Granted... this is not a Windows Phone ad, it's all about Vodafone Red Box service, but something that did caught my eye and the main reason why I want a Windows Phone, is that it just works... everything is there at you fingertip, all integrated... no need for Jedi training.

A few days back, I shared with you a new AR assisted experience LEGO put out for kids and grownups to play along this holidays season, today I want you to explore a more of a group-oriented, public interactive experience.

Recently, National Geographic peered up with London studio Appshaker to create a new way for people to interact and discover content from the network's collection of amazing footage.

In order to do so, appshaker came out with a public AR experience that let thousands of people to interact with everything from a T-Rex to Dolphins swiming around you to even a playfull cheetah.

Take a look yourself in the video above. Look at how, both the people that step up to the markers and the people around the mall experience the display. It is in showcases like this that not only brands get something to show for but the society gets the chance to start seeing what the future is going to look like. It prepare themselves for what's around the corner and gives creatives new grounds to explore.

Immagine what would happen if you add a kinect camera into the mix, if you have smart enough movements into the characters that could let people interact with the animals like if they were there, imagine what if you could dress the people with new clothes and take them into a new journey.

Academics: get the ball going, take your research outside, it's time to take all of those experiences out of the lab and into the world!!

sometimes you have to test stuff yourself just to see how grant it is... this has happened to me in a couple of ocacions before: when I got my first iphone, when I got my first retina-enabled iPod touch and now I can add a third... and it's from Microsoft!

The Photosynth App just works as advertized, the app sports Microsoft's Metro look and feel that, to say the least, it feels fresh on a device that is all but different (is it that a good thing?!) but that's just icyng on the cake... you have to tap start and just go flashing away those pictures... it's amazing!

Mobile photography really won't be the same after you test this app.

Kudos to Blaise and his team of researchers... this trully is a step closer to the future!

PS. Care to know where did all this came from? then check out Blaise demoing Seadragon and Photosynth and the future of Augmented Reality Maps at TED and then follow on dreaming!

Update: better yet... skip those videos and watch them later and just jump straight to Blaise's account of the app experience.

With only a couple of days into February and the diversity of slate offerings is just starting to spice up and with that the diversification of offerings, flavors and most importantly, experiences start their lineup to bloom.

So what's in for us? Let's just take a look at the infographic above which pairs up some of the known offerings available until now; as for concerns in design and implementation the lesser common denominator for all of them comes to be Webkit, which means that more and more HTML5 will become the de-facto technology we will catered to if we want to target all them as one as we wait to see how they penetrate in the consumer world individually.

These are interesting times and I'm exited to see how the slate market will evolve. Android is probably the platform with the biggest opportunity to make a dent in Apple's reign, specially given Apple's almost dictatorial behavior as of late and Google's non-stop grow in mobile.

In the mean time Google has a lot to catch up to in terms of facilitating the making money process to developers, if they expect more and more developers to make the jump, which as of now has remained below expectations.

The show is not over and the war of slates will just get hotter as the days advance, next week HP is set to unveil their line up of WebOS based devices, which has been creating a lot of expectation lately, same goes for the iPad 2 whose announcement is eminent and as for Microsoft, well... we'll have to see what MIX '11 has to offer in this arena, since their strategy is still quite vague. 

The pastures for us creators is greener than ever, imagination is at bloom and the displays are opening up... democratization for content, experiences and more is becoming reality one bit and pixel at the time... at a very fast rate.

Exited?

Where the iPad made me say Meh, it's just a big iPod... where the Samsung Galaxy Tab made me thought of the average experience I've had with the Galaxy S here in Korea and how raw Android still is... the PlayBook made feel like I wanted one.

It might be the good ad above, the great set of features, it's connectivity options or the fact that I can use HTML5, Java or Flash to build apps... but it just looks like it has everything we have been wanting from a tablet device and we haven't got thus far.

I know it's early to tell... I still want to see what HP will bring to the table with WebOS later this year, but now I can say Apple has got some good competition... and the fact that it is "enterprise" ready... makes it even more appealing.

What you guys think?

Update: you can register now to get access to the Table SDK.

Earlier today I shared a video on Augmenting Books with live graphics and visualizations and showed you how AR could play a role in bringing life to the good old paper book.

Now I want to take you a little bit further... I want to take you to look at social enhanced literature.

The video above is the materialization of a team at IDEO and how they see the future of books and literature evolving past the digitalization of paper.

With the commoditization of smart-phones and tablet-like devices, the rich of its graphics capabilities and the globalization of the social network, both in our personal and corporate lifes, the next frontier opens up to match all of them together and bring a whole new level of abstraction and connectivity to our daily tasks. I call this trend social augmented experiences.

Long will be gone the old static, lonely and disconnected way of doing work and very soon we will be taking place in a new era of discovery and experiencing the world.

Video is short but the impact of their vision is huge, and best of all: it's possible today!

You can also listen below to an interview from WNYC who talks to Duane Bray and Robert Lenne, part of the team behind this project.

I hope you, like me, will see this just as a natural evolution of the reality we live today... because more and more we are touching the future.

And for those who thought Adobe had already lost the fight...

here is a video for the second round.

Honestly... quite impressive!

this are the kind of experiences that the iPad enables... now wonder how extra good they could be if you could use a pen :)

Seat back relax and take a look at the future of Pen + Touch, at least how the peeps at Microsoft Research see it.

I guess we are getting closer than ever to the Courier reality... iPad looks so 2007 when you look at this :)

as I wrote before, I'm exited about the Windows Phone Series stuff and now that the tools are out I can't wait to dig in and get my hands messy... but there is lot's of stuff!... so where to start?

why, no other than the the mobile developer site! here I've found gems that I guess have skipped the noise radar of Mix.

take for example Petzold's preview of his upcoming book, if you know C# already this is a great place to start digging in a little more detail than the simple tutorials.

also, don't miss to check the development docs and the ux guide, these are probably the places I'll go hand and hand during the ramp up.