We’ve seen augmented reality being used in numerous different ad campaigns, promoting numberous products and brands such as the National Geographic. However, its use has been superficial at best mainly acting as cutscenes at best and with very little interaction but this project which incorporates publishing breathes new life into what some people perceive as a dying industry.
Between Page and Screen is a book that has no words or text printed on it, instead it only contains abstract geometric patterns and a web address leading to its site. As long as users have a browser and a webcam, they will be able to read the book where the patterns allow poems and text to appear before you. The animations which appear move with the book and create the equivalent of a digital pop-up book
The book explores a series of letters written by two lovers struggling to map the boundaries of their relationship, and the poems that appear fill the space between the reader and the screen. People viewing this may see the book as a novelty but that would be missing the point, it’s not intended as a commercial project, but a new way of tackling and injecting some a familiar medium. The fact that the book relies solely on augmented reality
The book was written by Amaranth Borsuk and the site was developed by Brad Bouse. Originally published as a limited edition book, the book is now available to buy from Siglio Press for $24.95.
I downloaded movies and TV series from illegal filesharing websites. (I was not a pusher though, just a casual user for personal use).
My other half and myself haven’t had a TV aerial or cable service for over a year. I simply got tired of surfing through reruns of Friends and all the other complete garbage that passes for TV these days. Yes I'm talking about you, star pop idol search brother bunkum.
Why did I stop? Well because the people who make movies and TV series came up with a way to make it easier for me to pay and view than to download from pirate sites. The same thing happened a few years ago. I used to download music illegally from Napster until iTunes made it easier to pay and access the music the way I wanted to.
The content makers tied the content and themselves to the production and distribution channel (the DVD or the CD became the product instead of the movie or music on it) and they based their revenue on this model and couldn’t see a way to move forward when the physical disc stopped selling.
The technology to allow the distribution of content online has existed now for 15 years and yet the movies and music businesses have fought the use of these technologies tooth and nail for years. (They also fought the VCR, the cassette, the DVD recorder and they fought the Web.)
So what allowed me to move from illegal to legal last week? Netflix arrived in Ireland.
My TV connects to the Web and I choose what I want to watch whenever I want to watch it and the quality is fantastic. I pay for this service. I'm glad to. How much do I pay? The price of two cups of coffee in a month. It only took 15 years but better late than never.
There are two ways to protect something online. Lock it up and police it and fight anyone who tries to get it or make it so easily and broadly available for a low entry that everyone would rather access it legally than rip it.
You may remember us covering Samsung’s smart window a few days ago where you could check up your Twitter feed and surf the web among other things. Well, another form of the smart window technology has appeared, this time it’s designed for the backseat of your car.
General Motors (GM) Research and Development challenged students and researchers from the FUTURE Lab at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel to come up with new years to help rear seat passengers, particularly children, have a batter experience while they’re on the move. The result was the Windows of Opportunity (WOO) Project, which created new ways for passengers to be entertained and educated while they’re travelling in-between destinations.
Because the project based its work on psychological studies that found car passengers often felt disconnect from their environment, the Bezalel students created concept apps to be displayed on the car windows. Some of them included Pond, an app that allows passengers to stream and share music with other cars on the road; Spindow, an app that allows passengers to peek into other users’ windows around the glob in real time, and Otto, an animated character that responds to real-time car movement, weather and landscape.
Speaking about the project, GM’s R&D lab group manager for human-machine interface, Tom Seder said:
“Traditionally, the use of interactive displays in cars has been limited to the driver and front passenger, but we see an opportunity to provide a technology interface designed specifically for rear seat passengers…Advanced windows that are capable of responding to vehicle speed and location could augment real world views with interactive enhancements to provide entertainment and educational value.”
So far there aren’t any plans to introduce these smart windows to future vehicles, but if any company decides to produce them, the technology is there for them to get started. When they do, expect the days of drawing shapes from the condensation that forms on your car window to be numbered.
