Archive for the 'Technology' category
Windows 7 Launches!
October 22, 2009 8:00 amAugmented Reality – Information at your Pupils
August 31, 2009 9:36 pm
The equation above says it all, in a few short years, augmented reality is going to explode. Augmented reality refers to supplementing the real world with contextual computer generated information. While the concept of augmented reality is not new, the ability to “take it with you” is just becoming economical. The devices we carry every day (iphones, smartphones) will get smarter and more powerful, the bandwidth connecting us to the net will continue to increase, and the data being crunched for us in the cloud will continue to become more relevant.
Already, the GPS information in iphones is changing the way people interact with the world around them. Turn-by-turn directions are combining your location information with map data to get you where you wish to go. Smart applications provide details about real estate by using GPS to understand which property sits in front of you. Social networks can be updated with the click of a button to let your friends know where you are. Even so, in a few years we will shrug when we think about how primitive this technology was.
As I write this, applications are being authored that combine the camera, orientation, and GPS information from the phone with data in the cloud to provide rich information about every day things. Just by pointing the camera on your phone to a sculpture in the park, you will get detailed information delivered to your screen about the art and the artist. Pointing at a restaurant might reveal the day’s dinner and happy hour specials, the wait time for a table, and then provide you a way to place your order as you make your approach. New in town and not sure where to get a bite? Point your device down the street and GPS combined with image recognition will present you with rich data about the establishments that lie ahead of you. In order to make sense of the enormous amount of data, the information will be easily filterable (Food, Italian, Romantic – for example) . Many different devices will provide this functionality and it will become clear that the hardware at your hip is much more than a phone.
Eventually, companion devices such as smart-glasses (Retinal Imaging Display), will enter the marketplace. These glasses will connect to your device via technologies like Bluetooth to allow for more convenient access to your information. Think of it as the way Terminator viewed the world, only without the all the red tint and orders to kill people. Information at your fingertips will become information at your pupils. Voice recognition will allow you to easily navigate through the data that is being drawn onto the lenses of your eyes. Likewise, content will be very interactive, allowing you to receive and send information to the people and places that stand before you.
This brings me to the “people” part of this future. The dawn of augmented reality is neatly aligned with the maturing of social media. The data crunching cloud is not only taking in everything it can about where you are and what you’re looking at, it’s correlating it with everything it knows about you through your social networks, online profiles, search histories, and so on.
Content you are interested in will reach out to you in the form of real time alerts to let you know you are in the vicinity of something you’d be interested in (end-user customizable of course). When you pass a comic book store that has the rare issue of Spider Man you’ve been looking for on ebay – an alert notifies you. As you walk through downtown Seattle, you’re notified of an audio walking tour that can be streamed in real time to your ear as you pass monuments and places of interest. When you walk into a party or concert, your data is correlated with others in your social networks to show you where your friends are in a crowded room or auditorium. It will be as easy to find someone in a crowd and send a direct message to their ear as it is to send a direct message on Twitter today.
The device you carry with you will become your extended sense of site and sound (and maybe more) and the data rich, processor heavy cloud will become the distributed machine that is organizing information, processing it and serving it up. You may think this sounds overwhelming and perhaps even annoying. In fact, you’re probably right. But rest assured… though it may be too much information for you to stomach, your kids are going to love it.
Want to learn more? Check out the Layar platform for one approach or Tonchidot for another.
Plasticiety: Society Meets The MakerBot Revolution
August 24, 2009 5:17 pm
Every movie in the 80’s talked about plastics being the wave of the future. As I sit here in my office surrounded by plastic gizmos and gadgets, typing away on my plastic keyboard, and listening to music crank out my plastic speakers; there is no doubt that those predictions have come true… almost. In truth, we’ve only seen the first phase of the plastic boom – the top down, manufactured approach where companies make and consumers buy. Well strap on your seatbelts folks, because Plasticiety is rapidly approaching and the wave it’s riding is called MakerBot.
In the not-so-distant future, we will all have MakerBots on our desktops or in our garages. They will do to manufacturing what desktop publishing did to printing; put it in the hands of the commoner. Makerbots are open source 3D printers. Similar to how a hot glue gun works – plastic tubing goes in one side, gets heated up into a liquid stream and is injected onto a surface (layer by layer) to form a 3-D object. Today the 3D object is limited in size to 4″x4″x6″, but that will increase in the wake of Plasticiety. Products will dawn stickers that define what percentage of MakerBot printable parts comprise them. Consumer purchasing decisions will be partially based off of this volunteer rating because it will mean the products can be easily repaired. Did the knob break off of your stove? No problem, just go to GE.com and download the 3D knob object that matches your part number and print out a new one. Tired of losing or breaking the battery cover for your remote controls? Put down the duct tape and have Makerbot print a new one. Uh oh, the kids lost the toothpaste cap again, surf over to Crest.com, download the object, and print a few spares.
But that describes only the tip of the iceberg! Sharing and community will do to manufacturing what it has done to music… irrevocably flip it on its head. Just visit some of the many object sharing communities that this revolution will foster, download the object models that intrigue you, and then print them into existence. Objects will be simple at first: hooks and hangers, Jello molds, cookie cutters, spatulas, spoons, measuring cups, salt and pepper shakers, coasters, bottle caps, etc. – but they will become more complex as the phenomenon takes off. In addition to the plastic tubing (aka – print cartridges), our local hardware and office supply stores will sell bundles of simple parts like springs, hinges and simple motors. With easily downloadable instructions, you will quickly be able to assemble your homemade parts into more complex creations. Likew
ise, when you find or invent items that are useful, it will be easy to post them to the community and share them with your friends.
