Thinks 2ne1

A stream of links and notes and pictures and articles on new technology, new media, 360, TV, mobile, Internet, augmented reality, artificial life, digital entertainment, social networking, inspiring art. That sort of cool stuff.

Augmented-reality Browsers

Augmented-reality browsers in development:

SPRXMobile Layar (Android)
IBM Seer (Android)
SREngine (iPhone)
Nokia’s Point & Find (Nokia)
Wikitude (Android)
Lastminute’s nru (Android)

IBM Seer is IBM’s Augmented Reaity browser, beta version set up for use at Wimbldon tennis. Point it at a court and get scores, pan around and get labelled information to search for food, drinks, etc.

More info here

Layar is SPRXmobile’s Augmented Reality browser, recently launched in the Netherlands.

Jun
18th

Thu

Point & Find is Nokia’s Augmented Reality browser in beta: “Just point you phone at real-world objects and find relevant information and services”

I signed up but it costs $500 USD just for a month to play around with so quickly left. As Tom’s post points out, open source (and cross-platform) versions may well have more uptake and be more successful, such as the SREngine.

(via The Future Digital Life)

UPDATE: Just tested the free Point & Find client in the wild at Cambridge Vue cinema. Pointed it at 5 different film posters/advertising boards: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Bruno, Transformers 2, some film with a rat and The Hangover. Randomly changing film guesses were displayed for all but The Hangover! For The Hangover the trailer link worked great - streaming the trailer into RealPlayer fine - and show times were correctly listed (after being prompted for postcode, would have been nice if it had used the network cell ID and/or GPS for location).

Overview by Tom Carpenter of Metaio ‘s forthcoming AR authoring tool Unifeye Design. Attach content to markers, provide actions, etc.

Metaio’s unimaginatively named iPhone demos iLive and iPlay let you add 3D elements to still photos. The ‘AR’ aspect is that the objects are positioned in 3D space. I assume all it knows is the ground plane, calculated using the accelerometers rather than image analysis. Shown at Berlin Webinale 200.

(via augmented reality blog)

Jun
12th

Fri

In my previous post last year I said that the Sekai camera appeared to be vapourware, largely because it appeared to be using natural feature recongition and tracking in scenarios where it did not look feasible.

This latest presentation clears it up a bit - the software isn’t using any image processing as far as I can see, it’s using the new iPhone’s digital compass to get orientation (along with GPS for position), something like GeoVector’s patent: “Pointing systems for addressing objects”.

(via MadeInTheUK)

Jun
9th

Tue

Twittering Away

Study shows Twitter as a one-to-many broadcast medium rather than peer-to-peer social network.

Interesting stats from the Harvard study of 300,000 users:

10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, in contrast to typical online social networks where 10% of users generate 30% of the content;
The median number of lifetime tweets per user is one as half the users updated less than once every 74 days;
55% Women, 45% men split;
Men have 15% more followers;
Unlike social networks, in Twitter men like to follow men.

Jun
8th

Mon

lm2labs, providers of computer vision-based interactivity solutions, demo their flashy AR business card (via ifolio)

I can only see this really making sense if receivers of the business card have a mobile viewer (ideally already installed). Then the AR content is quickly and easily accessible.

Otherwise, you need PC and Internet access to access the card’s extra content, at which point you have a computer with decent screen, mouse and keyboard at your disposal and the AR aspect becomes nothing more than a gimmick.