A good friend on mine and I discussed today what is already old what will be the new trend, to define what is old was easy but what will come was not.
The last few years social did dominate the Internet. Thousands of social platforms and apps came on the market. The famous ones are Facebook, twitter, linkedin, groupon and foursquare. All these social networks have in common that you suddenly connect with people you can't remember anymore or you don't know it is all about to be connected. As a result we have so many connections that the social gets too blur.
But social is now so common that it is not new anymore. Trying to do something new in social is still possible, but difficult to have a new break through. On the other hand, it is fascinating that many investors still invest in social start ups. Localization is almost old too but at least still open for more to come.
However there is a trend of new social networks which reduces the connections just to a few people who are truly your friends. I see this the next level in terms of social. Companies who are building networks, where we easily can have small groups of people and with no big effort allow to communicate and prioritize them combined with location recognition will get the next hype.
Shazam is to watch.
Shazam is a commercial mobile phone based music identification service, with its headquarters in London, England. The company was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton (now at Google), Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee and Avery Wang.
Shazam uses a mobile phone's built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of music being played. An acoustic fingerprint is created based on the sample, and is compared against a central database for a match. If a match is found, information such as the artist, song title, and album are relayed back to the user. Relevant links to services such as iTunes, YouTube, or Zune are incorporated into some implementations of Shazam.
Shazam has a perfect recognition software, is is really pretty fast and accurate. But the really cool part is, that shazam can bring TV ads and e-commerce together. If Shazam would be able to be build in the major smart phones then it could get big verry big.
During a show you see an ad you really like, you can now either try to read in the ad the internet address (if you see it) or try to scan from 15 feet with your phone the QR code (if they show one) - good luck with this, or try to make a picture of the ad and use google goggles to get more info about the product shown on TV. Nothing of this works really well. But Shazam can listen to the ad and then display on your phone the relevant online ad with a buy now button. Shazam did already some experience with same SciFi shows. I tried it and it worked well.
Gadgets
In the gadget department are smart phones already old. Tablets are still on the growing market but nothing really innovative. All manufactures are trying to copy the iPad. Android and iOS are so look a like that even there is not much innovation.
NFC (near frequency communication) is surely the next big thing for electronic devices. It is not a new technology but still not build into many devices. In a few years we might see NFC not only in smart phones but in many other things like toaster or running shoes. NFC will get cheaper and wider communication radius.
Augmented reality is still on my top list. We are still not at the top of the cycle. A big breakthrough will come when the processors of the smart phones and tablets will double in speed and performance.
Another big favorite of mine is gesture as input device. The Microsoft kinect is a great beginning. I can see many great innovations in this area. I believe that we are able to buy 65inch TVs in a few years under $1000 with build in kinect similar
technology. We will then replace in our master bathroom the vanity mirrors with flat screens. They work like mirrors (because of build in cameras) or as windows with scenics coming from the cloud. If we then walk in front of the screen ,the scenic will move like if we move in front of window and look outside.
In 2013, most of the consumers will buy tablets instead of notebooks. Netbooks will be dead till then. But the really fascinating part is that we, the consumers, will have always multiple intelligent devices, even if each device can do everything we need.
I remember that my friend I and discussed that in 2010 we might have only one device to make a call, shoot picture, tape a video or to surf the internet. We have been partly right. Our iPhone can already do this, but we have been wrong at the same time. We believed everybody does want to have only one device. The reality is different. The reality is that most of the electronic devices will be able to do almost everything, but we still want to have multiple devices. The reason is the form factor. I even believe (as my friend), that there is still space a device in size between a smart phone an a table. Something around 6inches screen size.
The biggest trend will be the total integration of all of them. Apple started some of this by allowing to watch a movie which is streamed to the iPhone or to play a game on the iPad which was purchased on the iPhone. And now they are going further with their iCloud for music and documents.
However the inter connection is yet not even started. The next really big trend for us is the seamlessly switching between devices without any effort and data lost.
Imagine you take a FaceTime call on your iPhone, you then go in your office to your desktop with NFC the iMac could recognize that FaceTime is running on your iPhone and ask you if you want to switch to the iMac. You could then at the same time surf again on the iPhone or even take another call.
Or you are on the phone having an important conference call, at the same time you need to take your car to pick up your son from VPK.
In the future you would be able to have your conference call on your office phone, as soon you wave your iPhone over the office phone, the call will be directed to your iPhone. When you are in your car, the call gets directed to the build in phone in your car and the sound will be played over the build in stereo.
After you picked ip your son, you need to print a presentation. You drive to Fedex Kinko's. There you hold your phone to the printer and your selected document will print.
Computers are much easier to use than 15 years ago, but then we had one device. Today we have at least 2 if not even more. I am regularly using any given day 5 different "computers" (iPad, iPhone, AppleTV, iMac, Windows 7 notebook).