How’s this for a practical use of location based social media sites? A design student from the National University of Singapore, Selene Chew, has created a new device that not only allows the blind and partially blind to navigate their environment, but also communicate and find their friends.
The BlindSpot is a prototype white cane that utilizes a GPS-enabled smartphone and accompanying ear piece. Reported on Co.Exist, one of the main features of the cane is if any of the user’s friends check in on Foursquare nearby, they are alerted to their presence via an audio message. The message in question details how far away they are, right down to the number of steps it’ll take to reach them. Users have the option to ignore, call the person or best of all, find them using tactile navigation.
On top of that main feature, the Blindspot cane also prevents users from walking into inanimate objects irrespective of its position. So even if the object is located at eye level where sweeping the cane wouldn’t allow the user to find it, the cane will detect the object and alert the user through the bluetooth earpiece allowing them to navigate around it.
The idea won second prize at the James Dyson Awards and at the moment, Chew is looking for a partner to produce the smartcane on an industrial scale.
There’s been a lot of gadgets on display at CES 2012, but the device that seems to be getting the most attention online is Samsung’s interactive transparent window. Basically a transparent screen, the window allows you to do check out news feeds, watch videos, check up your Twitter account and get updates to news and weather (the latter is for other areas as you can see your local weather by looking out the window).
There’s even a shutter feature which produces a pair of shutters to stop light from coming in. However, the coolest thing about this window isn’t the novelty factor, but that it’s only transparent from one end. That is, anyone walking past the window outside won’t be able to see through it, meaning that checking your Twitter feeds can be done with privacy.
We may be a good year away before the first batch of interactive windows go on sale but even if the venture isn’t successful, the technology itself is something that will certainly find other uses.
It’s always fascinating when people find innovative ways to utilise the abilities of everyday technological devices and give them a previously unheard of practical purpose. The Skylight adapter is an example of such an idea – it is a lightweight, plastic device that enables a smartphone to be attached to a microscope, with the result that images can be taken on the phone. Whatever slide is being examined under the microscope lens can then be emailed or shared.
The primary advantage of such a device is that it means that an image can be taken and sent on to the relevant medical professional who can then make a diagnosis based on the image sent to them from the smartphone. The Skylight’s Kickstarter page details what this would mean in reality for a developing country, “For the health worker in Malawi, Africa, the Skylight will enable circa 1980 microscopes to send diagnostic images to the nearest doctor, who may be separated by hundreds of miles.” Skylight also has a “5 to 1 Promise”, which means that for every five Skylights sold, the company make a donation of one device to a cause that could benefit from it.
Skylight also envisages other uses for its product, such as enhancing the teaching of science in classrooms, and also for personal use, suggesting that people use the device to steady a phone when taking a photo. Skylight used Kickstarter, a fundraising platform, in an attempt to raise $15,000 which “will be used to finish the design for manufacturability, packaging design, and help us set up and contact distribution channels for the donated Skylights.” A blog post on January 2nd revealed that they had surpassed this target and raised $22,727, with 295 backers, which means that the first production run of Skylights can begin. As well as being a really cool use of a smartphone, Skylight’s story is a great example of utilising a fundraising site such as Kickstarter to achieve goals and turn ideas into an actual business, with a philanthropic edge.
It’s been a pretty busy year on the tech blogging front. We’ve seen Techcrunch more or less falling apart at the seems, the editor of Mashable get sacked, Arrington set up his own blog, seen rumors of new blogs starting and had the usual fuss about Tech blogs being dead. Social media has helped drive these blogs to a new level because of the speed at which content is spreading but there is without doubt a bit of a shift in the landscape happening at the moment. We wanted to move away from the usual suspects and share the 5 blogs that we think will have huge break out years in 2012 and dominate the tech space…
Joshua Topolsky and Marty Moe founded this publication in 2011 and even though it is something closer to a full on media site than a blog we are still counting it because of the nature of it’s content. They are already starting to make waves and their content is beautifully designed, unique and refreshing. A strong focus on rich media like video will help them differentiate in 2012 and it should be a massive year of growth for them providing they nail the business model.
