The Layar application Tweepsaround makes visible who says what on twitter in your direct neighborhood. But is it true, or are they a bunch of bad layars?
The guys from Teletekst is Dood wanted to find out so they started their private investigation.
Watch this hilarious video to find out about the naked truth!
(via @wilbertbaan)
Teletekst is dood uses augmented reality to find the people behind the tweets
On Twitter, many things are shared by people, often in the belief that this information does not result in feedback in the physical world. We at Teletekst is dood wanted to show that we do listen to you. Using Layar, a mobile augmented reality application, we looked for the people behind the tweets, translating the digital the conversation to the physical world. In addition to our visits, we left the people art objects from our personal collection.
- David Veneman – camera swinger 1 / director
- Tim Terpstra – camera swinger 2
- Jorick Mulder – getaway-driver
- Mik Maes – megaphone maestro
- Micah Westera – delivery of TV’s
- Beer van Geer – people tracker
NIce! Tweepsaround is used as a unique feature in a TV ad for LG which aired last week on Dutch TV networks. The screens are showed approximately halfway the commercial.
Afgelopen donderdag heb ik bij CoworkCompany in Leiden voor een tiental geïnteresseerden een introductie op het gebied van Mobiele Augmented Reality gegeven. De slides van deze gebeurtenis staan hieronder.
The best path is open, no question about it. This “browser” model is the only way an AR app like Layar (or Wikitude) can survive beyond the gimmicky “app” life cycle. Just ask yourself: do I want to install the gazillionth “metro maps” app when visiting Paris, or just type “metro” in my standard AR browser and get the results (remember, the thing is location aware)?
So.
Going further, I envision a future for mobile AR where geo-tagged data points will be browsed in a generic way. By that time, the geo browser or whatever you will call it becomes a basic functionality of any mobile device, likely pre-installed and hopefully also downloadable from several vendors.
How Open is Open?
The currently available AR browsers (Wikitude, Layar) both have an open model – what they call the API, but in essence it is a formatting definition of a POI list, just like html is used for standard web browsers. At the same time both a closed with regards to their catalog and discovery model, in other words, AR data can only be consumed through either browser once a source has been explicitly registered and thus becomes part of their catalog. This make sense for now, as the market is very young and there are no other mechanisms for discovery or established yet. Remember when the www had only a few thousand sites, catalog services like Yahoo! made sense, they became obsolete after the number of web pages became too huge to be cataloged and search engines started to become the new way for discovering relevant results (and so Yahoo! transformed itself into a destination site including a search engine).
Another key aspect of the www is that there’s no need to explicitly add your content to some kind of catalog, just put it up and it will be found by aggregators (note: this is an evolving goal, we’re not there yet and have to do with SEO for the good or bad for a while – Linked Open Data is one of the answers here).
Following this analogy, this is what we need for AR to really become a mature way to “browse the world”:
better UX for the mobile hardware (eventually glasses and lenses)
open standard for AR data publishing
open standard for AR data queries
standardized AR browsers / clients
The path to real Open AR
The good news is that there are a lot of lessons learned from the regular www to be applied and a lot of existing open specifications and protocols which can be used. To mention a few:
publish using linked open data standards (semantic web, e.g. RDF – at least for metadata to support discoverability)
support a real time experience from the start (to avoid kludges like Twitter afterwards)
support social graphs from the start (AR is about you and your social network too)
use open standards for the transfer protocol, XMPP makes a lot of sense here
Two months ago, Tish Shute presented at the Mobile Monday conference in Amsterdam and introduced the AR Wave initiative to me. This looks like a very strong contender to evolve into the open AR web. If you’re interested in this matter you really should read up on this initiative!
Oh, and for now and the next few years we should really be very happy with our catalog based AR browsers, Layar and Wikitude are paving the road as innovator and evangelizer for a whole new industry. You can be sure they will keep stretching the experience to the limits as currently imposed by the handsets and immature technology.
Copenhagen Layer is the name of an environment monitoring initiative which shows you local conditions in Augmented Reality on your mobile phone. These environmental conditions are continuously sampled from the city by volunteering bike messengers who carry around tiny measurement devises – senspods – and upload this data in real time to the Copenhagen Layer data center.
Currently the project runs in Copenhagen only, so if you’re not in in the neighborhood you’re out of luck to experience the project yourself.
Good news: as of today the same data can be viewed on the map at copenhagenlayer.org. The site is still under development and we are actively experimenting with different visualization methods. As more data becomes available, more aggregate data may lead to richer views and more consistent data. At the moment only NOx levels are being used while the deployed sensor type is capable of measuring far more parameters, like COx, temperature, humidity and noise level in dB.
Now that the Copenhagen Conference is over we are left with a disappointing end statement. Apparently this was the maximum our world leaders could achieve when they got together: the potential was huge, the output (very) disappointing.
In this light I’m very proud to present a local grass-roots initiative to bring street level measurements of environmental pollution to the real time web and your mobile phone.
Please meet Copenhagenlayer.org and its Augmented Reality counter part Copenhagen Layer (link opens Layar app on your mobile device, only useful if you’re in Copenhagen).
So what is it actually?
It all started with a blog post by Ronni Tino Pedersen in October, about how cool it would be to visualize the local Copenhagen climate and green initiatives as an overlay over the city, using Augmented Reality. There was no clear focus, but people got interested and started to contact him with ideas. And so the plan grew to
take tiny portable environmental measurement devices,
link these to the internet using mobile phones,
have bike messengers drive them around through city traffic,
thus get a real-time cross section of the local environment conditions within the city,
make these data points visible using Mobile Augmented Reality.
This only could happen by the shared effort of a very enthusiastic virtual team. This team consisted of
Ronni Tino Pedersen Strategic online communications @ New Media Days at Danish Broadcasting Corporation – initiator and virtual project manager
Michael Setton, CEO of Sensaris.com who provided the sensors (senspods) and real time measurement set-up
Tobias Lau, CEO and founder of Socialaction.dk developing environmental projects with a social scientific focus
Peter Vangsbo Madsen, Cowi.com provided specialist advise on air pollution
And myself as data integrator and developer of the Layar implementation
The result is impressive, using your mobile phone you can experience what the environmental conditions are in your direct neighborhood, and if you’re lucky this data is measured just a few minutes ago! Although not yet directly related to the big picture of the Copenhagen Conference with its focus on CO2 reduction, this project may evolve so that a future version can even visualize the real-time carbon footprint of traffic in the city.
To quote Ronni Tino Pedersen:
I actually think copenhagenlayer in it’s current state will make a greater impact as part of the COP15 long tail than it could have during the summit. By focusing on the enabling possibilities of street level measurements we can now show some grassroots action that the politicians couldn’t. This is a good story with a fair chance of making it through the journalistic filters.
And so it is indeed.
Are you in Copenhagen? Then jump in: open Layer with the Copenhagen Layer
Just keep in mind that this project is in its early stages. The measurements are not very well calibrated yet. Interpretation is always risky and indicative at best, but the trends are real and it is very revealing to see the enormous difference of being surrounded by busy traffic or being amidst a calm city park. There are lots and lots more data available from the senspods than NOx alone, these will be integrated once a solid model for interpretation will be established. And with more sensors and more data points available all kind of aggregated views can be constructed and more reliable conclusions drawn. Heatmaps, rush hour vs. mid day traffic, summer vs winter, the sky is the limit.
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