It was interesting that Ewan was using a reference to the film Minority Report to emphasise his latest rant about the industry. At about the same time Ewan was ranting I was chatting to Paul Rawlings the CEO of Screenreach – a company that may just be bringing Minority Report to life.
Unfortunately Screenreach doesn’t work with pre-cogs to detect crimes before they have happened. I don’t mean that bit of Minority Report. I mean the scene where Tom Cruise walks into a shop and all the screens recognise him and display personal messages just for him. That is what Screenreach can offer … or something similar.
I’m going to be doing a fuller piece on Screenreach soon, but basically the company offers information and content that can be sent to screens – primarily plasma screens in retail environments, but also mobiles. The content they provide can be personalised either by recognising you as an individual – for example the screen can ‘see’ you via bluetooth – or by amalgamating group information from sources such as recent till transactions.
It all sounds interesting and I’ll be doing more soon.