Apple, Google, dropbox and Amazon are helping us to move our data (music and documents) into the cloud which helps to get better our devices synced, but to be honest not yet did I find a system which worked very well and is at the same time easy to set up.
the cloud is a buzz today but nothing really new, however faster Internet connections, the cloud and wifi everywhere will bring us to the next level. I truly believe, that in a few years most of our smart devices don't have large memory for storing data. The apps will be thin clients that a smart phone only need to have a few gigs to run OS and the Thin clients. Surely memory gets cheaper and smaller, that I doubt the memory will be reduced on the devices, but I believe most of our data will be stored somewhere but not the device.
I am not the biggest fan of Google but Google will lead this. They have already a notebook which uses chrome as OS and everything you do is in the internet using their service. The notebook sucks, it sucks pretty bad but only because we don't have all the time internet and without Internet the notebook is useless. It is like having a 3 series BMW but no gas to run it.
Even if the notebook sucks, the philosophy behind is the future. As developers we need to think more in applications which are storing the data not local and to allow seamless integration to any other device if needed. If Google would extend the notebook to allow to work on a doc offline and as soon internet is available the data would go into the cloud would be great. And as I heard they are working on this. Apple's iCloud seems to promise this for some data types.
Another trend will be projectors. They are around since ever, but with augmented reality and better technology, they will get new places not just for presentations or as TV replacement.
When I talk about projectors then I actually mean screen less displaying. The windshield in cars will be your screen. Windows will be screens and every wall can be a screen. Maybe you choose your room color by clicking a button on your iPhone and your room is suddenly red. If you don't like it anymore then you can change your room color without painting the walls.
The future is closer as we think and when my son is 18, he will lough about my blog entry from today.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Showing posts with label AR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AR. Show all posts
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
You have a great idea, but then?
I am writing in this blog about a topic which I got many questions in the last few years.
I met a lot of people with great ideas and many people did email me about their ideas. But most of these people were not rich or have no connection to rich people.
Here is the dilemma. We all have many times good ideas of things the world could need, but we never get our idea to live or in a status which would make us rich.
And if we look at the big start ups or success stories then we can always see that these people are either born rich or have the right connections through school, life or family. We hear more about successful kids from Harvard, Stanford or Princeton than from local Kentucky state college. The reason is obvious, not only that these universities have best resources, the people going to these universities have already connections and some start capital. And another important part are that many alumni are now successful managers. It is almost a given circle of success.
However there are many start ups which have not these connections and start capital. But obviously for them it is harder to be very fast successful.
The question is, how can we get successful without connections and start capital.
I don't have a recipe but I have some tips.
I want to take as an example an idea I had once. When my wife was pregnant I went shopping for a mirror I can mount in the car to see my newborn. I did not find anything which worked well with SUVs. I ended up with an idea. First thing I went online to search the Internet if this product does already exist. I found one person who had an similar idea but was never successful. I took my time and filed for design patent. It was time intensive but did cost only $500, $220 for the filing and $300 for a deeper patent search (high level search is free).
Then I did build a prototype and used it in my car and gave some other prototypes to my friend. Everybody loved it. The next thing was, that I got in contact with big retailers like Walmart. They actually did want to buy a few thousand, but this was my problem. They dictated the price they want to pay. I had to produce the product in China, the only way for me to produce it cheap enough to make money.
However I would need to order at 20.000 units, that the Chinese company could produce it to a price I wanted.
I did not want to go into the risk to invest $700k and did not execute the production. I actually did find investors but they all did want half of the shares. I have been stupid and did not want to give so much shares away. Looking back, I think having 50% of 1 Million is better than having 100% of nothing.
I found somebody who did want to buy my pending patent for $15k. I almost sold it, but did not. At the end I, did not make any money, but I still have the pending patent and a happy child.
This was not the first time I had an idea, did build business plan, and did meet with business angels or investors and banks. I did it couple of times and learned a lot.
Here are my tips, if you have an idea but you don't trust anybody. Especially today with all these new things like NFC, QR, AR etc. There are tons of new things possible, we all could get rich, but at the same time everybody tries to steal from everybody. They all do it, it is almost like a game.
1. Ensure your idea is new
The internet is great, it gives us the possibility to search for everything. We can easily find if our idea already exist on the market and if not what comes close.
2. Believe in your idea
Believe and have no doubt. Spend most of your time for your idea. The idea shall be the center of your universe like a newborn.
3. File for patent
Before you talk with anybody about your idea, you need to have a security. If you have a pending patent, then you can sue people if they are using your patent.
If it is too complicated for you to do it yourself, then hire a patent firm. Costs will be mot likely $4,000 to $10,000 if you hire a firm.
4. Build a business plan
A business plan with executive summery is very important, if you want to talk to investors or business angels or banks.
The plan helps you to have the answers they will ask. Questions like, why is your Idea great, who is your target audience, how is the expected growth factor, what is the exit strategy. Palo Alto Software has the best tool for this: Business Plan Pro
I wrote over 30 business plans in my live, mostly as consultant and I used many times Business Plan Pro.
