More Great Stuff From Google - Jam With Chrome & Google Search App

Besides the recent launch of Google Maps for iOS, there's been a ton of great stuff coming from Google lately so I thought I'd shout out a few things you may or may not have seen.

Jam With Chrome
If you haven't seen Jam with Chrome, you really must check it out.  The latest Chrome Experiment is absolutely mind blowing from a technical perspective as well as demonstrating what's possible these days with just a web browser.  Jam With Chrome allows you to invite friends into a live ‘Jam’ session to play any of 19 instruments to collaboratively create music from within the Chrome browser from anywhere in the world on pretty much any device, all in real-time.  It's hard to describe how cool this is without experiencing it yourself so head on over to Jam With Chrome and/or check out the video below.
Ads For The Google Search App
How promote the knowledge graph & voice search integration in the Google Search App in a way that communicates the power of those features without coming across as too techy?  Venables Bell & Partners nailed it in these spots.  Check them out below.

Doubleclick Rich Media - Media Bridging Desktop & Mobile

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I'm a bit obsessed with the media bridging opportunities where mobile is the glue that connects all other forms of media.  There's still a long way to go until it's seamless and elegant, but there's been some really nice progress, especially over the past six months.

One of my favorite examples (logrolling alert) was developed by my talented colleagues at Doubleclick (Scott Harmes - creative, Roberto Stocco - dev) in conjunction with Toaster Ltd.  The tech is called 'Channel Connect' and basically creates a communications channel between a desktop advertisement (such as a Youtube masthead) and an HTML5 mobile site.  It's not just limited to one user, so you can actually create an ad experience with multiple users competing/collaborating on the experience at the same time.  I think it has a ton of potential and look forward to seeing how agencies push these executions going forward.

Have a play with the demo here or for more details read below (full post on Doubleclick Rich Media Gallery blog):

Dubbed ‘Channel Connect’, this new Rich Media feature enables you to create more ways for users to connect with your brand.

What is it?

Channel Connect is a new DoubleClick package of Flash components and JavaScript libraries used to establish a communication channel between a desktop advertisement and an HTML5 mobile site.  The opened channel can be used to send any kind of information in either direction between a user’s mobile device and their desktop.

How can I use it?

Channel Connect turns a smartphone or tablet into a new input device, allowing users to interact with brand content more tactilely than a simple mouse.  Any Rich Media ad can be enhanced by switching mouse-interactions to gestures: turn a user’s mobile into a game controller or graphics tablet for maximum active engagement.

On a separate note you'll notice that it uses a QR code to initiate the mobile part of the experience.  That's definitely where most of the media bridging stuff falls down, so it's interesting to see Layar's announcement a few days ago that they're creating an easy way for publishers to turn standard print content into a simple augmented reality experience.  Really interesting stuff...