The proliferation of devices of all shapes and sizes — from the jumbotrons in Times Square to the micro-menus of Apple’s Nano — surround us. And, of course, the sheer multitude of these screens (GPS, iPod, mobile phone, LCD TV, Nintendo DS, etc.) has begun to change our interaction with the physical world.

But what’s most interesting about this development is not the abundance of screens, per se, but about how our culture’s seemingly ravenous desire for digital experiences is changing our expectations for physical spaces — both in public and private.

In the past few years, a host of artists, programmers and marketers have melded art and science to create new, digitally driven experiences that are redefining the way we think about our urban and personal landscapes.

Some of the better-known advertising work here includes Mini’s groundbreaking “Motorby” campaign, where an interactive digital billboard responds to Mini drivers passing by, and HBO’s “Voyeur” campaign, which transformed a New York City street into a theater.

But the trend is more than just “digital out of home,” which is a phrase that gets used a bit too broadly to describe this cultural shift. Instead, it’s a complete rethinking of our public spaces as digital experiences.

Project Blinkenlights: Perhaps the most influential and pioneering work done so far has been by this German group, which transforms office buildings into digital interactive installations. Its most recent project, Stereoscope, took over Toronto City Hall and created an interactive, visual concert.

Blinkenlights Stereoscope Toronto documentation video from Tim Pritlove on Vimeo.

The experience went beyond just a light display; it was participatory as well. Attendees were invited to play video games on the sides of the building by using their mobile phones. And artists could create their own animations for the installation using Project Blinkenlights’ open animation formats and tools.

555 Kubik: Similar to the work of Project Blinkenlights, the 555 Kubik project is a digital installation that turns a naked building facade into a compelling piece of art through 3-D projections.

555 Kubik extended version from UrbanScreen on Vimeo.

The project was created by UrbanScreen, a European agency that specializes in large-scale projection on urban surfaces.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra was an attempt to crowdsource a virtual orchestra via auditions through YouTube. For the public performance, which featured 96 professional and amateur musicians from 30-plus countries, Obscura Digital specifically mapped Carnegie Hall’s architecture to project 20,000 square feet of full-resolution video and dramatically enhance the event.

Livestrong Chalkbot: As part of Lance Armstrong’s return to the Tour de France and his Livestrong organization’s mission to cure cancer, Nike commissioned the Livestrong Chalkbot. Created by DeepLocal and StandardRobot, the Chalkbot enabled thousands of people to have their messages (submitted digitally) chalked along the route of this year’s Tour.

‘Top Chef Las Vegas’: For this season of “Top Chef Las Vegas,” Fallon and Monster teamed up for one of the more clever uses of mobile and digital-billboard advertising. The team created an interactive casino in Rockefeller Plaza that highlighted the Las Vegas element of the show and allowed passers-by to play interactive slot machines with their mobile phones for the chance to win $5,000 — now that’s an incentive for engagement.

While the melding of digital and physical has been done well before, it’s often been in fits and starts. But it’s only been as of late, as the technology has become cheaper and connectivity more pervasive, that we’ve started to see a more profound shift in digital altering of our public spaces. The emergence of radio-frequency identification and augmented reality and shift toward branded destinations — see the O2 in the U.K. — will only accelerate the trend.

Leave it to Guinness to give us an early taste. Working with London’s Red Urban, Guinness placed RFID tags on its team’s rugby balls and players, providing real-time data for fans and coaches alike. Running pace, kicking power and passing speed are all monitored — allowing a digital window into a physical event that is just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

If the Guinness RFID work is any indicator, perhaps the future won’t be about screens at all — it may simply become a matter of data and sensors.

For many of us, it’s too easy to get distracted by the industry speculation: What will happen now that Facebook has overtaken MySpace in the U.S.? Will Twitter take share from Facebook? Are Google and Facebook on a collision course? It’s like the digerati’s version of “Hot or Not?”