As noted above, today these MakerBots only make items that are smaller than 4″ by 4″ by 6″ and the objects they create have limitations - but that will change as time goes on. The bots you have in your home will become efficient at creating items of larger sizes and at higher qualities. Likewise, 3D object printing shops will begin to show up around town (the Kinkos of Plasticiety) and enable much larger or specialized projects to be completed with the same relative ease and low cost.
You are Here. At the crossroads of hyper-manufacturing and consumer empowerment… where digital turns back into physical and where ideas become tangible objects. Welcome to Plasticiety.
For a glimpse of this future today, check out MakerBot’s website and the open source object marketplace at Thingiverse.com.
Print 3D Objects with Makerbot
August 21, 2009 2:24 pm
Bre Pettis just completed his Gnomedex presentation on Makerbot and it’s a concept that really gets you thinking about what the future could hold. How cool would it be to dream something up, and then print it into reality? When something breaks around the house, how handy would it be to just download the 3D model and print another one? Uh oh, did your Makerbot break down? No problem, just ask your neighbor to print out the part you need. The possibilities seem endless – welcome to the world of distributed manufacturing. Click here to view my notes.
Gnomedex 9.0 Kicks Off in Seattle
12:22 pmGnomedex 9.o kicked off last night in Seattle with the usual cocktail reception at Bell harbor. This year, the theme is “Human Circuitry – A technology Conference of Influence and Inspiration.” This morning the actual conference began with “The Art of the Interview” by Warren Etheredge of the Warren Report. To boil a fun and informative presentaiton down to it’s core three concepts: get their attention, win their trust, and earn their respect. The Keynote speakers were Chris Brogan and 
Julien Smith discussing concepts from their new book release “Trust Agents“. It was a fast moving and entertaining presentation about using the web to build influence, improve reputation and earn trust. My notes can be found here. Following the keynote was another interesting presentation by Phil Plait about being an active skeptic. In the fast moving world of the web, it’s more important than ever to be an active skeptic and question things. My notes can be found here. Next up? Christine Peterson discussing life extension. How do we slow the aging process and stay healthy longer? There were a lot of concepts in this presentation about getting a baseline on your health, maintaining and improving it, supplement use, etc. I didn’t walk away with anything too ground breaking other than that I really need to drive toward living a healthier lifestyle.
It’s almost lunch time, so we are about a quarter of the way through the two day conference. It’s been a great event so far and there is a lot of interesting content coming down the pipe, so I look forward to having a full head by the end of the day.
Social Redirects
June 13, 2009 11:11 amDNC Streams HD with Silverlight & Move
August 28, 2008 10:24 am
For the last week, I’ve had the pleasure of working in Denver at the Democratic National Convention to support HD live and on-demand streaming of the convention through the DNC website: demconvention.com. The content is being delivered to the Internet over Level3’s content delivery network using Move Network’s delivery technology integrated with a Microsoft Silverlight player developed by Vertigo. The result is an unprecedented rich media experience that provides end users with gavel to gavel live and on-demand coverage of the convention, exclusive interviews, and behind the scenes coverage of DNC happenings. Though conference coverage is available on many different sites, the DNC coverage is the highest quality content available and is uninterrupted by advertising or commentary. Additionally, the site offered an alternate camera angle of the convention from the Pepsi Center and, for the first time in convention history, the site offers a Spanish feed (sponsored by Comcast). Check out the live and on-demand media on the DNC site and let me know what you think of the experience.
On another note, I had to include a picture of the Daily Show Bus. The fact that it presents itself as a rebranded RATT tour bus is brilliant. Check out other photos of the convention on flickr.
Extensions for Windows Beta 2
July 10, 2008 11:17 pm
I installed beta2 of Extensions for Windows and I am pretty impressed. The exstensions suite is customizable in the sense that users may install only the utilities that are desired, but I find that I have uses for all that are included. Extensions offered out of the gate include a Screen Capture Utility, a Virtual Drive creator and manager, a Shortcut Manager, a File Compare Utility, a Find and Replace Utility, a Disc Analyzer, an Explorer Extension, a Task Manager Extension, and FTP client, and a File Converter. The Shortcut manager is a very convenient way to create, modify or remove Windows keyboard shortcuts. My favorite extensions so far are the Explorer extension – which is like the Windows file explorer on steroids. It enables tabbed explorer windows, side by side explorer views and a host of other helpful options. Most of the extensions are available by clicking on the Extensions Icon in the system tray. However, a couple of my favorite extensions are accessible by right clicking on files. Right clicking on image files gives you an “extension” option that allows you to quickly convert or resize images (See image below). Doing the same on office documents lets you quickly “print” the document to a PDF. This is cool, and so far the bugs I’ve encountered have been minor and the installation did not appear to slow my machine down. So far, I give Extensions for Windows two opposable thumbs up!
Is Your Computer Equipt?
July 3, 2008 10:45 am
In mid-July, Microsoft will begin selling office programs to consumers on a subscription basis. This is a bold new business model for Office that is rumored to start at about $70 per year. The price seems reasonable for what you get (especially when I consider that I spend over $100/month on my cable bill), but you be the judge.
Equipt will include:
- Word 2007
- Excel 2007
- PowerPoint 2007
- OneNote 2007
- Microsoft Office Live Workspace
- Windows Live tools (Mail, Messenger, Photo, etc)
- Windows Live OneCare
- Upgrades and Updates
What do you think? Good deal or bad deal? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
