Wednesday, October 14, 2009

iPhone accuracy

We ran some field tests in darwin with Bill Wade at CDU and noted there were discrepant readings across our various GPS sensors; iPhone 3GS, Garmin 60CS, Garmin 60CSX, and a bolt-on GPS toggle for a mid-range digital SLR camera.

I discussed this last week with an ongoing supporter of our project, Andy Roberts from NT Land Information Services, and was able to get very accurate survey point readings on our street to 'calibrate' the accuracy of our GPS sensing units. Armed with blueprints of points, accurate down to the centimetre level, my son and I went out and crunched the numbers across the Garmin 60CSx and the iPhone 3GS.
Cutting to the chase; we were able to get below 3 metres with the Garmin. The iPhone averaged out around 20 meters, got as accurate as 10 and twice was about 50 meters out [12 readings].  With the Garmin there is an Average function that allows one to leave the unit reading, over time, to sharpen its focus and we achieved around <3 metres after a 3 min sit. I don't think the iPhone has this higher end 'average' function ability to 'read over time'.  All things considered the iPhone does a pretty good job, the GPS transceiver is tiny from the pics I've web sourced, this is its 1st iteration [and will either get better next version and/or someone will offer an accurate GPS bolt on].  Now if they offered this bolt-on as Wi-Fi connected it would be ideal, fingers crossed.
The other thing to be aware of is the manufacturers guarantee which goes something like this for Garmin; for 95% of the time it will get you within 10 metres radius, for 4.5% of the time you'll get within 30 metres and for 0.5% of the time you may be as much as 300 metres out.  Nice waiver eh?
Another option we intend to interrogate is reverse geocoding the route entirely; that is lay the route out along the roads and tracks depicted on the map photographs, without having to log the route with a GPS navigator first.
As is mentioned in earlier posts, 60 to 78% of Australia, depending who you talk to, is without 3G signals.  Here in the Alice, surrounded by a desert the size of Europe... we loose our 3G connectivity 10 to 15Km out.  Hence our work and research on a system that will overlay Augmented Reality information to the outback/remote tourist or professional.

As well as the tests we ran in The Alice here's a London based scenario that backs up the conclusions we have come to.  Remember also that the iPhone is gaining extra location fix position information from cell phone towers.
I've just started testing the fidelity of the iPhone GPS in outback locations [no 3G signal ergo no cell phone tower triangulation assists.] Early results are confusing!!
You tube

Purple line is route taken White line is iPhone GPS track Cycle computer indicated total distance travelled as 3.56 miles, iPhone track indicated 3.4 miles

Friday, October 9, 2009

We are obviously in the early days of mobile phone AR. How do you see it developing?

Rob Manson and Alex Young from BuildAR had this to say, great description, my bold words emphasis.

"Well, I’m working on a broader research project on Pervasive Computing and I think this is a core part of that evolution. The interfaces are still quite clunky and having to hold up and wave around your phone is still quite a clumsy experience.

I think quite soon we’ll see more immersive display devices start to spread. I’m running a session on this at Web Directions South and we use this underlying theory to inform most of our business/product strategy development.

Basically the distance between the network and the user is collapsing. The distance between the display and the user is collapsing. And the distance between the physical interface (e.g. think of gestures) and the user is also shrinking. This means our overall experience of space and even who we are is changing.

This all seems a bit futuristic, but glasses with displays built-into them should start to spread quite soon, all powered by mobile devices. And there’ll be even more interesting options too. Just think how quickly iPhones and Bluetooth headsets have become common everyday objects.

The opposite side of this is the spread of wireless digital cameras.

Combine the two and you open the door to rich and immersive Augmented Reality where you can shift your perspective constantly and freely.

I think this is the start of something really fascinating!"

Taken from an interview listed on the Sydney Powerhouse museum's joint project. Read full article here.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Traveling iClass

 The new breed of mobile phones such as iPhone 3GS & Android have three base characteristics that set them apart from their lessors:
  • Sensor Supported
    • Vison via camera and camcorder
    • Audio via microphone
    • Gravity/acceleration via accelerometers
    • Touch via the GUI
    • Electromagnetic - everything from GPS signals, WiFi transceivers, BluTooth, Cell Phone signals to Compass bearingsLocation-Aware
      • And this section is evolving rapidly as large companies and home coders alike apply 'collective intelligence' to assess what the market wants, and how to go about providing it.
      • Also I envisage a new breed of sensor apps coming online as wired and wireless sensor 'bolt-ons' are connected to the phones to provide perception across say temperature, microscopy, smell and even taste
  • Internet Connected
    • Within a given 3G signal umbrella you can source the web.
  • Location Aware
    • Via GPS signal processing and cell Phone triangulation

I'd been trying to get a suitable acronym from SS, IC and LA. Lassic, Ssicla and finally iClass appears out of the mix...

 just like the dyslexic guy who walked into a bra... and said Ouch!.  It was an iron bar.

