2013: The Year That AR Goes Mainstream.

Augmented Reality has reached critical mass.  There are dozens of apps that offer just about anything you can imagine.  I can lie in bed, half asleep, and boot Junaio, and see stuff surrounding me.  The only thing keeping it subdued is the lack of an affordable head mounted device.  Google is posed to bring that cost down in the future.

I've always daydreamed of having a pair of glasses that allow me to interact with virtual objects and people on the fly.  While having an HMD will facilitate that, it isn't the only piece of hardware involved. A separate camera in the room, tied to geospacial coordinates to observe your position will be necessary, I believe.  The best piece of hardware I can think of is the Kinect.  Your visitors can be virtual or physical, in the room with you.  Anyone in a virtual reality can invite you in a location and your recorded image becomes your avatar.  The best thing about that is you will feel as though you are physically in that location. And it all happens in real time, 24/7, without having to start an app.  It just works.

Granted this is just January. Realistically, prices and hardware won't be widely available until mid to late 2013.  But I'm willing to go on a limb and be firm on this being THE year!

Committing to HTML 5

I've been really intrigued with HTML 5.  It promises to do a lot for the web, and sometime in the future, the "internet of things".  But the catch is that most people are comfortable working in HTML 4.  We all have our templates set in 4, and we just don't want to take the time to recode all of that stuff.  That, and we're not nagged to enter metadata when we're using 4.  But there is just one thing that's wrong with this kind of thinking.  Sooner or later, the people that are working in 5 are gonna leave us all behind like dinos.

Now I'm not saying we all have to do everything in XML.  That would be like trying to write in binary, when using C++ is so much easier.  But even the most dense of us are starting to notice that the web is heading towards HTML 5.  And I'm cool with that.  I've done a lot of switch over from HTML 4 using XHTML.  And even XHTML is getting long in the tooth.


I was just reviewing some files I have in my 3d worlds folder. As it turns out, much of that work is bits and pieces of VRML coding.  I was reminded of just how challenging VRML is.  It was created back when HTML 3 was in use.  It's one of the reasons I've taken an interest in X3D for doing small projects.  It's designed to work with HTML 5.

There are websites like Second Life, and programs like Open Sim that you don't need to worry about the magical incantations to get a world up and running.  And many works I've seen are just stunning.  But there are just a couple of tiny problems.  A world needs to load directly from the servers for me, even though it supposedly is cached somewhere on my machine.  And the realism shatters whenever I see an incompatibility in prims.  The little glitch line that is constantly pixellating when you least expect it.  You know what I'm talking about.  I've heard it called the "Denno Coil" effect.

Now one thing that VRML/X3D is great at, is eliminating pixellation.  That, and caching a world on your machine, rather than calling it from the cloud.  Of course you need a plug in.  I've come to accept that.  Eventually most plug ins will become apps.  The one I prefer is BS Contact, from Bitmanagement.de.  I discovered recently that many web based games are written in VRML and X3D. Of course there is some Java and Javascript involved as well for that, but I'm already babbling for too long on this.

What I'm trying to say, is that I'm going to recommit to upgrading my templates to HTML 5, and take another shot at learning X3D.  While I'm not going to become a master of X3D, I hope to be able to learn enough of it to do a few projects that have been in the back of my mind.  So we'll see what happens!

Happy Trails, Wordpress.com

Today I finalized the closing of my Wordpress.com blog.  Anything that was there is now here on Blogspot.com.

Neil Armstrong, August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012

I just learned at 2:15 am Sunday morning of the passing of an American icon. Mr. Neil Armstrong, yesterday.

There isn't a space enthusiast anywhere who doesn't instantly recognize the man for not who he is, but for what he did.  Ask any Baby Boomer where they were on July 20 - 21, 1969, and you'll get a variety of answers.  All of them involving watching a black and white television not much bigger than today's laptop viewscreens.  We were kids that believed in heroes that had flesh and blood.  Not these comic book substitutes of today.

I went to Yahoo.com for the story.  It was modest, but it said what it needed to.  There were many kind and heartfelt comments left there. And of course the lunar landing conspiracy nay-sayers were having their sounding board as well.  All I could do was shake my head.  I'm not going to bash on the nay-sayers.  Only because these are people that have reached a point where it doesn't matter what you tell them, they have already tried and found the US Government guilty of fraud and cover up in everything.  Someone jokingly said to me once that someday they will find evidence that the American Civil War and the Colonial War of Independence are cover ups as well, and we're all still paying our taxes to the UK.  While there IS a crapload of BS in Washington DC right now, pointing fingers at a hero won't solve those issues.

