Believe it or not, large oil companies like Shell aren’t just focused on drilling into the ground or the ocean floor to bring up more oil. They have invented some marvelous innovations to improve the lives of people all over the world, too. And now, Shell has released an iPad app to publicize new uses for their technology discoveries, Shell’s Inside Energy.
Overview
INSIDE ENERGY is a magazine style app that explores the role innovation plays in producing energy to supply an ever increasing world wide need. Using the app, you can learn about advances in technology, and meet the people involved in making it happen.
Interactive collages allow the user to explore the ways energy is produced, and used. The user can also learn such things as how Shell produces natural gas and oil thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface by swiping down from a 3d platform into the depths of the murky environs below.
An inventive use of video, animations, photos, and sound help the user go inside energy.
The app uses the iPad’s capabilities to highlight the various ways Shell is using new technology to produce new sources of energy, produce everyday items like pillows, and even create a stove that Shell says brings efficient heating to the poorer countries around the world, yet still protects the air they breathe.
Using swipes, pinches, taps, and even your voice, you can explore the various “articles” included in the app. Shell says the available content will be updated regularly, with new stories appearing periodically.
The article I explored was “A Light Touch”. The article demonstrates the ways optical fibers can be used during excavating, and drilling, and how they can be used to monitor wells and gas lines after they are in place. The app uses engaging graphics, animation, and iPad gestures, (the article even requests you to shake, tap, and even make a “sss…” sound into the mic of your iPad to simulate gas entering a well,) to help demonstrate how the fibers are used.
The other articles in the app were equally engaging and informative. However you feel about oil companies in general, the app is an interesting attempt by Shell to inform the public about how they say they are using technology to explore for new energy sources, and try to improve the lives of the world inhabitants.
Verdict
This is an app that uses the capabilities of the iPad in innovative ways to demonstrate how Shell says it is using technology and new discoveries to better use the energy sources currently available to the world, and how they are attempting to create new ways of making the world a little safer and easier to live in.
Viewing it from a simply technological standpoint, the app is an entertaining and engaging method used by Shell to share their efforts and their viewpoints. The app is worth a download simply to view the way Shell uses the iPad to show how their technologies work. Educational publishers and developers may want to take a look at the app just to get a few ideas how to enrich their products.
Price: Free (App Store Link)
Rating: 3.5/5[rating:3.5]
Pros:
- Engaging use of graphics and animation
- Excellent use of engaging the user via gestures, shakes, and even voice.
- Amazing amount of initial content.
Cons:
- Occasional pauses in experience for downloading content, perhaps download the information in the background?
- App told me that I was not connected to the Internet a few times, when I clearly was.
