Augmented Planet » Video

Some Cool Educational AR Demos

lester — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:37:06 +0000

We hear all the time about how augmented reality is going to change our lives and bring the education experience to life. Everything from changing our printed books by including rich interactive multimedia to the way we experience a trip to the museum.

Proving education can be fun, New Zealand based company, MindSpace Solutions Limited have some really engaging marker based demos that are well worth a look. A couple of my favourites are: Explore a Human Heart which has some really nice effects. Using five markers, four of which represent a piece of the heart while the fifth provides information on what you see. As you combine 2 or more cards the augmented reality images interact with each other.

The other demo I really like is the Solar Explorer. Similar to the heart demo but this time each marker represents a planet, when you add two planets together they scale to reflect their comparable size.

It’s all really clever stuff.

Try the demo yourself here
Watch the Human heart video here
Watch the Solar Explorer video here

Away from markers, MindSpace Solutions also have a really Interesting approach to engaging museum visitors. The idea centres around their Digital Binoculars Stations. Digital binoculars are just like any other fix binocular station you find at tourist attractions around the world. You know the ones where you put in a few coins and you get several minutes looking at a distant object before they go dark. However these binoculars bring the world to life by playing movies or animating exhibits. The system contains rotation sensors which are able to tell the computer where the binocular station is pointing so it knows the exhibit you are looking and can play the relevant augmented reality experience. By placing the system in a strategic location in a museum it can cover many different exhibits engaging you as you look around the exhibit hall.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqLAKBX0om4

If you find yourself out in New Zealand, visit the Canterbury Museum where you can give the system a go.

Rocking Augmented Reality Demo

lester — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:22:39 +0000

This demo is probably one of the coolest augmented reality demos I have seen for sometime, you might even say it rocks.

There has been some attempts in the past to combine augmented reality with music videos but this one is the best by far. With the Lost Valentinos augmented reality demo you print the markers and decide how the music video will look. Each marker represents an individual member of the band so you can arrange them however you see fit, make you own stage and soundings and decide the action.

Once you have your perfect music video you can upload it to share with others at their website. The YouTube video below doesn’t do the demo any justice at all so be sure to visit lostvalentinos.com and watch the introduction there. The music is actually pretty cool as well.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPbEzbyS2ik

You can have life sized band members so get printing and join the band.
http://www.lostvalentinos.com/

Augmented Reality News Digest 14/9/09

lester — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:54:21 +0000

Sorry for the late blog today, I have been trying to get my CV done so I can start looking for a job. So despite my lateness let me do a bit of a news digest.

Getting a lot of attention and being billed as Google Earth meets augmented reality is this blog post and video (below). I’m not really convinced that it’s an augmented reality solution. Don’t get me wrong it looks good and I looking forward to playing around with it, but calling it augmented reality is stretching it a bit. Read the article and watch the video and decide for yourself.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPk88soc2qw

Revolution Magazine must be having an augmented reality day today, having brought us the Google Earth story above they also have a feature on the top 10 augmented reality campaigns. There isn’t really anything new in there, nothing that we haven’t been talking about for a few weeks now but that’s the power of twitter. What goes around comes around again and again.

In a similar vein this is yet another article focused on the top demos. As above there isn’t really much new but the article is interesting from a marketing and sales perspective. If you don’t have the time or patience then just watch the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgett5Od3G4

That’s it for today, now back to the CV.

Print Is Dead Long Live Augmented Reality

lester — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:50:35 +0000

It’s hard to imagine the ways in which augmented reality will change our lives in the future, but one area ripe for picking is the printed press.

Images come alive with augmented reality

Magazines for example, the images are stationary and don’t move or change. A picture says a thousand words but video or interaction says a lot more. Skip forward several years from now and imagine picking up the newspaper and looking at the TV guide, instead of seeing a still picture of the latest episode of Lost you’d be able to see a full length trailer for tonight’s episode.

An AR marker

Of course this is possible already, marketers have been embedding AR markers into printed medium for a while. The problem is those black and white squares where the 3D content will be rendered means very little to the human eye. Unless you have some way to interpret the image into it’s augmented reality form it’s a waste of advertising space. But it’s only a matter of time before black and white markers are a thing of the past and we are able to recognise natural shapes.