But what often gets overlooked is just how quickly the Facebook platform changes, forcing users and marketers to scramble to catch-up.

Facebook’s vanity URL land grab is an excellent example of just how fast the company moves. Two weeks ago Facebook users and brand marketers (who hadn’t submitted the proper info in advance) needed to log-in on Friday night 9:01 PST to secure their own Facebook vanity URLs. These URLs ensure that a company like Starbucks has a dedicated place to direct consumers, e.g. facebook.com/starbucks.

Adapting to a change like the Vanity URL program can have a significant impact on the overall success of a brand on Facebook. Both Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret saw big spikes in fans after the change. Starbucks notched a 27% gain and added 656,102 fans, while Victoria’s Secret saw a 58.5% spike with the addition of 524,999 fans according to InsideFacebook.com.

Clearly there is more to all of this than just throwing sheep. To help brand marketers make sense of advertising in the Facebook era, we recently co-hosted the Facebook Marketing Breakfast Series with Inside Facebook in San Francisco.

The attendees reflected the ever-widening Facebook marketing ecosystem. On one end of the spectrum there Fortune 500 brand marketers who are looking for clues on how to best adapt their campaigns to the social sphere and Facebook in particular. On the other end of the spectrum were grassroots nonprofit organizations and individuals who were looking to tap Facebook’s tools and ad programs to build their businesses.

The speakers were equally diverse and included Trista Handisides (brand market solutions, Facebook), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester), Michael Brito (Intel), Betsy Burkett (Mattel), Karl Long (Nokia), Keith Rabois (Slide) and myself, among others. Everyone shared their perspective on where Facebook and the social graph were headed and how brands could successfully participate. We also discussed, rather candidly, where brands have struggled with Facebook.

There was a good degree of enthusiasm about Facebook’s relatively new Engagement Ads, which enable users to interact with advertising on the home page either by attending an event, sending someone a gift, participating in a poll or watching a video, all from the ad unit itself. This type of socially driven advertising felt much closer to a viable model than anything marketers had seen yet.

Of course there were also complaints. Frustration with Facebook’s search ranked high, as brand marketers felt that the indexing lagged significantly. There were some more minor issues around the quality of tools and reports. And, of course, there was confusion about the diversity of Facebook’s offerings and what was right for each marketer.

Owyang put the event in the right context, noting that power is shifting to communities over brands and that Facebook plays a critical role in the evolution of the social web. Given that, most of the speakers seemed to agree that simply running display ads on Facebook wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, brand marketers need to run broader social programs that enable conversations with consumers — which can include anything from Facebook fan pages to tie-ins with offline events.

But many participants at the event seemed mostly concerned about keeping up. It’s clear that Facebook needs to innovate in real-time to win the hearts and minds of consumers — and fend off Google, Twitter and the like. But Facebook also needs to find a way to slow-down a bit for more brand marketers to get on board.

Don’t expect that rate of change to lessen anytime soon, however. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Robert Scoble that the future of Facebook won’t even be a website.

As anyone who has bowled a few frames on a Nintendo Wii or flicked through a series of pictures on an Apple iPhone knows, gestural and multitouch interfaces are a thrilling and surprisingly intuitive way to interact with technology. And once consumers get used to ditching the mouse and keyboard they are going to demand much, much more of it.

But will brand marketers be ready? With recall rates at an all-time low, they can’t afford not to be. The technology, which is built on accelerometers, sensors and the like, is finally ready for the mainstream. And it just might be what the industry needs to start delivering the breakthrough brand creative that we’ve all been clamoring for.

To understand what’s possible, to see how brands can and will behave, it helps to take a look at what’s worked so far:

CNN: Any discussion of gestural interfaces needs to start with Jeff Han and CNN. Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel, introduced multitouch to the mainstream with his talk at the TED conference in 2006. CNN tapped his agency to create John King’s multitouch screen on CNN for the presidential election, which made the broadcasts historical for more than one reason.