Mr. Armstrong was part of a time when you had to have unshakable faith in what you believed in.  And we believed that we could beat the Soviets to the moon.  Hell yes, it was propaganda!  Did it have an effect on kids my age?  You damn well bet it did!  That was the effect it was supposed to have!  In 1969, we seriously had to learn to go into the school hallways, sit facing the walls, and cover our heads.  Back then it was either us or the Soviets.  We knew exactly who the enemy was then.  Neil Armstrong was THE symbol of American superiority!  We currently have a generation of people that accept terrorism, airport friskings, and shoot to kill" orders from the local police departments as part of everyday life. The only heros they have are corporations, politicians, and financial institutions that would blatantly lie straight to your face and say that everything is fine.  No wonder everyone craves fantasies like Batman, Spiderman, and the other comic forces.

The USA, no, the world has lost a great hero.  One that never considered himself a hero.  That's just how heroes are.  Enjoy your new trip to the Heavens, Mr. Armstrong.  You earned it.

I've Moved!

In case you haven't noticed, I've imported my blog from Wordpress.com to Blogspot.com!  I haven't been too happy with the Wordpress interface lately, so I finally made the plunge to change.  In all fairness to Wordpress, they were there when I needed to switch from Geocities.com when Yahoo decided to close Geocities down.  But time marches on.  This was as much a business decision as a personal decision, so I'm comfortable with it.

I'lll only keep Wordpress up until the end of August, and then it's parked here on Blogspot.  I'll look forward to seeing you here!

Don't Look Behind the Curtain!

I like to pretend that I'm tech-savvy.  A few days ago there was a great deal at Shopko on a 7 inch Polaroid tablet computer that came with a case with a keyboard.  Including the coupon, and the two year warranty, the price with tax was $105.  The tablet comes with Android ice cream sandwich.  Cool!  Or so we thought.

Now don't get me wrong.  This is a very nice tablet.  It is low end, which means I wait a few seconds for response times.  Of course if I wanted quick and snappy, I need to put out quite a few more bucks.  But this isn't a hardware review.  This is a rant about Google.

Since the OS is Android, I assumed "Great!  I can go to Google Play and access my music that I uploaded!".  Not.  Apparently Google has decided that since my hardware wasn't up to their standards, I wasn't allowed to download their Google Play app!  Huh?  That's right.  No Play on the Polaroid for me!

Fortunately, Polaroid has the Amazon app store already installed.  And Amazon says "Inexpensive hardware?  No problem!"  I downloaded their mp3 app to the tablet.  And surprise, there is all my music that I had uploaded to their cloud as well!

So my question is this:  When did Google suddenly become such dicks with their Play store?  They invite people to use their service, only to let us know that they're following Apple's business model?  If I wanted to do that, uh, I'd use an iPad and iTunes, folks.  I really wanted to stay completely in Google's universe, but ONCE AGAIN, they've pissed me off.  And there is Amazon, standing with their welcoming arms.  Needless to say, you know who I'll continue shopping with.

And So It Begins...

http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds-for.html

This story is starting to gain momentum.  A man and his family were in a McDonalds in Paris, France.  The man has a medical vision implant.  All very legal, with documentation to authenticate his condition. And yet employees from a public company purposely destroy the papers, and physically attack this man, due to their narrow-mindedness.

Now I could imply that the employees were acting out of instructions from the franchise owner of not allowing public photography as it could be a ruse for undercover journalism.  The McDonalds Corporation has a policy of not allowing anyone to do a news story on their premises without previous authorization. And only interviewing the general manager of that particular restaurant, or the corporate rep. And I can understand the logic of this.  It controls libel or slander or simply misreporting facts.

But this is far more than a simple  "keep the media at bay" situation.  I think this man was attacked by people out of religious principle.  Attacked out of fear of loss of control of a perceived lifestyle that can no more be controlled now, than thousands of years ago.  Fundamentalism is equally narrow minded in Islam, Christianity, and Judasim.  And God forbid if you happen to be from the American continent.  It doesn't matter if you are a Yank or a Canuck.  Then you also fall under global sterotyping.

They tried to yank out a medical implant.  What is going to happen when Google releases their final version of the Glass technology?  And not just Google. You know that other companies are lining up to release their own version of augmentation.  Does it become a stand off between cyborgs and fundamentalists?  A holy war between transhumanists and the religious right wings?  Or something even more ludicrous as the tech public against corporate elites?

Some reading this will say "Hey, you work for McDonalds. Why aren't you supporting the company?".  I'm not real proud of this right now, for my own reasons.  Whether or not the McDonalds corporation makes this right for Dr. Steve Mann is besides the point.  At some time in the future this will become personal for everyone.  We will need to take up positions on whether we embrace technology and the direction it's taking us, or shun it from our lives.

On this, I stand solid with the transhumanists.