Dragons!

So what's the first item of the day? Well, as I was strolling through the latest MIT Technology Review, the headlining article caught my eye right away. Actually, it was the accompanying picture that got my attention. Rising from the pages of an unopened book was a 3-D dragon perched on top of a hill of treasure. Sweet as.

Turns out that a publishing company in the United Kingdom has released the first book to be enhanced by augmented reality. This term was pretty new for me, so I had to do some brief research:

Augment Reality is the by product when the real and virtual world come together. The real world, in this case, is live streaming video that is enhanced by computer generated imagery. I didn't know this until now, but the yellow first down makers seen on televised football games are examples of AR. Nifty.

This book, Drake's Comprehensive Compendium of Dragonology, uses the same technology to bring a 3-D dragon to life. After installing a software plug-in, a web cam reads markers on the page as spatial reference points and recreates the dragon on your computer screen. The dragon is as life-like as possible; it moves, roars and even naps. As you rotate the book in front of the camera, the dragon similarly turns allowing for a complete perspective.

AR may possibly rejuvenate print media. As newspapers and magazines are becoming completely accessible through electronic sources, printing on paper has simply become costly and inefficient. Even books are being replaced by technology like the Kindle. Using AR to enhance print media may just save the dying medium. AR will not only create an entirely new experience with print, but perhaps an entirely new way to retrieve information.

Augmented reality is becoming increasingly more prevalent in our lives and it's exciting to see what will come next.

Cell Phones Have Ears Too

Back when phone calls were connected by the hands of an operator, there was always a paranoia that someone was listening in on a supposedly phone call. Even today, with the possibility of phone tapping, your phone calls may not be as private as they may once have seemed. As we've become increasingly dependent of cell phones, refusing to separate ourselves for fear of losing connection with the world, researchers have developed a new soft ware to monitor users via their cell phones.

The point of this software is to not only track consumers, but continue to make cell phones smarter. An example given was that someday, a cell phone will recognize that it's user is in a meeting and will automatically switch to silent. SoundSense, developed by a group at Dartmouth College, is a software that uses the already present microphone in a cell phone to record and track the reoccurring sounds around it's user. SoundSense takes these sounds, no matter how unfamiliar, and tries to categorize them as "voice", "music" or "ambient sound". When a sound is reoccurring, SoundSense labels it as a high-ranking sound and promts the user to confirm that the sound is significant.

I'm curious as to where this technology will eventually lead. The article believes that SoundSense will create an entirely new way to connect socially. In these cases, I'm sure everyone would have to have SoundSense. Perhaps if you're at a particular bar, SoundSense may recognize the sounds of that bar and alert those in your contact list who happen to have the same bar sounds listed as well. Maybe this could also be like a Facebook status thing where your phone will recognize the sounds around you and post it to some major application. Someone could check this application and see that Joe Blow is currently vacuuming or is visiting the local slaughter house.

I definitely want to look into this when it becomes an available application everywhere. Privacy will be a significant issue, but this will definitely become a whole new way to connect.

Candy

I want candy, bubble gum and taffy.
Skip to the sweet shop with my sweetheart Sandy.

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