AT&T: AT&T was one of the early adopters of multitouch, making Microsoft’s Surface table an integral part of the company’s future mobile retail experience. Now, in select locations, consumers are able to place various phones on the table, compare features, browse rate plans and explore coverage areas by simply sliding their fingers across the screen.

Orange: Searching for an exciting new way to engage consumers, Orange looked to U.K. ad shop The Alternative to create a gesture-based and “touch free” interactive shop window. The window is activated when the shop is closed and lets passers-by check news, watch music videos or film trailers and play games — all by waving their hands.

Levi’s: Dockers recently made news by creating a “shakable” mobile advertisement that is presented within an iPhone application. The ad, which gets served as you progress through levels on games like iBowl and iGolf, allows the user to literally shake the phone to make a dancer wearing Docker’s khakis to dance — clearly this gives interactive advertising a whole new meaning.

Boxee: The much talked about tech start-up is creating a slick, new internet-based online video viewing experience and is trying to differentiate by tapping both gestures and multitouch for its just released controller — an ingenious little application that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a fully functioning remote control.

Siftables: Going even further afield, there are a whole new set of gestural computing technologies that are close to production. Siftables, born out of the MIT Media Lab, caused a stir at TED this year by making digital data physical with cookie-sized devices that look like children’s blocks. Users can manipulate them, whether by piling, grouping or sorting them, to create different applications. Now being stewarded by Taco Labs, you can expect to see these put into play soon.

We are still just scratching the surface here. More multitouch is on the way (Microsoft is making multitouch a core part of Windows 7) and just as technology companies are rushing to build new platforms and devices to support gestures, brands need to move quickly as well. Few, surprisingly, have done so beyond the occasional one-off or prototype so far.

There is much for us all to still learn about gestural computing. And there will definitely be a few things to avoid — substituting “Tap Here” for “Click Here” must be on the top of any “don’t list” worth its salt.

One thing is certain, however: Gestural experiences will become our digital future. They will enable us to create rich, memorable experiences and engage consumers in ways that we can’t yet even conceive. These experiences will define some brands, and become transformational for others. And very soon, what gets created beyond the browser will matter just as much as what we can create within it.

For digital marketers the eagerness to find the next new thing is both a blessing and a curse. Steve Rubel, Edelman’s digital czar, summed up the paradox best recently when he said, “Second Life was digital marketing’s Vietnam.” There is a price to be paid for being too quick to embrace a new, untested technology after all. You can both overshoot the market and look foolish at the same time.

Augmented reality, also known as AR, sits at that precarious nexus today. It could transform the digital landscape, merging online and offline in wild new creative ways, as Hashem Bajwa points out in an earlier DigitalNext post. Or it could forever be the stuff of freaks and geeks. Will the hype around augmented reality crush the technology before it can really take off?

First, a bit of background: today augmented reality enables consumers to physically manipulate 3-D objects as displayed on a monitor. The technology is based on using markers that are basically printed patterns on paper that when viewed through a video stream and recognized by software create a type of hologram-effect.

Think Star Wars’ Princess Leia’s hologram communication with Obi-wan and you are pretty close.

Brand marketers have spared no time in utilizing augmented reality to inspire consumers’ imaginations — here’s a look at some of the best early work:

Lego and K’Nnex:
The toy company, with its “digital box,” has one of the more arresting uses of augmented reality today. Simply hold up the Lego box to an in-store kiosk with a web cam and watch a rendering of the toy assemble itself. Metaio, one of the leaders in AR, designed the experience for Lego. Total Immersion, another leader in AR, created a similar experience for K’nex toys which also allows you to control and even pilot the AR rendering of the toy.

Topps:
Topps is leading the way with augmented reality today and trying to ignite new consumer interest in sports trading cards for the digital era. The company enlisted Total Immersion to create a full AR experience that brings Major League Baseball favorites like Ryan Howard to life. At Toppstown fans get the full 3-D experience, can make the tiny players bat and pitch, plus explore stats and game info.