5. Have a NDA on hand when talking with others about your idea. Make sure the NDA empowers you to get a lot of money if the party will break the agreement.
6. Find capital if needed
I tend to prefer to business angels. They usually don't invest big $$ but they don't want neither high shares. And BA have usually good contacts to other investors when it comes to 2nd or 3rd investment round. For round one (which is mostly under $1 million) find 5 to 10 BA, family or outsiders. There are many websites dedicated to Business Angels. Banks don't take enough risks and ask you to have a lot of security. Big investors want to have too much control from the beginning.
Alternative you could use kickstarter.com or other similar websites to collect money for your idea. But the risk is high you don't get enough together.
7. Live your idea
Don't do anything else if you can afford. See your idea from the beginning as your full-time job.
Many people are successful in the young years because they have no family and can work 24/7. Many older people are successful because they can utilize their connections and their experience.
These tips should help you to get your idea running and maybe soon I will read about you and your success.
Some useful links:
eHow about patent filing
Patent costs
funding help
Kickstarter
Gofundme
startup addict
Iventurers
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
I met a lot of people with great ideas and many people did email me about their ideas. But most of these people were not rich or have no connection to rich people.
Here is the dilemma. We all have many times good ideas of things the world could need, but we never get our idea to live or in a status which would make us rich.
And if we look at the big start ups or success stories then we can always see that these people are either born rich or have the right connections through school, life or family. We hear more about successful kids from Harvard, Stanford or Princeton than from local Kentucky state college. The reason is obvious, not only that these universities have best resources, the people going to these universities have already connections and some start capital. And another important part are that many alumni are now successful managers. It is almost a given circle of success.
However there are many start ups which have not these connections and start capital. But obviously for them it is harder to be very fast successful.
The question is, how can we get successful without connections and start capital.
I don't have a recipe but I have some tips.
I want to take as an example an idea I had once. When my wife was pregnant I went shopping for a mirror I can mount in the car to see my newborn. I did not find anything which worked well with SUVs. I ended up with an idea. First thing I went online to search the Internet if this product does already exist. I found one person who had an similar idea but was never successful. I took my time and filed for design patent. It was time intensive but did cost only $500, $220 for the filing and $300 for a deeper patent search (high level search is free).
Then I did build a prototype and used it in my car and gave some other prototypes to my friend. Everybody loved it. The next thing was, that I got in contact with big retailers like Walmart. They actually did want to buy a few thousand, but this was my problem. They dictated the price they want to pay. I had to produce the product in China, the only way for me to produce it cheap enough to make money.
However I would need to order at 20.000 units, that the Chinese company could produce it to a price I wanted.
I did not want to go into the risk to invest $700k and did not execute the production. I actually did find investors but they all did want half of the shares. I have been stupid and did not want to give so much shares away. Looking back, I think having 50% of 1 Million is better than having 100% of nothing.
I found somebody who did want to buy my pending patent for $15k. I almost sold it, but did not. At the end I, did not make any money, but I still have the pending patent and a happy child.
This was not the first time I had an idea, did build business plan, and did meet with business angels or investors and banks. I did it couple of times and learned a lot.
Here are my tips, if you have an idea but you don't trust anybody. Especially today with all these new things like NFC, QR, AR etc. There are tons of new things possible, we all could get rich, but at the same time everybody tries to steal from everybody. They all do it, it is almost like a game.
1. Ensure your idea is new
The internet is great, it gives us the possibility to search for everything. We can easily find if our idea already exist on the market and if not what comes close.
2. Believe in your idea
Believe and have no doubt. Spend most of your time for your idea. The idea shall be the center of your universe like a newborn.
3. File for patent
Before you talk with anybody about your idea, you need to have a security. If you have a pending patent, then you can sue people if they are using your patent.
If it is too complicated for you to do it yourself, then hire a patent firm. Costs will be mot likely $4,000 to $10,000 if you hire a firm.
4. Build a business plan
A business plan with executive summery is very important, if you want to talk to investors or business angels or banks.
The plan helps you to have the answers they will ask. Questions like, why is your Idea great, who is your target audience, how is the expected growth factor, what is the exit strategy. Palo Alto Software has the best tool for this: Business Plan Pro
I wrote over 30 business plans in my live, mostly as consultant and I used many times Business Plan Pro.
5. Have a NDA on hand when talking with others about your idea. Make sure the NDA empowers you to get a lot of money if the party will break the agreement.
6. Find capital if needed
I tend to prefer to business angels. They usually don't invest big $$ but they don't want neither high shares. And BA have usually good contacts to other investors when it comes to 2nd or 3rd investment round. For round one (which is mostly under $1 million) find 5 to 10 BA, family or outsiders. There are many websites dedicated to Business Angels. Banks don't take enough risks and ask you to have a lot of security. Big investors want to have too much control from the beginning.
Alternative you could use kickstarter.com or other similar websites to collect money for your idea. But the risk is high you don't get enough together.
