In recent years, intelligent location and social awareness has become a user expectation – almost everything that we touch is in some way intelligently connected to us or other devices around us and technology is starting to second guess our intentions based on the context that we’ve given it. Sometimes that context is deliberately and clearly identified such as in a diary appointment, other times that context is suggested through our current location or updates to our social streams.

As we are starting to expect more and more from the technology that we carry around with us, it’s nice to have a vision of where we’re headed. If you have an idea where you’re going then you’re not going to unintentionally surprise people along the way, and as I often say, technologists seek inspiration in science fiction. So if you produce a vision then you are going to inspire people to help deliver that vision with you.

In a follow-up to the previous 2009 productivity video, Microsoft’s Office Division have released a new vision, you can watch it below.

I like Microsoft’s clear commitment to connecting people and using technology to connect us back to ourselves and our experiences in the real world. It’s well worth taking some time to look through the Microsoft Office YouTube channel to see their vision for other areas such as health, banking and manufacturing.

Five years ago, augmented reality was the future. People were saying that by now, we’d all be playing immense augmented reality games, using it to find everything and get information overlaid on real life. What the reality is today, is weak mobile signal, dropping GPS signal and not much use at all.

Today, Kevin Slavin is interrogating the concept of augmented reality. Why isn’t reality enough?

Augmented reality started with building machines that fly in 1990 to 1995 for Boeing. In early examples of representations of how machines see the world, Terminator saw that machines processed through the eye, as opposed to the brain. A steady stream of text would show up on the screen whenever the film would go to the Terminator’s perspective (Machines need to read before they can think?). The problem is that’s not the way things happen. This is where augmented reality in it’s current state falls slightly.

Most current representations of AR attempt to replicate the world within the framework of a device. However, replicating the environment around you isn’t a way to immerse the user into the world. For example, an example of AR with baseball cards, where the player pops up in 3D on the front of the card, doesn’t actually make the player real. However, the information on the back of the card, with stats and history, can immerse the reader further into the world of the player. As another example, applications like Layar, that lays information about where you are through your camera, actually makes the city feel further away when you experience it.

The idea of trying to make the imaginary ‘real’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the 1920s, Arthur Conan Doyle said of the Cottingly Fairies, “The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth-century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and a mystery to life.” In 1860, it was easy to believe in ghosts because they are invisible. Cameras brought ghosts to life, like in the famous instances of doctored photos that show ghosts. With the muppets, Jim Henson understood that it wasn’t the verisimilitude that made things real, but the constant movement and voice. That is, it doesn’t matter what it looks like, but what it does. The Tamagotchi in 1996 provided an incredibly lo-fi, but amazingly immersive experience, because it became real by behaving like it was real.

In 2006 Kevin worked on a mobile game called Papa Bones, where a ghost was created that made it’s way around a city. You could see where you were on your screen and see where Papa Bones was in relation to you. If Papa Bones went through your path, your phone would vibrate. What they found was that people who were playing the game would literally run away from Papa Bones. Kevin even had a moment when his team were working in a studio with his team and a bunch of Papa Bones tester devices were sitting on a table. Papa Bones swept through the studio and all the phones vibrated and fell off the table. Even though he knew it was a bunch of code, he wasn’t prepared for the feeling from that experience.

The idea behind successful AR is using a device to guide you or help you in an environment, but leaving your eyes to do what they’re meant to do. See and experience the world around you.

Augmented reality is supposed to be about the entire world around us. Not just the world in front of us.

This is a report of Kevin Slavin’s talk on Augmented Reality and ‘Reality is Plenty’ at dConstruct 2011 on 2nd August 2011.

Over the last few years we’ve seen some jaw-dropping Augment Reality demos. Here’s a YouTube playlist of some of my favourites:

I love watching these and enjoy imagining me being in a situation where one of these AR apps can save a life, save the world, or just get me to the nearest train station before I have to get a taxi home. I genuinely watch those videos and think, “I could use that, I could be in that very same situation and when I am, I’d pull out my AR app and the world would once again be a better place.”

I’d love to service my own BMW and with AR apps like that I don’t feel that’s such a ridiculous idea. However, it’s less likely that I’d surf the streets on my phone trying to find a bar that sold Stella Artois. And there-in lies my problem.

