A contact lens with metal circuit elements has been tested in rabbits.
(Credit: University of Washington)Reading the news about a University of Washington professor's experimental electronic contact lens, I wondered if my dream of the ultimate personal technology has finally moved from over the horizon to in sight. Here's what I want: to be able to walk into crowded cocktail party, and know exactly who I am looking at -- each person's name, last time we met, and other information pertinent for a pleasant social interaction. I want that information beamed into my field of vision, in text floating over their heads, like the health indicators over the bad guys in a computer game.
It'll be awhile, though. The contact lens just has one blinky light in it so far. But you can now get augmented reality apps for the most modern mobile phones. New smartphones have not just cameras and location sensors (global positioning satellite receivers) but also compasses and inclinometers, so they know what direction they're pointing and which way the device is being held. With these sensors, they can run cool sci-fi apps that show data projected on top of the video their cameras are picking up.
In other words, augmented reality apps show, as their baseline image, a video of what the camera is pointing at, which is a redundant display of what you can see already with your own eyes. Then, on top of that, they overlay data -- graphics or text -- telling you about what the camera is seeing. Until smartphones are smart enough to recognize people by their faces, the cocktail party application I want isn't quite possible. Although it should be noted that Google and other companies do have face recognition functions in some of their photo album services, and a Swedish company called The Astonishing Tribe has a compelling demo of such a product. There's a video here.
But here's what you can do right now with a AR-capable phone:
Yelp shows you what's outside your window.
(Credit: Screenshot by Scott Stein/CNET)Get Yelp on the iPhone 3GS (download). A secret feature (shake the phone three times to activate it when Yelp is running) overlays restaurant names and user ratings over the video you're looking at. So you can see, in theory, a review score hovering over the image of the restaurant you're standing right outside of.
Get Layar for an Android Phone. Layar is a building block AR platform that can use data sets from other providers. There's Yelp, for example (although the pure Yelp iPhone app is a bit better). Layar can also show you Twitter posts from users nearby, Wikipedia entries based on what your camera is pointing at, houses for sale from Trulia, and other info. It's incredibly cool.
Lost in a strange city? If it's New York or London, try AcrossAir's subway locators that'll tell you just where the station you're looking for is.
Unfortunately, for the urban apps I just mentioned, sometimes the orientation sensors aren't as accurate as you'd like, and the data that you see is placed erroneously. I guess it's hard to get a reliable compass reading in a modern city setting. Also, the AR apps can't tell, yet, if what the camera is seeing is relevant to what they want to display. The Yelp app will often pop a review up over a building that's located between you and the building it means to display its info over.
The most interesting and useful augmented reality app I've tried so far (but keep in mind, I'm a geek) is Google Sky Map for the Android phone. When you're out in a field at night, far from lights and magnetic interference -- and assuming you still have a data connection -- your Android phone can tell you what stars or planets you're looking at. Better yet, ask it where a body like Mars is, and it'll tell you which way to point your phone until you're looking right at it. I'd like the app to have more data, to find things like the International Space Station, but it's still an amazing product. It makes me look like a genius to my son, and that's worth the price of admission. (It's a free app, so it's an easy calculation.)
If you want a phone capable of running AR apps, the choices today are be the iPhone 3GS (not the older 3G, it doesn't have a compass) or an Android phone like the MyTouch 3G.
And here's a tip: Until we're all set up with cocktail party implants, if you meet me at a party, do me a favor and introduce yourself the old-fashioned way.
If scientists got the correlation models together, I wonder if they would find a blisteringly harmonious relationship between those who loathe reality TV and those who loathe Twitter.
Critics of the microblogging service declare that, like reality TV, tweets are just mindless ego-fodder being released on the masses by the second.
Well, now the two ego-fodder receptacles appear to be coming together for the further enlightenment of the world.
Variety reported Monday rather up-to-the-minute news of Brillstein Entertainment, a powerful artist management company, and Reveille Productions, the folks who used to be owned by NBC Entertainment's co-chairman, Ben Silverman, and have produced rather likable TV in "The Office" and "Ugly Betty."