7. Live your idea
Don't do anything else if you can afford. See your idea from the beginning as your full-time job.
Many people are successful in the young years because they have no family and can work 24/7. Many older people are successful because they can utilize their connections and their experience.
These tips should help you to get your idea running and maybe soon I will read about you and your success.
Some useful links:
eHow about patent filing
Patent costs
funding help
Kickstarter
Gofundme
startup addict
Iventurers
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
AR for tourists and A look into the future of AR
We have been in St Augustine last weekend, and besides that I was happy not to be addicted to my electronic gadgets, I missed something which would have been really cool.
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United States.
When you walk through the oldest American city main street (St George Street) then it is hard to imagine how it was back in time.
The houses are still there and some people wearing clothes from the 18th century, but there are so many tourists that you just don't get the feeling how it used to be.
Would it not be nice to have your iPad with you and hold it in front of you and you could see a reenacting of 1794 or 1565. You could walk through the street and see all happening again through your iPad.
Your iPad could be a time machine. The process would be pretty simple. The city would only need to close St George Street for one day and hire some volunteers to to reenact one day. A camera team would walk the street from north to south and from south to north.
The iPad app could be interactive and the user could touch a house or person on the screen to get more info.
Suddenly a street full of people would be replaced with a few people three hundred years back in time.
I found an interesting AR idea, when I was researching, if there is already an app for this.
Autoglass did produce a video how AR could work in 2020 on windshields. See video below (just click on image - you need flash).
Here is a no flash version.
The concept idea is good but the UI needs in my opinion to change. I watched the movie on my iPhone which is a small screen and I could not follow the traffic because I was concentrated what the screen displays. I thought the issue was the small screen. Therefore I watched it again on my iPad and on my 54 inch screen. All the time the text was distracting for me. Too much to read, the brain needs to long to translate the info.
I like the idea but, if it comes to a product like this, then there should be no text but signs and symbols. Easy symbols which can be easily recognized.
Find out by yourself how easy you can follow the AR. Autoglass did mark pedestrians with a red arrow and bicycles with a red arrow but it was still not easy to recognize. The best part was the broken windshield. The whole lower screen got red, this I instantly saw. But as a driver I might have been scared and hit the break for nothing and then not only my windshield would be broken.
The video is a sign in the right direction and many people are interested in this. The video got within 2 weeks over 100k views.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United States.
When you walk through the oldest American city main street (St George Street) then it is hard to imagine how it was back in time.
The houses are still there and some people wearing clothes from the 18th century, but there are so many tourists that you just don't get the feeling how it used to be.
Would it not be nice to have your iPad with you and hold it in front of you and you could see a reenacting of 1794 or 1565. You could walk through the street and see all happening again through your iPad.
Your iPad could be a time machine. The process would be pretty simple. The city would only need to close St George Street for one day and hire some volunteers to to reenact one day. A camera team would walk the street from north to south and from south to north.
The iPad app could be interactive and the user could touch a house or person on the screen to get more info.
Suddenly a street full of people would be replaced with a few people three hundred years back in time.
I found an interesting AR idea, when I was researching, if there is already an app for this.
Autoglass did produce a video how AR could work in 2020 on windshields. See video below (just click on image - you need flash).
Here is a no flash version.
The concept idea is good but the UI needs in my opinion to change. I watched the movie on my iPhone which is a small screen and I could not follow the traffic because I was concentrated what the screen displays. I thought the issue was the small screen. Therefore I watched it again on my iPad and on my 54 inch screen. All the time the text was distracting for me. Too much to read, the brain needs to long to translate the info.
I like the idea but, if it comes to a product like this, then there should be no text but signs and symbols. Easy symbols which can be easily recognized.
Find out by yourself how easy you can follow the AR. Autoglass did mark pedestrians with a red arrow and bicycles with a red arrow but it was still not easy to recognize. The best part was the broken windshield. The whole lower screen got red, this I instantly saw. But as a driver I might have been scared and hit the break for nothing and then not only my windshield would be broken.
The video is a sign in the right direction and many people are interested in this. The video got within 2 weeks over 100k views.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Monday, May 30, 2011
Is technology always good?
I have been this weekend in St. Augustine, FL with my family. We had such a great time and I was glad I left my iPad and iPhone in the hotel. During these three days I learned a lot, a lot about the human factor for communication. In a time where everything gets easier with electronics we miss a lot. Till today a smartphone or computer can not replace the human factor. We can open our living social or Groupon app to see specials, we can use google to find infos about St. Augustine and we are able to pay and buy tickets for attractions without even to talk to somebody just by using our phone. But how good is it?
