Augmented Reality Via Cellphones [2]

Last year, I got introduced to the use of semacodes to augment reality by the Entry Points into a Smart Campus Environment project at the ETHZ. Semapedia is democratizing the concept by combining the physical annotation technology of Semacode with high quality information from Wikipedia.

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Real-Time Location Sharing on GPS Phones

Via Augmented Reality Gaming, Mologogo is a free service to “track” friends with GPS enabled cell phone. It only works in the US and I am not sure how such a service would be perceived in a non-GPS friendly continent like Europe. For example, it would be useful to make the positioning less accurate and augment the map with the name of the place (or use the map in unknown places and drop the map and only use the name of the place in known locations).

Real-Time Maps of Wireless Internet Use

The people at iSPOTS “How Wireless Technology is Changing Life on the MIT Campus”. They have set up a real time map that displays wireless internet use on campus. The page loads an animation of the past 24 hours activity. As usual it looks very nice and it is not necessarily very hard to do.

Somehow related is another MIT project about is MIT’s Mobile Landscapes project in Graz done with GSM data.

Interactive Chart for Tailored Mobile Application Download

Local for Mobile targets very specific devices in the US. Google provides an interactive chart to determine the phone’s compatibility. Criterias are the carrier, the phone brand, the phone model and the data plan.

In order to download the beta,

Google and Self-Positioning

Google has to make clear that its Local for Mobile relies in fact on users self-positioning themselves:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – In a Nov. 6 story about Google Inc.’s new mapping software for mobile phones, The Associated Press quoted a company executive saying that users won’t have to type in their location to get directions on phones equipped with Global Positioning System technology. The story should have made clear that the GPS function isn’t available yet.

Meet Me Here

Meet Me Here allows to use 3D maps of London’s Soho and Covent Garden area in order to schedule a meeting in a public place.

Intel's Useless LBS Scenarios

Intel is “examining” the world of indoor WiFi positioning. The scenarios of usage of such a technology are laughable and cannot be seen as a serious entry into LBS.

The technology could be used, for example, to alert you if your dog leaves the yard, to decide which printer on a network is most efficient for a pending print job, or to determine the shortest route to an emergency exit in a building.

The punsh lines “It can make medical research easier” and “It’s making computing more intelligent and user-friendly ” are no less than plain scary. Surprising for a company founding the Place Lab project that has some studies of user experiences and LBS.

Related are the DoCoMo scenarios for their ubicomp technologies (Interconnected World).

If Car Companies Employed People from Telecoms

Since I am in the middle of the lousy mobile development jungle (that I often compare to the car industry), I cannot help myself mentioning this “what would happen if a car company only employed people from the telecoms background” quotes from MobHappy. All of them are very relevant. The best “sooo true…” statements are:

• You’ll notice quirky little changes in the car controls depending on the manufacturer. Some cars put the gas pedal on the left, some favour the traditional right – with hilarious results!
• New cars would come with wheels that you need to change before you can drive it on A roads and you’ll need to reconfigure the brakes before they work.
• Ads for every car will promise speeds up to 450 miles per hour.
• Access to gears 4, 5 and 6 will be hidden.
• Changing lanes sometimes makes the car stall.
• When you buy a car, you have to promise to keep it for two years, during which you can only use one brand of fuel – although some shady garages will “unlock” your car. You can also refuel over the air, as well as garages but over the air costs twice as much as it’s so convenient and cool.

Real-Time Awareness Maps of Cell Phone Usage [Updated]

Updated map of the Mobile Landscapes project creating electronic maps of cellphone use in the metropolitan area of Graz, Austria.

Symbian Hacks for Context-Aware Programming

Very resourceful set of Symbian programming hacks done by Mika Raento for his Context research projects. Relevant pieces of codes include how to autostart, retrieve GSM data and manage SMSs.