wireWAX brings its taggable video technology to the iPad

London-based taggable-video company wireWAX has announced that its software is now arriving in a ‘touchable’ format on the Apple iPad.

Over the past few years, the people at wireWAX have been building clickable or ‘taggable’ software which allows users to add motion-tracking hotspots or ‘tags’ to people and objects within video, as well as interactive content and information.

wireWAX is an online tool (no software needed) that lets users tag content, much in the same way as you would add tags to Facebook photos. Once these tagged hotspots are added, users can then add buttons with images, formatted text, links and other applications. The latter of these, apps, is where things start to get exciting… you can add video-in-video, SMS/Message senders, image carousels, competitions, interactive games, animations, just about anything you can dream up.

These apps are offered as ‘off-the-shelf’, such as a Facebook profile app for a friend in the video, or custom-built such as an e-commerce app for an online retailer, that plugs in to their shopping cart system.

Recently, the company has completed video campaigns for the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Ripcurl and ITV. And here’s an example of an interactive tagged video for fashion retailer Oki-Ni:

There is this underlying principle that wireWAX adheres to. The idea is to bring the Web into a video, rather than creating links to external content. Though this is largely the case in the Oki-Ni example above, to buy an item of clothing you’re whisked off to the company’s website. There’s no real reason why the full transaction couldn’t take place within the video.

It’s also worth checking out this promo video from an ITV television show. It demonstrates another potential use-case of wireWAX technology:

wireWAX also promises to help brands monetize through offering the viewer a reason to engage, as opposed to bombarding them with ads. So for example, a user may see relevant ads once they’ve clicked a key hot-spot, and in the case of the Oki-Ni video above, users are offered the chance to buy the clothes worn by the people in the video.

wireWAX first made the move into the UK’s tablet market last December, making a special version of its software available to “creative partners only”, but the company has now rolled it out across the board on the iPad. Check out a short demo of wireWAX on the iPad for yourself here:

Steve Callanan, CEO at wireWAX, says:

“We believe the latest incarnation of software on the iPad will open the product up to a much wider audience and are really excited about the opportunities of merging taggable and touchable video technology. It’s clear to see that there is huge potential in the marketplace right now for this technology and that the possibilities for interactive taggable video are quite simply endless.”

So – how can you start using wireWAX? Remember, this is all Web-based, so there’s no apps to install or software to download.

First of all, you have to create an account and decide which service level you’re looking for. It operates a freemium business model, offering a basic service with limited videos and views per month, all the way up to Premium which is pretty comprehensive and costs just shy of £1,000 per month. Bear in mind, the main target audience here is creatives and video developers, though there’s nothing to stop amateurs and hobbyists getting involved too.

Back in June, we wrote about ThingLink, a tool which uses rich media tagging to make still images social and interactive. So think about wireWAX as a ThingLink but for video. It’s a really neat tool though, and should help push the boundaries in terms of building bridges between brands and consumers.