The Next Web
Our good friends (we have contributed lots of articles there) have been growing solidly over the last year and are starting to get a serious presence in the USA and Silicon Valley in particular. We may be biased but the best tech stories we see every day are always on TNW and their concise fast reporting means they are usually breaking the biggest stories and a must read for all of us in the industry. Except super growth again from the all star team in 2012.
GigaOm
This is my first stop nearly every single day of the week for their quality hype free tech writing. The cover the emerging trends, new technologies and because their business model does not depend on page views (they have lots of premium research services) they don’t get involved in all the silly tech stories. They just raised funding so hopefully that will mean lots more quality content for us readers.
Paris Lemon
MG Seigler has been writing for some time on Techcrunch and although I don’t always agree with his forthright opinions he does get people talking and thinking about the subjects he covers. Just like his old boss Michael Arrington he is not scared to put himself at the center of the story and although that can seem like having a big ego at times it more often than not works in terms of getting the big scoops. Strong opinions and compelling reading. 2012 will be a massive break out year for this blog, even more so than this year already was.
Trying to get consumers attention in New York’s Times Square with advertising is a tricky job but Hyundai have done that with their latest creation which features the world’s largest iPhone controlled racing game. Passers by simply have to register and they are then given a turn using their iPhone as a controller. It is a truly immersive experience for the person racing but it also grabs the attention of other people passing by and the screen comes along with it’s own mini grandstand for spectators. The fact that to use the iPhone racing game you also have to download an app means that this is a great way for the thousands of players to take away their very own piece of Hyundai with them on their journey and possibly even think about buying one at a later date. We are seeing more and more of these interactive billboards featuring games and although they are an expensive platform to develop they certainly get a lot of attention both offline and online.
Japan have a fascination with vending machines, creating more technologically advanced devices as well as giving them purposes that extend beyond their original use.
Drinks company Asahi Soft Drinks Co. has created a new vending machine that not only dispenses drinks but provides free Wi-Fi that lets you access the web within a 50m radius.
The service is free for anyone to use and connects automatically without needing to install or pay for the service. However, it disconnects after a 30 minute timeframe, but you can still reconnect after this happens but it means you can’t abuse the service by downloading any large files.
After you log in, uses will see information relating to where they are currently based, such as where to shop as well as local and regional attractions.
The company’s ambition is to install 1,000 machines across Japan first before increasing that number to 10,000 over the next five years. The vending machines are being developed in conjunction with wireless company, FreeMobile.
While its still a relatively young service and still improving, Google Maps has become an indispensable resource for navigation and making sense of new places. Yet perhaps in years to come, this will become the next logical use for the service. In Japan, to highlight the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country back in March, Google drove over 44,000 kilometers through the affected regions to capture and record the landscape. The images used in the specialised site date from 2008 for the pre-disaster shots and July 2011 for the aftermath.
The initiative, which is called Build The Memory, allows you to compare and contrast before and after images of each area by seeing it before and after the earthquake occurred. The result is a striking comparison, highlighting how much destruction occurred during the incident.
While the initiative was done as a special case, it would be interesting to see how Google maps develops over time. While it’s being used for directions and navigation, future years could see it being used by planners and historians among other professions in understanding processes and the development of areas. Archiving could be the next logical step for Google’s flagship product and placing a further emphasis on education (alongside Google Earth) could see the service gain further recognition and progress in leaps and bounds.
Before and after shots of an area in Yamamoto, Japan
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We’ve seen augmented reality being used in numerous different ad campaigns, promoting numberous products and brands such as the National Geographic. However, its use has been superficial at best mainly acting as cutscenes at best and with very little interaction but this project which incorporates publishing breathes new life into what some people perceive as a dying industry.
I broke the law, I broke it at least once a week.