St. Augustine opened my wife's and my eyes. It started with the car train tour around 24 attractions in St. Augustine. I played in the morning golf and my family went to downtown. It was already 4:30pm till I met them. Emile and my wife bought already tickets for the tour and did one or two half rounds in the train. I went to the ticket stand to buy myself a ticket, because we decided to do a whole round which is about 60 minutes. The lady at the ticket service (a ticket is $20) was so kind to tell me that the tours are ending at 6pm and asked me if we are back the next day (tour tickets are valid 3 days). Unfortunately we had to leave the next day. She told me it would be waste of money to buy for just one hour a ticket. But my son did want to go on the train (he loves trains). The lady was so kind and gave me a free ticket. I am pretty sure this would not happened with an electronic butler over the phone. I was so pleased I tried to give her $5 tip, but she declined.
During the sightseeing tour we stopped twice and took different trains, the guides on each train had other stories to tell, it was just great to hear different stories about the same attractions. It was so human and individual. We could have bought an iPhone app which tells to each stop the historical background, it might have been more accurate but less interactive with the guide.
After we were done with the whole sightseeing trip, we went to a small coffee shop. My wife bought for her a mocha and a double espresso for me. When the bar tender asked how I want the coffee, she told him what would usually say "Like my wife, black and bitter" and that she usually then responds with "and I like my coffee like my husband white and weak". The guy liked the story so much that she got my double espresso free. Try to do this when you buy a coffee at a vending machine.
On Monday morning I went with my son into the hall of fame of golf, he is under 5 and did not need a ticket. I got with my ticket a free shot to a replica of the seventeenth hole of TCP Sawgrass and a free round of 18 putting holes. And guess what, at both attraction my son got it free too, even if they had a sign everybody regardless of age has to pay.
We had many other situations in and around St. Augustine, which have been so nice and human.
I am not a geek, but I love gadgets and any new thing i can get. And I even had tons ideas about AR when we went through downtown, but at the end I enjoyed the non electronic weekend. This weekend showed me that all these new things will take us some of the most important part in our life. Communication and human not rational behavior.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years the government will establish the "human day" when we are not allowed to use any electronic device for one day. When it comes to this point then something went wrong with us.
Maybe in 20 years we have human robots which can be so irrational and unpredictable that it feels human again. we will then send them on vacation and to work. And then watch all the stories they saved in their private cloud. How appealing.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
St. Augustine opened my wife's and my eyes. It started with the car train tour around 24 attractions in St. Augustine. I played in the morning golf and my family went to downtown. It was already 4:30pm till I met them. Emile and my wife bought already tickets for the tour and did one or two half rounds in the train. I went to the ticket stand to buy myself a ticket, because we decided to do a whole round which is about 60 minutes. The lady at the ticket service (a ticket is $20) was so kind to tell me that the tours are ending at 6pm and asked me if we are back the next day (tour tickets are valid 3 days). Unfortunately we had to leave the next day. She told me it would be waste of money to buy for just one hour a ticket. But my son did want to go on the train (he loves trains). The lady was so kind and gave me a free ticket. I am pretty sure this would not happened with an electronic butler over the phone. I was so pleased I tried to give her $5 tip, but she declined.
During the sightseeing tour we stopped twice and took different trains, the guides on each train had other stories to tell, it was just great to hear different stories about the same attractions. It was so human and individual. We could have bought an iPhone app which tells to each stop the historical background, it might have been more accurate but less interactive with the guide.
After we were done with the whole sightseeing trip, we went to a small coffee shop. My wife bought for her a mocha and a double espresso for me. When the bar tender asked how I want the coffee, she told him what would usually say "Like my wife, black and bitter" and that she usually then responds with "and I like my coffee like my husband white and weak". The guy liked the story so much that she got my double espresso free. Try to do this when you buy a coffee at a vending machine.
On Monday morning I went with my son into the hall of fame of golf, he is under 5 and did not need a ticket. I got with my ticket a free shot to a replica of the seventeenth hole of TCP Sawgrass and a free round of 18 putting holes. And guess what, at both attraction my son got it free too, even if they had a sign everybody regardless of age has to pay.
We had many other situations in and around St. Augustine, which have been so nice and human.
I am not a geek, but I love gadgets and any new thing i can get. And I even had tons ideas about AR when we went through downtown, but at the end I enjoyed the non electronic weekend. This weekend showed me that all these new things will take us some of the most important part in our life. Communication and human not rational behavior.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years the government will establish the "human day" when we are not allowed to use any electronic device for one day. When it comes to this point then something went wrong with us.
Maybe in 20 years we have human robots which can be so irrational and unpredictable that it feels human again. we will then send them on vacation and to work. And then watch all the stories they saved in their private cloud. How appealing.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Monday, February 21, 2011
Cracker country goes digital
My family and I have been on Sunday at the Florida State fair.
Besides ridiculous fancy food like
Chocolate covered bacon, krispy kreme doughnut fried hamburger, deep fried butter, deep fried oreo, deep fried candy bars and meatloaf Sunday
and a lot of attractions like double head princess, half man half mermaid and the smallest pig in the world, they had as a small cracker town.
The town had original houses from Florida crackers from the 19th century.
What are the Florida crackers?