My problem with AR experiences is that I don’t want to use them in public. And you will no doubt be quick to point out, that’s a pretty major problem. I’d use the BMW app in the privacy of my own garage, but I’m not going to do it in public. Put rather more politely than I could ever manage by a colleague of mine recently “it makes you look like a right Charlie”. Have you ever seen someone stop whilst walking down the street and hold their phone in front of them as if they’re looking through it into another dimension? I haven’t and I walk the streets a lot. Is it because it takes us outside of our comfort zone? Even the swathes of Hoxton Hipsters who are so quick to jump in and ride the latest technology bandwagon are able to exercise self-control when thinking about taking out their smartphones and browsing the streets like the device is a window to another world. Maybe because it’s a public admission of a gap in our knowledge – who would like to admit they’re actually a tourist? Maybe it’s for security reasons – “The tourist guide told us to be wary of street crime!” Maybe it’s such an obvious interaction with AR that we don’t want to expose our obviousness to others?

Why do we have Augmented Reality?

As I often say, technologists aren’t great at coming up with new ideas of their own, they look at science fiction and think ‘that’s pretty cool, I’m going to build it’. We did it with Hover Boards, the Jetson’s car and Star trek Communicators. So I blame Star Trek. I blame concept cars and their head up displays. I blame that scene from Star Wars when R2D2 let loose that Obi Wan was the only hope. I’ll go back further and blame the Ancient Greeks and the Oracle at Delphi. Anything that removes us in any way from the reality that we actually live in can be added to this list.

AR visionary Keiichi Matsuda has released his vision of future AR in video form over the last few years, one example is in the playlist above, but here’s another which requires you to put on some 3D glasses to fully appreciate the interface that may one day surround us.

Augmented City 3D from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Ethics. Who owns your logo? Who owns the space around us?

When you look at an environment through the screen on your mobile phone, is that a real space you’re looking at? What is to stop a vigilante from taking the original image and mis-representing it through Augmented Reality? This happened to BP as you can see in the video here. This app let’s users see the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill when ever they see a BP logo. The user simply launches the app and aims their phone’s camera at a BP logo and the logo is transformed on screen to a broken pipe with oil pluming upward. I can’t comment on the legalities of this, but it is worrying that it could happen to anyone.

Making AR discreet in our lives

Advances in display technology

At the moment we’re still relying on our phone screens to display the additional information that we can add to our environments. Recent advances have been made in display technology that would make this a more subtle experience. Glasses that have digital displays on their lenses are slowly becoming reality as we’re able to shrink the technology to an acceptable size. Contact lenses were once an alternative to glasses but we are now seeing some useful technology being added to them. We are a long way away from having head up displays in lenses and there are many companies working on this end goal removing the need for bulky eye wear.

Futurologist Michio Kaku says ‘In the next 20 years, the internet will be in our contact lens. We will simply blink and we will be online, and when I look at you I will see your biography right next to you because my contact lens will know exactly who you are. You will always know who you are talking to and if you speak to me in Chinese, no problem. I will see Chinese subtitles translated into English under your picture.’ Slightly scary stuff. I believe him.

On a more realistic note, Vuzix are making waves with their eyewear (pictured above) as long as you’re comfortable with the price.

Advances in input devices

The Kinect as a walking aid demo from MIX11 this year is a great example. The hyperbole of this was lost on many people there (I overheard conversations between people who were complaining about how awful the visually impaired were being treated). If anyone ever goes to their local Specsavers and is told to gaffer-tape a Kinect unit to their head instead of being subscribed glasses then I would see that as equally a success and a failure. The sartorialist in me would snigger, the functionalist in me would sigh.

Kinect is the next opportunity that we have to interface with these alternate realities. We no longer have to hold up a device to browse our world, we can instead interact with it on a more natural level, through voice and gesture. Take the example of Kinect powered World Wide Telescope – this was the first application that I really felt was intuitive and obvious, it was natural to use and navigate. It works. Over the next few months I fully expect to see more shining examples of Kinect controlled AR as the creative developer community take advantage of the Kinect SDK for Windows that was recently released.

