Watch this hilarious video to find out about the naked truth!
(via @wilbertbaan)

Teletekst is dood are a bunch of Layars from David Veneman on Vimeo.

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

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More about Layar and Tweepsaround.

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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.

Deze workshop werd gegeven in de serie Networkshops waarbij regelmatig interessante workshops voor en door zelfstandigen worden gehouden.

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Chris Cameron of RWW asks Open or Closed: What’s the Best Path for Mobile Augmented Reality?

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.

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My first thought about the iPad, triggered by Tim Bray: Nothing Creative.

At the first glance I could not agree more with Tim. There’s nothing revolutionary about this whole iPad thing, it just let’s you “consume the web”.

At the other hand, this looks like the perfect execution of the whole “web tablet” idea which surfaced ten years ago (2000, 2001) and then almost vanished. I think the iPad is the culmination of evolutionary innovation, helped by Moore’s law.

For geeks there’s not much fun, no way to tinker and extend. Then, as soon as you see it as a nice consumer device and have it lying around your coffee table this might be a very nice gadget (at a pretty hefty price).

For me there are also a lot of unanswered questions, like why would I want to have this lying on the coffee table, operating under my identity? Security and privacy anyone? Or is it not meant to share after all?

Finally, why do we (yes, including me) always have such a strong opinion about Apple products? They must be doing something right in marketing (remember: HP launched a very neat tablet, the Slate, only a week ago). Some introspection: why are we disappointed when we get the perfect version of something wished for 10 years ago? Is it because it’s too late and we’re already way beyond with our thoughts?

Update: Mark Pilgrim describes his disappointment about the closed nature of the iPad as Tinkerer’s Sunset – be sure to read this excellent writeup!

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Copenhagenlayer Map View

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.

For more background info about the project see Copenhagen Layer: realtime air quality around you

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Copenhagen Layer in Reality view

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

1. take tiny portable environmental measurement devices,
2. link these to the internet using mobile phones,
3. have bike messengers drive them around through city traffic,
4. thus get a real-time cross section of the local environment conditions within the city,
5. 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
• Michael Friis, creator of Folketsting.dk created the site copenhagenlayer.org including the Google Maps version
• Tomas Skovgaard, architect maa Tomasskovgaard.com made all graphics
• 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.

This is the start of something great!

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Tweeps Around 3D view

The popular Augmented Reality app Layar just got updated to a very exciting new version with support for a 3D Reality View and a couple of other neat features.

I’m proud to announce a new version of the Tweeps Around layer, with the following improvements:

• The images of tweeting people are shown in 3D in space, just as they are around you
• Support for the new native geotagging feature of Twitter
• You can now reply and post new tweets (status updates)
• Your tweets will be geotagged with your current location (optional)

Like to experience this yourself? Make sure you have the latest version of Layar installed in your iPhone (free download in App Store) or Android powered device (free download from Android Market).

You need a Twitter account with geolocation eneabled to send local tweets yourself (no worries, Tweeps Around will guide you through the process when you first log into Twitter).

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Local tweet in Tweeps Around

Right now Twitter released their long awaited Geotagging API and activated the user interface for every user: Think Globally, Tweet Locally!

This allows every twitter user who uses a (mobile) device that is capable of determining their location, to annotate their tweets with exact location. This makes Tweeps Around so much more useful! Up to now, the location had to be parsed from the user’s profile location field, which some clients indeed dutifully update with the location of the last posted tweet. But this is often rather inaccurate, as the last update is kept when no location data is available.

Twitter: mobile geo activation screen

So, we will get real exact locations and – as can be expected – many more location annotated tweets. That is, if users are willing to activate the geotagging setting and use the feature. It is switched off by default, for privacy reasons, so you have to manually activate it under your twitter account settings (the mobile settings lead to just one activate button).

Be sure to check out Tweeps Around the coming days and let’s see how fast this catches on!

BTW: in Tweeps Areond, the officially geotagged tweets are indicated with Distance 234m, whereas the guessed locations are prefixed with a tilde character, like this: Distance ~234m.

Direct link to Tweeps Around Layer (open from your mobile phone, iPhone or Android).

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Image by miss604 via Flickr

Browsing the updated Foursquare development documents I came across a real nice hidden gem: it appears that the Flickr folks have enabled so called machine tags to associate a photo with a Foursquare venue.

The almost hidden quote from the Flickr Developer blog:

This is the part where I casually mention that we’ve also added machine tags extra love for Four Square venues IDs. I’m just saying…

Now how cool would it be to display a little photo on my Foursquare Layar venue detail pages?
Remembering @codepo8’s execellent talk at the Fronteers conference last week, I realized that this is where the really cool YQL engine comes in really handy.

And indeed, the following query does it all:

select * from flickr.photos.search
    where machine_tags="foursquare:venue=132009"
    limit 1

Just save the REST command url, wrap it in a little PHP handler and we’re good to go (homework for next time: process the YQL response in XML format with js/e4x and skip the PHP part altogether).

So now you will see a little thumbnail picture for every venue which has a photo tagged on Flickr. There aren’t many yet, but hey, it’s a start!

See it in action in the Foursquare Layar app on your phone (iPhone, Android) or read my announcement for more background information about the foursquare layar app.

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