Florida cracker refers to original colonial-era English and American pioneer settlers of what is now the U.S. state of Florida, and their descendants. The first Florida crackers arrived in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain. The British divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida, and began to aggressively recruit settlers to the area, offering free land and financial backing for export-oriented businesses. The territory passed back to the Spanish crown in 1783, and then to the US government in 1819. Spanish rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was only nominal and the territory was wild and lawless.
The town was awesome I felt like going back in time if there has not been something amazing modern.
In front of each house was a sign with two QR codes.
One code for English and one code for Spanish.
The visitor had to scan one of the codes which redirected to a website with an audio file.
The audio file was (for each house) about 5 minutes and explained the history of the house.
I have to say it worked perfect with my iPhone 4, however some Android users had problems because the phone could not find a program to run the mp3 files.
A complete list of the audio files can be found here.
It was a perfect use of QR code. I stopped and watched how many people actually tried to scan the codes. I counted in a time period of 20 minutes 250 people going into the church but only 4 people even trying to scan the QR code which two of them had problems to get the audio file to work.
At least 20 people were wondering for what and what the QR code is.
Giving two more years and much more will do it.
The idea is really great. I remember that in the past i had to rent an audio guide to go through a museum, which did cost money and did never work well.
Nowadays we can scan a QR code and in some cases even use it in combination with augmented reality not only to hear the explanation but to see some extra layer of info on top of the art.
Technology as education, i love it.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Besides ridiculous fancy food like
Chocolate covered bacon, krispy kreme doughnut fried hamburger, deep fried butter, deep fried oreo, deep fried candy bars and meatloaf Sunday
and a lot of attractions like double head princess, half man half mermaid and the smallest pig in the world, they had as a small cracker town.
The town had original houses from Florida crackers from the 19th century.
What are the Florida crackers?
Florida cracker refers to original colonial-era English and American pioneer settlers of what is now the U.S. state of Florida, and their descendants. The first Florida crackers arrived in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain. The British divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida, and began to aggressively recruit settlers to the area, offering free land and financial backing for export-oriented businesses. The territory passed back to the Spanish crown in 1783, and then to the US government in 1819. Spanish rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was only nominal and the territory was wild and lawless.
The town was awesome I felt like going back in time if there has not been something amazing modern.
In front of each house was a sign with two QR codes.
One code for English and one code for Spanish.
The visitor had to scan one of the codes which redirected to a website with an audio file.
The audio file was (for each house) about 5 minutes and explained the history of the house.
I have to say it worked perfect with my iPhone 4, however some Android users had problems because the phone could not find a program to run the mp3 files.
A complete list of the audio files can be found here.
It was a perfect use of QR code. I stopped and watched how many people actually tried to scan the codes. I counted in a time period of 20 minutes 250 people going into the church but only 4 people even trying to scan the QR code which two of them had problems to get the audio file to work.
At least 20 people were wondering for what and what the QR code is.
Giving two more years and much more will do it.
The idea is really great. I remember that in the past i had to rent an audio guide to go through a museum, which did cost money and did never work well.
Nowadays we can scan a QR code and in some cases even use it in combination with augmented reality not only to hear the explanation but to see some extra layer of info on top of the art.
Technology as education, i love it.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Paris Hilton got makeover
For some Paris Hilton is the most beautiful woman and for some people not. But as we know every woman is beautiful and now there is a way which allows women to try jewelry on before buying it and without leaving the computer.
An E-commerce website in Australia is utilizing augmented reality (AR) for this.
See a übergizmo video about the this website.
Does it not look great? But unfortunately, even if the idea is great, the execution is poor.
First of all it is done in flash which limits the usage. Non of my mobile Apple devices can handle flash. My fault, should have a Dell Streak.
Lucky I have an iMac. Which makes anyway more fun because the screen is 27 inch and the iSight camera has a much higher resolution than the iPhone 4 or iPad2 front camera.
But neither i had luck on the iMac. My iMac has flash, and the flash did load, however the flash piece is only developed against windows computers. As described on their website it a small window pop up which asks me to allow the app to use my video camera. And this little popup does just not react on my clicks.
Next i started Parallels with Windows 7, but i did not get my iSight camera to run because I forgot to install from MacOSX DVD the bootcamp drivers, no idea where the DVD is (must be in one of my CD boxes i have in the attic). I could not get it run on any Mac neither in MacOSX or Windows. My last chance is my only Windows computer i have, which is my office notebook.
The idea of the AR is great but really poor executed. Not only does it not work with all OS and devices (70% user reach is still good enough) but the jewelry looks too unrealistic and cheap. It is already hard to show the elegance of gold and diamonds on website photo, it is harder to render it as vector.
The movement of the pieces don't follow perfect with your body movement, and even with a fast dual processor and big graphic chip it still does not go fluently.
This application has same issues like most of the AR i saw so far. It seems there are some designers and IT people developing this stuff without consulting or hiring a CGI expert from the movie industry.
They know how to do these things and they know all little tricks to make this looking great. Of course they have better equipment and the rendering is not realtime, but even with technology good enough to work via Internet, they would do a better job.
