The Walll of Apps at CES: A Guided Tour

First Wall of Apps Display At CES Casts Light on Importance of the Apps World

How do you showcase Mobile Apps at the world’s largest tradeshow? Very carefully.

First: The crowds — and I mean 153,000 of them need access to the apps. People attending the show need to feel them and touch the apps.

That’s a lot of hands.

Second: They need a little bit of guidance and inspiration to understand what the app does. An app left on its own can be quickly overlooked.

Third: The app space needs to be an affordable exhibit space for an app developer who doesn’t have the resources of a large hardware company.

Fourth: It’s got to be placed in a highly trafficked are of the show.

With those goals in mind, Living in Digital Times, created The Wall of Apps and 18 stalwart apps developers took their place on the wall. Together we had a fabulous show. Next year, as apps become even more entrenched in the success of the CES, we’re hoping that the Wall of Apps gives the other “great wall” a real run for the money.

Wall of Apps from A to Z

Here’s a look at the basic concept for the Wall of Apps. I call it whack-a-mole meets the interactive museum. Even before the show started, Wired Magazine caught on and seemed to really get the idea of a self-curated wall of apps.

Each app had a placard with a synopsis of the app, and the app was tethered onto the wall, like so:

The selection of apps was diverse and exciting; the traffic a healthy stream, and unlike most museum exhibits you were encouraged to touch the art!

Featured Apps:

Zinio — Truly gorgeous, Zinio is an app designed for high-quality, digital delivery of top print magazines. Originally developed for the PC market, the app runs print-like digital editions on smartphones and mobile tablet devices. We’re talking more than 4,000 magazines from around the world, many with interactive multi-media content. Readers can sync their library and access all of their publications from any device or computer. For more information, visit zinio.com.

Grocery Glee – This shelves on this mobile support would gave Andy Warhol a run for the money. You shop for products just like you would in a real store, dragging them off the shelves and into your shopping basket. Complimentary products like the jelly when you buy peanut butter are offered or you can take shortcuts and head to your favorite aisles. Checkout occurs at the touch of a button, your tab keeps running and coupons keep you coming back. Stores that use the system can benefit from creating a better shopping experience to a more targeted customer. Customers will find it fun and easy.

SunDew – This app provides a new and mobile way to get the best answer to your toughest questions. SunDew allows you to post a question and get answers from the community. Those who answer win community karma. Optimized for a mobile environment, the app lets you forward questions, send to just your own network of contacts, or put it out there, making it quite flexible.

Concussion Recognition and Response - Developed by experts and based on CDC guidelines, this app helps parents and coaches recognize the symptoms of conditions. After recognizing the symptoms of a concussion they can document the symptoms and provides a monitoring piece and return to play guidance. It can be customized for specific sports themes, to0.

Echoer : Social networking and location based event get graphical with Echoer. At the football game? Hankering for a discount while shopping Macy’s? Heading to a flash mob? Just brainstorming in the park? Echoer lets you express your thoughts in a lovely graphical environment. And the thoughts that resonate best grow larger and larger. It provides a new way to look at crowd-sourced information.

Runtastic Download the application to your iPHone, mount your iPhone on your bike and you get a wealth of statistics and social networking features. Heartrate, speed and even your cadence are all recorded in addition to the standard miles cycled, calories burned and elevations. You can view maps, charts and stats to your hearts delight. Heck, it even plays music! Hardware for mounting your iPhone is available on their store. To watch the video: http://blog.runtastic.com/en/runtastic-all-about/florian-gschwandtner-roadbike-app-ces-2012/