“Coraline”:
The marketing for “Coraline,” the first stop-motion animation feature shot in stereoscopic 3-D, was top notch. One of the highlights was the creation of a digital out-of-home campaign that literally placed consumers in the story by allowing them to see themselves as a part of the film through augmented reality. These “Storescapes” used AR to superimpose images onto pedestrians, so onlookers could see their reflections in a screen with animations including button eyes covering their real eyes.

Toyota IQ and Mini:
Car companies such as Toyota and BMW have been quick to use augmented reality technology to create a 3-D interactive experience for new cars. Toyota employed the technology to show off its new small car, Toyota IQ, which allows consumers to interact with the car and discover its agility and interior space. MINI employed the same strategy for the release of its Cabrio convertible.

Fanta Virtual Tennis:
Fanta uses augmented reality to bring a bit of whimsy and play to its Play On Virtual Tennis offering. The game enables consumers to play in either single or double mode, facing off with a friend any conceivable location. It’s promises the closest thing to an out of home Wii experience that we’ve seen yet.

As novel and fun as these examples are (and there are many, many more — even GE is in on it), we are still years away from realizing the true potential of augmented reality. The next wave, which is just starting to emerge from the labs, promises a full melding of virtual and physical without markers. Imagine walking down the street and seeing digital overlays on physical locations (bars, restaurants, movies) with adverts, video clips and even avatars.

The primary way to experience this today (albeit with bugs) is with a mobile device, such as T-Mobile’s G1, which runs Google’s Android software. For example, Wikitude from Mobilizy is a mobile travel guide that provides overlays of locale information for more than 350,000 world-wide points of interest. Similarly, Enkin wants to “reinvent navigation, by combining GPS, orientation sensors, 3-D graphics, live video, and several web services into something wholly new. More practically, SPRXmobile and ING deliver a mobile ATM finder for the Netherlands that allows you to locate ING ATMs simply by holding the phone in front of you.

At this moment, augmented reality for marketers is a novel, nifty new technology — but one that will probably grow gimmicky quickly. I’ve personally played with seven or eight demos at this point (many mentioned above) and after the “gee whiz” factor is exhausted, there’s not really much there to sustain any real engagement. Besides, there’s a vague whiff of “Dungeons & Dragons” around this stuff that’s will be hard for most to get over.

Today, the biggest potential is for both geeks and gamers. It’s not hard to imagine how a video-game company could use the technology to literally place consumers into the game. Or how companies like Topps and Legos will further use augmented reality to enable a more enhanced game play experience. Check out WiiSpray for a taste.

Augmented reality has huge promise, but in the short term it’s a niche technology for a niche audience. But, of course, gaining a foothold in the multibillion-dollar gaming industry is not a bad place from which to start. Let’s just hope our desire to hype it AR as the next big thing won’t harm it.

Regardless of how fast our internet connections get, it still seems that we’re perpetually waiting for our digital media — websites, videos, pictures, music — to load. It’s a twisted feedback loop: faster broadband begets bigger and bigger file sizes. All of which makes accessing that Flash-heavy product microsite a perpetual exercise in patience.

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. The migration from dial-up to broadband promised instantaneous access to the web. So much so that earlier this year the preloader — that ubiquitous status message and animation that plays before a site loads — looked on its way to becoming extinct and was given its own museum, PrettyLoaded.

But fans of the preloader should fear not. Peruse most recent Favourite Website Awards’ (FWA) sites-of-the-day and you will still find your self waiting — whether you are surfing on a T1, cable connection or middling DSL line. Funny how we still as an industry haven’t recognized that speed is the killer app of the internet era.

How much does speed matter online? Ask Google’s Marisa Mayer who recently released findings that a page-load delay of 400 milliseconds — about the blink of an eye — can drive down usage. That fraction of a delay translated to a 1% reduction in Google’s search query volume and millions of dollars in lost revenue. Imagine what a load time of 7 to 8 seconds could mean for the usage of a marketer’s Flash-enabled microsite?