AR is the future but the future comes faster if we take more time and money to do a better job.
I am seriously thinking to start an AR company and would hire a few professional CGi guys, an doctor, a physics professor, a stylist, some designers and some good developers. This combination is required to understand and create good AR.
Let us see what comes next.
Did anybody of you see a really good execution so far?
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
An E-commerce website in Australia is utilizing augmented reality (AR) for this.
See a übergizmo video about the this website.
Does it not look great? But unfortunately, even if the idea is great, the execution is poor.
First of all it is done in flash which limits the usage. Non of my mobile Apple devices can handle flash. My fault, should have a Dell Streak.
Lucky I have an iMac. Which makes anyway more fun because the screen is 27 inch and the iSight camera has a much higher resolution than the iPhone 4 or iPad2 front camera.
But neither i had luck on the iMac. My iMac has flash, and the flash did load, however the flash piece is only developed against windows computers. As described on their website it a small window pop up which asks me to allow the app to use my video camera. And this little popup does just not react on my clicks.
Next i started Parallels with Windows 7, but i did not get my iSight camera to run because I forgot to install from MacOSX DVD the bootcamp drivers, no idea where the DVD is (must be in one of my CD boxes i have in the attic). I could not get it run on any Mac neither in MacOSX or Windows. My last chance is my only Windows computer i have, which is my office notebook.
The idea of the AR is great but really poor executed. Not only does it not work with all OS and devices (70% user reach is still good enough) but the jewelry looks too unrealistic and cheap. It is already hard to show the elegance of gold and diamonds on website photo, it is harder to render it as vector.
The movement of the pieces don't follow perfect with your body movement, and even with a fast dual processor and big graphic chip it still does not go fluently.
This application has same issues like most of the AR i saw so far. It seems there are some designers and IT people developing this stuff without consulting or hiring a CGI expert from the movie industry.
They know how to do these things and they know all little tricks to make this looking great. Of course they have better equipment and the rendering is not realtime, but even with technology good enough to work via Internet, they would do a better job.
AR is the future but the future comes faster if we take more time and money to do a better job.
I am seriously thinking to start an AR company and would hire a few professional CGi guys, an doctor, a physics professor, a stylist, some designers and some good developers. This combination is required to understand and create good AR.
Let us see what comes next.
Did anybody of you see a really good execution so far?
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
America invented the iPhone but Germany is already a step ahead
Everybody is talking about social and Mobile and guess what, this is old news. Both should be normal and common like Internet. There is no need to call any both out, just have it as a part of your marketing.
What we should call out is augmented reality, the ability to combine reality with animated images like green screen in movies. The mobile devices are getting faster and better. AR is here and in 12 months as usual as Social, mobile or Internet. But at least it will be in everybody mouth like Social today.
America seems not ready for this. Almost the same as for QR codes. They are around for years and just now we start to see them here. Europe and Germany are using them for marketing since years. Now Germany is again ahead and shows how AR can work for you.
Last week Germans or Americans with German satellite TV had a chance to watch and interact with the world’s first augmented-reality TV show.
Viewers of Galileo, a quiz show (ProSieben channel), were able to interact with the questions on the TV screen by viewing and interacting with augmented reality versions of the questions on their iPhone screens.
The viewer needed to have Junaio on their iPhone to see the AR and interact. The app is created by a German company called Metaio.
And there is Audi (German car maker) which created a beautiful calendar with no cars, but if the user downloads an iPhone app and holds the iPhone in front of the calendar, the user will see the latest Audi models on the calendar.
Watch the movie here
I think there are reasons why i kann stolz Deutscher zu sein. Prost.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
What we should call out is augmented reality, the ability to combine reality with animated images like green screen in movies. The mobile devices are getting faster and better. AR is here and in 12 months as usual as Social, mobile or Internet. But at least it will be in everybody mouth like Social today.
America seems not ready for this. Almost the same as for QR codes. They are around for years and just now we start to see them here. Europe and Germany are using them for marketing since years. Now Germany is again ahead and shows how AR can work for you.
Last week Germans or Americans with German satellite TV had a chance to watch and interact with the world’s first augmented-reality TV show.
Viewers of Galileo, a quiz show (ProSieben channel), were able to interact with the questions on the TV screen by viewing and interacting with augmented reality versions of the questions on their iPhone screens.
The viewer needed to have Junaio on their iPhone to see the AR and interact. The app is created by a German company called Metaio.
And there is Audi (German car maker) which created a beautiful calendar with no cars, but if the user downloads an iPhone app and holds the iPhone in front of the calendar, the user will see the latest Audi models on the calendar.
Watch the movie here
I think there are reasons why i kann stolz Deutscher zu sein. Prost.
- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69
Sunday, January 9, 2011
eBay Fashion has now augmented reality
eBay is now offering augmented reality, with the latest iphone update on Friday.
Consumers are now able to test a few sunglasses before they buy them.