Is there an issue of AR standards?

AR experiences on mobile devices are currently outside of the browser. There is no standard that browser developers can adopt and build in as part of their software. There are many SDKs that developers can use to create these experiences and with the release of the Mango software update for Windows Phone 7, it is now possible to create AR applications across all mobile operating systems so these experiences can now be enjoyed by more people on more devices. However, I’d like to see AR implemented as part of the web browsing experience so I don’t need to jump out to specific applications for information. 

I’ll believe it, when I don’t see it

I believe that I walk the streets like a vampire ninja, invisible and casting no shadow. I am un-noticeable and silent in the way I move. I embrace all technology both useful and useless but I feel uncomfortable with anything that makes me stand out in a crowd and currently that’s most forms of AR.

Looking forward to the future, as these sensory devices become less obtrusive to our natural environment and as we are able to provide input and receive output through discreet technologies, we will start to fulfil the vision of the early pioneers of AR. As our intentional interaction becomes less obvious to the outside world these augmentations will become more popular and more prolific. We’ll be able to subtlety request and receive information on everything we see, it will be thrown at us with the added benefit that we can pick and choose to know as much or as little about our current environment as we like.

For now, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I am technology’s proudest user but right now this just doesn’t work. The idea is genius. The execution based on the technology available to us is also, genius. But until the illusion of AR is truly magical and invisible, I can’t play this AR game.

In the meantime, if you fancy getting around London on the new Barclays sponsored bikes for hire but have no idea where to find them, 18 year old Daniel May has developed an application to help you find the nearest cycle hub based on your location. Sounds good to me!

CycleHubs WP7 preview from Daniel May on Vimeo.

Dunno about you but can’t wait to get my hands on one of those phones…

CouchDB 1.0 Released – includes Windows support and is 300% (yes, that’s 300%!) faster than the previous version. That’s faster than Roadrunner, right?

Reality Gets a Makeover – The Augmented Reality Drone (A Drone) is a toy helicopter equipped with cameras that send videos back to an iPhone or iPad to create a real world video game

Skype’s SDK arrives in beta for Windows, Mac – Skype is offering a limited, invite-only beta release of the SDK, called SkypeKit, to those who request it. SkypeKit beta will work for Windows (x86) and Mac OS X

Got an idea for a phone application but no programming experience? Your luck could be in as Google App Inventor for Android Lets Amateurs Write Apps

OK, so I’ve always had a vivid imagination and love virtual reality, 3D and the more recent Augmented Reality as they blur the lines between what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. So when I was invited to join The Fantastic Tavern for an evening on ‘Realities’, nothing short of an ‘act of God’ was going to stop me being there to find out more.

The evening kicked off with a humorous introduction from EMC’s Matt Bagwell, who framed the evening as an exploration of Augmented Reality – is it a fad or is it here to stay, a technology that has commercially viability? 

Matt took us back to the early 90’s, when blending realities became pervasive – starting with the fantastic game ‘Doom’ and moving to the military and their use of data by blending reality with an information layer. After providing the context for the evening, Matt left it to the speakers to explain what Augmented Reality actually is and how do you work with it – what’s good about it and what’s not so good? How can it ‘permeate the everyday’?

First up was Paul Dawson, Experience Director of EMC Consulting, who gave an overview of the definitions and roles of ‘realities’ by presenting a number of examples, including the best and the worst.

Paul held up The Terminator as being a great example of augmented reality (referring to the first film in the series and in my opinion the best). He also mentioned that the first Augmented Reality head up display in a car was back in 1988 (Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme) – a great ‘did you know’ if I’ve ever heard one.

He then moved on to popular iPhone apps like Tube Finder, and asked if there was really any difference between the services offered by Tube Finder and those provided by a compass? He made the great observation that in practice, what tends to happen with apps like these is that too much of the data is incorrect – one example was data showing Southwark Tube station sits on top of EMC’s offices…

Paul then asked ‘…so what does work’? Augmented Reality currently only uses dimensions and not senses. What we want to know is information that directly affects us – for example, what we want to know is queue times in the local Tesco, or the nearest ATM and whether it has cash in it. Paul moved the discussion a step further by asking how we bring senses into the mix?  What if we could listen to conversations in a room to help us decide which ones to join – essentially a tag cloud?

