Can’t wait for the North American International Auto Show to kick off on January 9th in Detroit so you can see the next version of the Ford Fusion? Well, you don’t have to.

Ford has released an app for the iPhone and Android that is simply activated by pointing the mobile device at a Ford logo, whether it’s on a car, online, or on a piece of paper, Mashable reports.

The app, which can be found on the Ford Fusion Facebook page, allows users to go for a drive in the new car on a variety of courses and gives them the ability to view the bare bones of the new car from 360 degrees.Continue reading...

Just in time for last-minute holiday shopping, Nike has teamed up with augmented reality specialists GoldRun, Akoo (an out of home TV network) and U.S. running apparel retailer Finish Line for an AR-based treasure hunt and sweepstakes. The contest's prize package is sure to please sneakerheads and runners alike: Nike’s Air Max Flash Pack, a collection of 15 shoe designs and colors.

Shoppers in 106 malls with Finish Line stores can download the free GoldRun app, find a virtual Nike shoe, snap a picture of the shoe in front of a Finish Line store and have a chance to win one of the 15 pairs of Nike shoes awarded daily.

“By sharing branded photos and earning rewards (such as winning a new pair of Nikes or getting a discount on a product), the consumer is incentivized and the brand wins, because they're seeing engagement in the mobile and social space while driving awareness and revenue,” GoldRun Founder and CEO Vivian Rosenthal told brandchannel.Continue reading...

When a game designed for mobile phones has gotten more than a half a billion downloads in less than two years of existence, it’s apparently time to bring it into reality.

That must be what the creators of the Angry Birds game are thinking, anyway. Rovio, which is planning to go public in the next few years, will debut two Angry Birds playgrounds in its homeland of Finland next year, according to Reuters, that will have “animal spring riders, swings, sandpits and a range of climbing towers with slides, and a unique Angry Birds arcade game.”

The company has signed a global deal with playground equipment manufacturer Lappset to create “equipment inspired by the game's characters" for playgrounds that will be called Angry Birds Magic Places. "The playgrounds fit perfectly into the Angry Birds world and our way of thinking," Rovio marketing chief Peter Vesterbacka said in a statement.Continue reading...

Retailers have been grousing for years about the disappearance of consumer dollars to the online environment. And the proliferation of smartphones has made things that much more difficult as consumers in the stores looking at products can immediately look to see if they can get better prices online. Amazon.com is taking it one step further, giving brick-and-mortar retailers one more thing to complain about.

The Seattle-based online-retail powerhouse is launching a promotion on Dec. 10 that will attempt to get shoppers in retail environments to buy the products they are seeing in the store via Amazon at a discount, according to Direct Marketing News.

To qualify, consumers need to use Amazon’s Price Check mobile app to check out the price difference between something at the store and Amazon. “To compare pricing, consumers can scan a product's barcode, take its photo and speak or type its name via the app,” Amazon told DM News.Continue reading...

This week in New York, Italian fashion icon Valentino Garavani unveiled a first-of-its-kind virtual museum at the Museum of Modern Art. An ode to the designer's iconic fashion design, it's the world's first virtual fashion museum.

The launch event was live-streamed on YouTube and featured a maniacally enthusiastic Anne Hathaway as host. Presenters included Valentino, his business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, Google Art Project’s creator Amit Sood, and Italian Vogue editor-in-chief, Franca Sozzani. A sleepy-looking Hugh Jackman jumped on stage for the virtual “ribbon cutting.”

Giancarlo explained that the 3D museum was originally conceived as “an idea space." Google Art Projects, which had been working on virtual museums for the National Gallery, MoMA, Uffizi, Tate Britain, and France's Palace of Versailles, became involved after Valentino reached out with his initial ideas.Continue reading...

After American Airlines threw him off a flight today for refusing to stop playing Words With Friends and turn off his iPhone, actor Alec Baldwin tweeted this photo with the hashtag, #theresalwaysunited. Below, see how the saga unfolded on Twitter.Continue reading...

CNN set off a firestorm of speculation when it reported Friday that Facebook had acquired Gowalla, the location-based check-in mobile app similar to Foursquare.

Facebook declined to comment, but Josh Williams, Gowalla founder and CEO did not deny the deal in an email to AllThingsD on Sunday, writing, “The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumours and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released. But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon.”

Turns out, as Business Insider reports and a Gowalla blog post confirms, that the Gowalla team is indeed joining Facebook — but not the brand itself, which will be killed off in order to supercharge the timeline feature on Facebook, whose own Facebook Places check-in function launched last year but never took off.Continue reading...

Walmart has just released Shopycat, a standalone Facebook app to make shopping, holiday and everyday, smarter and stress-free (hopefully). Shopycat mines social data to recommend items from Walmart.com, Walmart stores and other partner sites including RedEnvelope, Barnes & Noble, NBC Universal and ThinkGeek.

“We’ve been working on how to add a social layer on top of e-commerce. One of the key areas where we thought we could make a difference is in gift-giving … we thought if we could take a person’s interests and ‘likes,’ that are expressed on Facebook, and tie those with a vast product catalog, then we could make gift-giving much more enjoyable,” commented Anand Rajaraman, head of WalmartLabs, to Venture Beat.

Shopycat currently passes users to other websites for purchase, but by this time next year, shopping will be done directly on Facebook, as Ravi Raj, VP of product for WalmartLabs told VB.Continue reading...