These two significant players are about to make a reality series in cooperation with Twitter.
The creative possibilities for Twitter will surely never be over capacity.
(Credit: CC Mykl Roventine/Flickr)Perhaps you yourself have had a gestating idea for a reality TV series featuring Twitter and will feel miffed that someone has gotten there first.
All I can tell you is that according to the plans for the as-yet unnamed opus, the concept consists of "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."
Will real people compete to see who's the finest twittering paparazzi? Will they have to decipher cryptic tweets sent by Shaq and Demi Moore with clues to buried treasure? Who can possibly know?
All that is clear is that Variety quoted Brillstein's Jon Liebman as saying: "We've found a compelling way to bring the immediacy of Twitter to life on TV."
Strangely, the words 'Ashton' and 'Kutcher' have not immediately been associated with this project.
But it seems that soon "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol" may find a rival in realitweet TV.
Back in 2007, we put out two April Fools' Day posts chronicling fake and absurd start-ups. One was a Google Maps mashup for rodent sightings in New York restaurants. The other was a prenatal version of Twitter where unborn children could post status updates. A few readers took the bait in the comment sections, but it appears our ideas weren't so far off, as both have come to fruition just a year and a half later.
The first is, true-to-form, a maps mashup where New York City residents can see where local eateries have had rat-related health code violations. The site was launched in late October by New York City health officials as a way for users to help police local businesses and feed data for scientific research.
The Rat Information Portal's map lets you browse by borough to see where there have been high inspection and infestation rates of rats. Yum.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The maps portion of the site isn't as easy to use as a Google Map, but it does a fine job at letting you filter the data to show all sorts of juicy tidbits, like which places had the most follow-up inspections and how far gone infestations were in each part of town. The data goes all the way back to 2006. Consider it yet another thing to check about your new neighborhood before taking the plunge on that new apartment.
Our other fake start-up, called UltraSoundd, was based around the idea of taking sound from unborn babies and converting it into status updates. In our implementation, this involved sticking a telephone to your stomach and using dial-up Internet. Designer Corey Menscher has come up with a far more ingenious plan however, by creating a sensor belt that will automatically convert any baby movements into Twitter status updates such as this one:
Your baby kicks--you get a Tweet. All courtesy of Corey Menscher's Kickbee belt.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Menscher calls it the "Kickbee," and in its current implementation it looks like a weight belt with a bunch of wires hanging off it. Within its folds is an array of sensors, a microcontroller and Bluetooth transmitter to send everything off to a nearby laptop. So far it has been tracking kicks and sending them to Twitter since early this month. You can find the entire project page for it, along with Menscher's other works here.
ExitReality is the latest virtual world to come onto the scene and is launching out of private beta tonight. Its big bold feature is the capability to turn any site you're on into its own 3D world with interactive elements created from content found on the page. This includes photos, videos, and music files.
The service requires a small system plug-in that currently runs only on PCs. I was told no Mac version is planned, but may come into the picture if there's enough of a demand. Once the plug-in is installed, you just need to click a button in your browser and it will take you to the 3D version of that site. The tool will automatically scan any page you're on and make a "default" world where bits and pieces of content are pulled together and organized within a giant room. Site creators can put together their own creations, complete with a developer toolbox that lets people create some Second Life-esq environments using open-source 3D modeling standards.
In a demo earlier this month co-founder and CTO Danny Stefanic walked me through something that looked like the Ewok village from Star Wars. Unfortunately Webware.com did not look as lush, although my byline has never been bigger. Stefanic says site owners can put together their own worlds that would become destinations, or companions to their existing sites, and offer yet another place to monetize their content.
This is a more developed ExitReality page that includes many user created elements. The stock page that's generated on text sites is far less flashy.
