Thursday, June 07, 2012

Interactive Print in Augmented Reality - The Future of the Web



Layar has been one of the most innovative and progressive web start-ups I've seen in a while.  It's taking the technology world by storm, and just today, it's come out with something I truly think will lead to a revolution in how we interact on the web.  Layar has been working on this for over a year, and I believe it's hit critical mass, with the numerous developments happening concurrently with augmented reality programs across the world.

Layar has been collaborating with European magazine and newspaper publishers to help enhance the static pages of their publications with digital content, and in particular, offering publishers the tools to simply create the interaction themselves.  As Layar reveals, the last two issues of LINDA. Magazine, including the L’HOMO issue, are all embedded with buttons. The vtwonen magalogue with all of its “Buy” buttons.  The latest Eppo comic from Senefelder, the VPRO Gids.   Introducing: Layar Creator.

Will this mean the end of QR codes?  Seems like it. Layar Creator's emergence feels a lot like when the first services like Geocities provided easy access to creating websites, interacting with other users, and paving the way for the Web 2.0 era.  Layar Creator is almost like a WYSIWYG application for activating print pages with digital AR content. Anyone with a computer can upload images or PDFs, drag-and-drop any of a number of digital buttons onto the pages and publish them on the Layar platform. Layar Creator requires no software to install.  No fancy code work needed, no developers.  Whereas it took months of web programming to put together -- can now be done in mere moments.  

Layar uses image recognition technology, as it recognizes existing images from the pages of magazines and newspapers without the need for special markers like QR codes.   It's a path where I think we're truly leading to the so-called, much hyped but little-understood Web 3.0.    This early premonition of how "digital tagging" can be applied to physical objects are, in my opinion, the foreshadowing of the Web of Things and information shadow that will be a distinctive feature of Web 3.0.  

Monday, June 04, 2012

From Card Catalogues to Gesture-Based Computing



There have been a wave of new touch screen, mobile, and cloud-based emergent technologies out in the past few years.  One of them is 'SixthSense', a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. Currently a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab, Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense.  This game-changing technology is actually a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world – just like the movie. He has also invented an invisible mouse called Mouseless, which is controlled by an infrared laser beam and an infrared camera, both of which are embedded in the computer itself.   The current prototype system costs approximately $350 to build.   Pranav is already a celebrity with some of his innovative inventions, yet in the library world, there's still some questions as to what exactly gesture-based computing or augmented reality can provide or benefit to libraries.  Does the gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projecting an analog watch make for a practical application?

As I was listening in to discussions in my Digital Humanities Summer Institute session, I became more appreciative of the future of such technologies.  It's not so much the technology -- rather, it's the social, political, and business end of things which must be evaluated and researched well in order for a technology to function and thrive.    I liken the card catalog as analogous to gesture-based computing.  With the card catalogue, a stationery flip card is just a piece of card board; however, with text and a collocation element, it becomes something much more.   It becomes an essential tool of libraries, cataloguing, and classification.   Despite its disappearance from libraries, its associations with the library are so heavily embedded that it's almost impossible to remove it entirely from the library lexicon.   Library websites are often still referred to loosely as the library catalogue. So what can we learn about emerging technologies?   Could we envision a future where library patrons can easily flip through entire shelves of books by just a wave of their arms?   Can we envision a library where patrons don't even need to leave their couches, but can view entire shelves of books in the comfort of their homes?   Some libraries are already thinking ahead it seems.