The conclusion was there are some beacons of hope emerging where not only correct data but also relevant data is added into the melting pot, indicating Augmented Reality could stay relevant and commercially viable.

Paul was followed by Johannes Kebeck, Technical Specialist for Bing Maps in EMEA. Johannes focused on Bing services (no surprises there!) to demonstrate what advancements in augmented information means for anyone who uses maps (i.e. all of us who invariably stumble around a strange town or city at some point).

Johannes talked about the number of new (or seemingly new) developments in technology in general and how they can be applied to mapping. He referred to Crowd Sourcing, for example, to harness the power of the community and of course referred to the ubiquitous Flickr photos rendering historic images onto maps to provide historic context – see the TED session by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.

But then the deeper questions were asked: How do we interact with this? How do we talk to it? Johannas drew on an example used at an art gallery where visitors can not only zoom into the building but drill right down to view a specific painting and get all relevant data on that item.

But how easy is it to use? It’s no easy task to stitch hundreds or thousands of images together. However, with the help of a free Microsoft tool called ICE, or Image Composite Editor, an advanced panoramic image stitcher, images are seamlessly and automatically sewn together – plus for the user the information is only a couple of mouse clicks away.

Content is becoming richer and richer – users can not only zoom right into objects but zoom out to see the stars and the moon, all from a mobile phone.

Johannes also pointed out a local sensor application to highlight relevant data about an area, with the demonstration he gave focussing on real time news about crimes happening round the corner integrated into the map view, for example images and text update confirming a criminal was apprehended after breaking and entering.

But how do we augment reality with spatial information?If I see a house for sale nearby, I want to know how much it costs. Or if I visit the ‘House of Versailles’, I want to find out where the disabled entrance is, where the toilets are, etc. It’s possible to superimpose data onto the image through the camera using geo spatial information. This is technology that people already understand. Sometimes sticking your mobile phone out and staring at a tiny screen is limiting and can be dangerous!

Johannes rounded up the session with a fascinating peak into the future to a world where contact lenses are not only used to improve vision and change the colour of our eyes but actually function as an LED computer display. personally, I can’t wait for that!

Finally (from a speaker POV that is), the EMC Consulting creative team, aka Glennis McGregor, Matt Ratcliffe and Chris Gannon talked about the practicalities and challenges of working on various realities applications, including pushing the immersion factor, using games to create an ‘Augmented Virtuality’ with the aim of empowering teams and enhancing training. Finally, of course you need to consider health and safety, with the ideal being that the Augmented Virtuality environment is actually safer than reality.

The evening was rounded off with a Q&A session where random questions could be fired at the panel of speakers from the increasingly rowdy audience (fuelled by the freely flowing beer and sausage fest that kept everyone’s stamina up throughout the evening). Although there were a number of very interesting questions – including whether games inhibit creativity and individual expression and the danger of encouraging people to do things in a virtual world they may feel is OK in the real world – the best question of the night was whether Augmented Reality was being used in the adult entertainment sector… accompanied by cheers of encouragement by the audience.

The final poignant question ‘How do you mediate the important information from the vast amount of data? Who controls it? How much filtering will you have to do to get the information you need?’ was deemed too good to answer and left for future pondering.

The quick poll was between the iPad or sausage – and sausage won hands down!!

After that it was time for the 100 or so crowd to continue drinking, eating sausages and of course network, network, network.

All in all an interesting, insightful way to spend a Thursday evening. Cheers!

Find out more about EMC and The Fantastic Tavern, plus there’s a new event called ‘The Lock’ scheduled for 19th August – essentially 3 taverns running 3 streams on 3 different themes and run by the Fantastic Tavern team.

P.S. Michael McClary ate all the sausages while I was writing this!

Class Action Complaint Filed Over Google Buzz – how angry would you have to be to take Google to court?

Next generation computers will be highly interactive devices controlled by gestures – better control that nervous twitch…

CIA-linked start-up touts all-seeing eye for net spooks – they’ve devised a system that monitors every IP address on the internet for malware. Yikes! (or is that Good!?)