Albert gives the nod to memestreme


Couldn't resist it!
http://www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

BuildAR and Layar heads up.

With reference to the next blog down, we discussed potential VET training and employment outcomes for "Geo-Locative Media Studies". Given that most job descriptions making use of such training don't currently exist my blog entry may appear a trifle tenuous, but read on. I mentioned Layar which is:
"Layar Reality Browser adds 3D to its Platform {Oct 6 09}
Layar announced the addition of 3D capabilities to its augmented reality browser platform. With 3D, developers can tag real-life objects with 3D text, place 3D objects in real-world space, and create multi-sensory experiences. The addition of 3D enables Layar developers to create more realistic and immersive augmented reality experiences for mobile devices.
More information at www.layar.com/3D
Layar is GLOBAL. With lots of content layers for everyone. All the news is on the blog and in thepress section.":


Anyway Stop the Press, contemplate some emergent VET job opportunities and cop an optic on this Aussie start up BuildAR
"Click here for the full blog transcript of the excerpt provided below.

"On Saturday night at our (very rainy) Common Ground meetup in Sydney, Rob Manson and Alex Young from BuildAR demonstrated the first version of their augmented reality mobile toolkit using images from the Powerhouse’s geocoded photographs in the Commons on Flickr.
This work riffs around the early mashup from Paul Hagon where he combined the historic photos with Google’s Street View; and the ABC’s Sydney Sidetracks project.
But then makes it mobile – replacing the Street View with the actual view through the camera of your mobile phone.

I asked Rob a few questions -
F&N – What is this Augmented Reality thing you’ve built? What does it do?
The first service is BuildAR and it is a service built upon the Mobile Reality Browser called Layar.
Layar uses the GPS on your mobile to work out where in the world you are, then it uses the digital compass to work out which direction you’re facing (e.g. your orientation). From this it can build a model of the objects and places around you. Then as you hold up your mobile and pan around, it can overlay information on the live video from your camera that you see to highlight where these objects and places are.
BuildAR let’s you quickly and easily add, search and manage your own collection of Points of Interest (POIs) to create your own Augmented Reality layer. You can do this via a standard PC web browser, or you can do it via your mobile phone. You can create a free personal account and get started straight away creating your own private POIs or you can make public POIs that other people can view too. All it takes is a few clicks and they are shared or published in real-time.
You can also use the service to create fully branded and customised layers.
Follow the links for more info, very interesting. Coupled? entangled? with the research scurrying apace at Microsoft's PhotoSynth labs, Washington Universities CrowdFlow [similar to an app from Georgia university which uses live cctv data to populate virtual landscapes with real-time demographics {and google algorithms to auto blur faces and license plates }] and Sameer Agarwal's 'Building Rome in a day' project [machine driven suction of pics from public sites to auto compose 3D VR scapes], to name but a few, it is just getting a whole lot easier to envisage GeoLocative career options for our erstwhile student population.
Consider how many times, from what angles and from what altitudes our very own iconic Ayers Rock has been photographed... In may ways it will be easier to attain VR/AR 'models' from the timeless terrain of our sunburnt centre.  The unsealed roads are about the only things that traverse the terrain on a decade by decade time line as floods, termite mounds etc urge road deviations.
The 'granularity' [the volume and density of media available for a given coordinate] of most of the locations along the Red Centre Way will be much less than say the roof of the Cistine Chapel, and it will be a while before google street view arrives, but the research efforts and innitiatives above are talking about building Rome and Dubrovnic models from 50,000 pics, in a day.  I'd say right now there's going to be a heluva lot of pics from the Red Centre online.
And this brings us back to memestreme; its great having 3D models of the outback, now the scene without a meme is becoming set: all we need to do now is lay stories and ideas onto this magnificent backdrop. Bring it on.
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Click here for the fascinating  "ABC Innovation's Sidetracks" info page & you'll be able to read about; 
ABC Innovation has launched their Sydney Sidetracks project.
This is a lovely experiment in developing a mobile heritage application which takes some of the archives of ABC TV and Radio and combines them with static imagery and research from the cultural heritage partners – Powerhouse Museum, State Library of NSW, National Film & Sound Archives, Museum of Contemporary Art, the City of Sydney Archives, and the Dictionary of Sydney.
ABC have sensibly hedged their bets so the diverse content is available as an interactive website with a simple map interface, and as a multi-platform mobile Java application.
Whilst the mobile application is not yet location-aware, it does provide a simulation of the potential experience that awaits in a future version. The phone version can be ‘sideloaded‘ to a huge range of different devices. Being out and about with the content changes your experience of it greatly but suffice to say, mobile is still in a very immature phase – with significant usability issues to be overcome. Partially to get around these, a whole lot of the ABC Archives content can be downloaded, separately, to your phone to be accessed as podcasts.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Copyright conundrums [R]






During the Mobilizethis09 conference run by Bill Wade in Darwin last week the question of; "What is 'legal media content' these days?"... when, as part of our Uni studies and daily life we want to use Web 2.0 mashups to get our points across.

