices and become the
narrators of the book. Thus, the next time you have to take off on a
business trip, you can still read your kid a bedtime story even if
you're stuck at 30,000 feet.
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* References to products and services in trendcentral do not imply our endorsement, but rather are intended to provide objective insights into emerging trends and examples of those trends. trendcentral is published by The Intelligence Group, a trend research and consumer insights company focusing on youth culture. For more information on our services, or to subscribe to our syndicated Cassandra Report studies, please contact Noelle Weaver at 212-277-5244 or via email at nweaver@intelg.com.
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