First you have to take a picture of your face with your front camera on the iPhone. After this you have to move and zoom the glasses placer till this fits well on your eyes. It is important that you have good lights and that your eyes clearly seen in the middle of the image.
After this you can choose from a handful different types of glasses like the RayBan aviator.
The front camera will start and display the glasses on your face. You can even turn your face left, right, up and down and the glasses will move with your face.
You can hit the shop button if you like the glasses. Hitting the shop button will show you all ongoing auctions for your selected glasses.
The idea is great but still a little experimental. The glasses are rendered in a bad quality, the frame does not look real, but you can choose for each type different frame color or glass color. The glasses don't follow perfectly your head move, but the better the light the better the app works.
It took a while till i had a good scan of my face to see the glasses almost fitting perfect. Unfortunately there are only few types to choose from and one joke glass type which is as well available at eBay to buy.
Really good is how the glasses are partly transparent. It feels almost like real. It is still a big step to market but does show us the direction it is going. I can't wait till i can put clothes via AR on before I buy them.
AR and eBay are showing how we can get online a step closer to brick and mortar. I buy a lot of things online, but almost never clothes, only if I tried them before in a store. Soon I can try them online on.
I can't wait till the iPad with camera is out. The screen is perfect size for things like this.
Well done eBay.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Consumers are now able to test a few sunglasses before they buy them.
First you have to take a picture of your face with your front camera on the iPhone. After this you have to move and zoom the glasses placer till this fits well on your eyes. It is important that you have good lights and that your eyes clearly seen in the middle of the image.
After this you can choose from a handful different types of glasses like the RayBan aviator.
The front camera will start and display the glasses on your face. You can even turn your face left, right, up and down and the glasses will move with your face.
You can hit the shop button if you like the glasses. Hitting the shop button will show you all ongoing auctions for your selected glasses.
The idea is great but still a little experimental. The glasses are rendered in a bad quality, the frame does not look real, but you can choose for each type different frame color or glass color. The glasses don't follow perfectly your head move, but the better the light the better the app works.
It took a while till i had a good scan of my face to see the glasses almost fitting perfect. Unfortunately there are only few types to choose from and one joke glass type which is as well available at eBay to buy.
Really good is how the glasses are partly transparent. It feels almost like real. It is still a big step to market but does show us the direction it is going. I can't wait till i can put clothes via AR on before I buy them.
AR and eBay are showing how we can get online a step closer to brick and mortar. I buy a lot of things online, but almost never clothes, only if I tried them before in a store. Soon I can try them online on.
I can't wait till the iPad with camera is out. The screen is perfect size for things like this.
Well done eBay.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Augmented Reality T-shirt by Sebastian Merchel
We know Germans are crazy, because I am German. But now the crazy goes crazier.
A German Designer created an AR tee. It is a black shirt with an antique TV printed on. The TV has a barcode in the middle. Switch your webcam on and let the show begin.
AR Tees is based on a simple concept and design frame. There is a black t-shirt (and it could be an ordinary one) on which is imprinted a specialized bar code. The bar code is framed by an old school television set with mechanical dials, antennae pointing in the opposite direction, and speaker grooves on the front.
So far it may look and function like a normal tee. Point a webcam at it though and the AR technology of the tee will blow you away. The TV set imprinted on the tee turns into a real, streaming television for the people watching the tee over the webcam. Old cartoons and Laurel and Hardy shows can be viewed by the person wearing the tee and anyone else watching the person over the webcam.
The AR tech on the tee works with Flash software embedded in your internet browser. The specialized bar code is read by the FLAR-ToolKit to track the content of the tee. Papervision3D has been used to give the content appearing on AR Tees a 3D effect.
The t-shirt costs around $30 and the set up is easy, if you have a Windows computer.
http://www.sebastianmerchel.de/artees.html
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
A German Designer created an AR tee. It is a black shirt with an antique TV printed on. The TV has a barcode in the middle. Switch your webcam on and let the show begin.
AR-Tees first augmented reality tv-shirt from SebastianMerchel on Vimeo.
AR Tees is based on a simple concept and design frame. There is a black t-shirt (and it could be an ordinary one) on which is imprinted a specialized bar code. The bar code is framed by an old school television set with mechanical dials, antennae pointing in the opposite direction, and speaker grooves on the front.
So far it may look and function like a normal tee. Point a webcam at it though and the AR technology of the tee will blow you away. The TV set imprinted on the tee turns into a real, streaming television for the people watching the tee over the webcam. Old cartoons and Laurel and Hardy shows can be viewed by the person wearing the tee and anyone else watching the person over the webcam.
The AR tech on the tee works with Flash software embedded in your internet browser. The specialized bar code is read by the FLAR-ToolKit to track the content of the tee. Papervision3D has been used to give the content appearing on AR Tees a 3D effect.
The t-shirt costs around $30 and the set up is easy, if you have a Windows computer.
http://www.sebastianmerchel.de/artees.html
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)