Great question, still no clear answer. The following three articles attest to the fact that change is afoot and will hopefully provide a good overview of what the current state of play is for; copyright, copyleft, digital commons, patent rights, IP etc.  All that 'stuff' we're used to thinking of as belonging to someone is now more or less dead in the water unless its being viewed and freely altered over the grid. This is what I refer to in later posts as memes [ideas with attitude] that culturally evolve as they are replicated, with variation, on the grid.

Its mid 2007 and I've been in touch with ABC radio national and asked them if it was okay to use  whole or excerpted bits of their Radio national program podcasts.  I made 4 inconclusive phone calls asking if I could use their content and I never really thought the question was clearly answered until the 5th call.  I explained again how I wanted to populate an Augmented Reality tour with some ABC/rn content, pointed him to the 2007-2008 blog and continued to describe what we were doing. Finally he said "Are you going to on-sell this?" - "No", "Then go ahead and use whatever you want and please don't alter the ABC metadata".  That was it, leave the meta intact and don't make money off it.

Other places like ted.com and youtube expect you to share, alter and evolve their content.  So long as their content is being viewed and/or morphed, they are doing good business.  Economics 101 in the weightless economy.

Anyway, the following 3 ABC/rn podcasts make for excellent listening, I have listed them in what I consider the priority order. The Alfred Deakin lecture is by three gents who really know what they are talking about, and although this was broadcast Dec 2007, its a really nice piece of work.

TASTE:
Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture 29 December 2007
Are we missing out on the full benefits of science and technology because of outdated ideas about copyright and patenting? Could the key to feeding the world be locked up in a company fridge somewhere? Open-source software has transformed the internet, underpinning the phenomenal growth of Google, Ebay and YouTube. What can science learn from this revolution? In our rush to protect intellectual property, have we damaged our capacity to deliver solutions for the critical issues of the 21st century?
In this lecture, John Wilbanks, Executive Director of Science Commons at Harvard Law School, will describe how existing social and legal infrastructures are choking science, and how we can create new ways to share research. Brian Fitzgerald, Head of the Law School at Queensland University of Technology, will discuss the success of open source in the information technology world, and the lessons for other fields of science.
FULL:
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This is a great overview of Advertising, and how it is dragging itself, kicking and screaming, into digital paradise. Three wonderful speaker and the 1st Professor Veran from Murdoch Uni WA, well worth listening to.
TASTE:
The changing face of advertising
A look at the way in which the Australian advertising industry is adapting to the challenges of the modern age of communication.(This program was first broadcast on 11 October 2007)
Antony Funnell: Welcome to another edition of the Media Report on ABC Radio National ... I'm Antony Funnell. Today's highlight program looks at future trends in advertising.
Like journalism, the industry is much disparaged...and we often overlook its importance in terms of underpinning the viability of much of the media we consume.
That is -- in blunt terms -- without the revenue generated by advertising there'd be very little to watch, hear or read (leaving public broadcasting aside of course).
So, today on the program, we'll look again at the way the advertising industry is adapting to the rapidly changing media environment of the 21st century.
FULL:
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Internet Piracy Oct 2009
TASTE:
Oscar McLaren: The copyright industries say their enemies are everywhere, from multi-billion dollar internet companies to the millions of people around the world who pirate films and music on the net.
But also in the cross-hairs is a growing band of mash-up and remix artists and everyday computer users for whom the internet has sparked a wave of creativity.
Around the world, some say the copyright industry's war is already lost. At a conference in Canberra earlier this year, here's Harvard University's Professor Lawrence Lessig.
Lawrence Lessig: We have to recognise we can't kill this form of creativity, we're only going to criminalise it. There's no way we can stop our kids from engaging in this form of creativity, we can only drive their creativity underground. We can't make them passive, the way at least I was growing up, we can only make them pirates. And the question we have to ask is, Is that any good?
Oscar McLaren: Today, Background Briefing explores this question. Hello, I'm Oscar McLaren on ABC Radio National.
The battle is really about how copyright law should adapt in an age when everyone can be a pirate.
Should it crack down on every download of a film or song? Should it stop every unauthorised remix? Should it stand aside? Or should it find another way of regulating intellectual property.
There are enormous corporate interests involved on all sides, and the laws are complex. But at their most basic level they're meant to encourage creative people to produce work and release it to the public.
FULL
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