HTML 5 and Open Video just may be the technologies that we’ve been waiting for to deliver a faster and more open internet.

IO 9Elements HTML 5 Canvas Experiment

HTML 5, the next major revision to the 4.01 standard, is geared specifically to support rich web applications (e.g. Google Docs) built with JavaScript. And open video platforms, such as Ogg Theora, will enable content creators to embed video and audio files on the web just like HTML text or images today. Moreover, you’ll be able to easily edit, crop, tag and remix those same videos. And none of this will require plug-ins from Adobe (Flash), Microsoft (Silverlight) or Sun (JavaFX).

These new coding standards (which won’t formally be ratified by the W3C for quite some time) are getting early support from Mozilla’s latest Firefox browser 3.5, Google’s Chrome, Opera and Apple’s Safari 4 — and enabling a host of new, faster web experiences. Here’s a taste:

• IO 9Elements HTML 5 Canvas Experiment
  The German digital shop 9Elements has created one of the most impressive HTML 5 demos so far. The experiment loads 100 tweets related to HTML 5 (natch!) and displays them using a javascript-based particle engine. Employing audio and motion, the demo enables users to click on a dot or “particle” and read/link to the associate tweet. It takes data visualization to a whole new level.
• Choose Your Own HTML 5 Adventure
  This site boasts the mother lode of HTML 5 demos, which were put together for Google’s I/O ’09 Developer Conference. The most impressive include Geolocation: Google Maps, which enables geotracking (and certainly targeting, in the future) through the browser; YouTube HTML 5, which demos the open player; Canvas: Drawing Board, which allows for user generated scribbling and Canvas: 1st-Person Gifter which allows for navigation in a virtual environment. Most impressively Workers: Motion Tracker actually pairs a video with a JavaScript-powered application.
• Chrome Experiments
  Created by the Google Chrome browser team to tout the benefits of JavaScript (and Chrome) these demos were created using open standards like HTML 5, Canvas and SVG. There are about 50 experiments in total ranging from games to voice-generated interactions to 3D animation — all delivered surprisingly quickly and with impressive fidelity in the browser.
• Daily Motion’s Open Video Demo
  One of the best examples of Open Video, Daily Motion’s HTML 5 Video Demo Player eschews Flash for the new HTML 5 video tag. The video is seamlessly integrated into the code of the page, and users are able to rotate, pop a preview player, skin and even add effects to the video itself. Daily Motion has gone one-step further in supporting the standard and released a “Pre Beta” site that features all open video content.

There are a host of other, smaller noteworthy demos worth checking out as well. Paul Roget’s Dynamic Content Injection is a nifty way to see how video can start to be played with in code form and Remy Sharp’s Drag and Drop and Drag Anything are both quite nice too.

Of course, we are in the very early days of HTML 5 and Open Video. Some believe that we won’t see widespread adoption of HTML 5 until 2012 and the W3C won’t officially ratify it until, maybe, 2020(!). But those estimates seem far too conservative. Much progress has already been made and nothing needs to be made official before HTML 5 is widely adopted and supported.

More tellingly, HTML 5 may gain quicker traction on mobile devices. Today’s Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS are now supporting HTML 5, not Flash. In fact, some of the demos highlighted earlier currently work on the iPhone today. In the not too distant future publishers will most likely opt to create mobile sites in HTML 5 to deliver rich experiences on mobile browsers (ala today’s web) — versus developing and supporting variations of apps across a range of handsets and platforms.

For marketers, content creators and developers, moving to HTML 5 and Open Video sooner than later makes good sense. The technology will allow digital experiences to be delivered more quickly, shared more widely and discovered more freely almost instantly. And with Google sounding a call to arms with its “Let’s Make The Web Faster” campaign it’s not hard to imagine a future where we’ll flip through web pages, apps and rich media as quickly and easily as we turn pages in a magazine or flip channels on our television.