(Credit: ExitReality )To that end, the entire Exit Reality platform is tied to two important things: a social and ad network. Users can have their own Exit Reality specific profiles that come with them from site to site, and there's a built-in directory and search tool used to browse some of the best creations. The advertising side is a little more vanilla, with contextual ads that layer on top of your site's content. There are also special branded 3D elements such as a Carl's Jr. moving bull which was shown off to me in reference to a 2-year-old TV advertisement, which can be found when visiting the Carl's Jr. site in Exit Reality.
Ultimately my only beef with Exit Reality's approach is that it's not offering a whole lot more than something like Me.dium when it comes to the social side of browsing. Me.dium doesn't try to re-think what site creators have come up with and makes the discovery process no different from the experience everyone else on the Web is having. Exit Reality seems to be focused on the 3D attraction, which is certainly not a bad thing, but the experience you get coming to a default version of a site is just not up to snuff with the handful places that have been meticulously created to be immersive. It's a classic chicken and egg problem, with users bound to get bored of it unless there are plenty of interesting places to visit.
Another problem is that the 3D virtual world space is getting crowded fast. Last week at the TechCrunch50 conference we saw the launch of Hangout.net which looks a little more visually impressive and includes things like VoIP chat and a really neat physics engine that lets you throw things around with some level of realism. There's also the Home service coming to Playstation 3 owners in the next few months, alongside the other myriad online choices like Doppelganger, Kaneva, and There.com which also partially compete with gaming heavyweights like Second Life and World of Warcraft.
The one thing that's really going to keep people coming back is something different, be it the people there or the available activities once you're on a site. Whether the open-source creation tools (which I think are one of the strong points) are enough to make that happen is anyone's guess.
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If you've kept an eye on the gestures scene, you'll be familiar with the concept of controlling various apps and services with hand gestures. The idea is to help you escape the use of traditional peripheral devices like a mouse or joystick in place of your body and hands. Lately we've seen examples from Microsoft, as well as a slick peripheral from 3dconnexion that's specifically been designed for navigating 3D spaces. Xtreme Reality is a software that captures body gestures via Webcam and converts them into keyboard and mouse inputs. You can create your own keyboard combos based on gesture combinations, and assign them to any open application (for games, photo browsing, etc.)
At a live preview of the technology at today's TechCrunch40 conference, the company showed off live demos of Google Earth, navigating a PowerPoint demo, and a live boxing round, all with simple hand gestures. The company intends on licensing the gesture technology for use in video games and third-party gesture software. It's still unavailable in consumer applications, with no announcements on a release date or pricing.
I'm still pretty happy with the keyboard and mouse combo for nearly every software and Webware app I use; although, as we've discovered with the Wii, and even the iPhone and it's multitouch display, sometimes an actual gesture makes something feel more natural and intuitive. How that transitions over to something like a spreadsheet or a word processor is anyone's guess. For games and zooming around maps, I can't wait.
I've embedded a short video example of the boxing demo below.
Hewlett-Packard is giving the public a chance to try out one of the experimental technologies it's cooking up. HP Labs is expected to announce Wednesday the open beta of Mscapes, a suite of software applications that let anyone create interactive location-based games or tours.
The Mscapes online authoring wizard can be used to design digital overlays on a map using photos, videos, graphics, text, or audio. Anyone with a GPS-enabled mobile device running Windows Mobile can use the Mscapes client to play any of the created games as they move through the physical world.
For example, HP Labs partnered with the National Park Service to create a guided tour of Yosemite National Park.
"Fundamentally, all of our mobility announcements are about helping people connect with each other around information that's important to them," said Debra Brackeen, HP Labs' director of strategic initiatives. "All of that connection is happening with richer and richer media experiences." And though Mscapes is not yet a finished product, HP is "putting it out there for the enjoyment of customers and developers."
So far a number of gaming applications have been created--mostly for kids--as have some educational guides and tours. "Part of what we're excited to learn about is to discover the things we haven't thought about," said Brackeen.
HP will publish the spec for Mscapes player client so it can be exported to other mobile platforms in the near future.
Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.
This technology will be great for navigation apps, and for games.
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