Metaio are a company at the cutting edge of augmented reality development, in their latest vision video we get a flavor of how the future of print may look once these barriers have been removed. If you watch the video below you’ll notice how real shapes are used as markers making the content readable whether you are viewing with an augmented reality device or the human eye. Not only that but the augmented reality content is compelling and adds value to the product, a real marketers dream. I can’t sail but I now have an urge to buy a yacht having brought into the dream.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB4F8z5miTY

Augmented Reality Brings Lego To Life

lester — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:10:42 +0000

Mataio are always up to interesting things in the augmented reality world and their latest demo is no exception. Lego has always pretty popular with children but if Mataio have their way, in the future children won’t have to imaging playing with their creation, they will be able to interact with them via augmented reality.

In their latest demo video, Mataio cleverly track the lego bricks as the boundary to the dragon/knight fight and bring the scenario to life through augmented reality glasses.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0PC-glqLp0

No doubt this solution was built with Mataio’s SDK, so if you are looking for augmented reality tools take a look here.

While this is only a demo and not an augmented reality software solution shipping today, Lego are setting the trend with bringing the bricks to life. DisneyTown Orlando installed a camera where children can hold up the Lego box and see the toy they can build. Very useful in helping them persuade parents to part with their money.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UxWkZtUKaI

I’m going to sound like my grandad but kids today don’t know they are born. I had to wait until I was about 14 before I finally got hold of a computer, even then it was a ZX81, with 1k of ram and a black and white display. I feel old knowing Lego has more processing power than the PCs I grew up with.

Augmented Reality Driving Applications

lester — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:13:34 +0000

Two driving applications for Android users this morning.

I noticed a few days back, AugmentedTimes reported an update to the Wikitude application aptly named ‘Wikitude drive AR navigation system’. The new update gives turn by turn instructions and POI navigation to Android users.

Unlike a TomTom or other GPS device which gives directions overlayed on a map, Wikitude overlays the directions on reality via the phones camera making it much easier to see the instructions. This should solve those GPS problems where you are told to turn left but not exactly sure which left you are meant to take.

I was a little bit worried about the idea of using augmented reality in a car for navigation, the whole idea of looking at a small screen for instructions was a bit scary, however as long as it is properly mounted to the dashboard and you don’t drive down the road with it in your hands then there is not really that much difference with a traditional GPS device.

The new update from Wikitude represents a big change for the application which previously offered information on points of interest, I’m wondering if the change is largely due to the success of Layar. Either way it’s a very compelling update that would actually make me buy an Android device so excellent job.

Wikitude drive AR navigation system – in action

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReH9dmqfOqA

While on the subject of traffic navigation, readers in Toronto take a look at the augmented realty Traffic View application.

Traffic View gives you access to over 250 traffic cameras directly from your Android device to help you see what the traffic is like and plan your journey. You can either view the cameras in advance to see what the traffic is doing and plan your route, or as you are driving the application will show you what the traffic is like ahead of you by showing you the view from the next traffic camera. It’s a fantastic idea, how many times have you been stuck in a traffic jam just after you passed a turn off? I am not in Canada so unable to test it, if you have tried it I am sure we would all like to know your experience.

Traffic View – in action

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqlwZK9e5UI

Both applications are available in the Android Marketplace

Augmented London – The New iPhone App

lester — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:07:14 +0000

Bank holiday here in the UK today, so the wife has decided to paint the living room. I have been up hours taking down curtains, shelves and trying to get up the enthusiasm to take down my plasma tv before she tries to paint around it. Wife on the other hand is complaining about the shade of green paint she I brought. I’m told the one she I brought is the wrong shade. Green looks green to me.

It seems that no matter what city you are in, there is an augmented reality application to help you find the nearest underground station, I guess it was only a matter of time before someone decided ‘what about buses’, and here we have the London Buses iPhone application.

I avoid travelling on buses so fortunately the application also tells you the location of the nearest underground stations as well, subject to a upgrade fee. Like Layar you can also download other POIs to find interesting things around you, but unlike Layar the application doesn’t look extensible for you to build you own plug-ins, and again unlike Layar POIs are not free, if you want to find your nearest wifi zone, restaurant, Starbucks etc then you’ll need to purchase the POI from the appstore via an in-application download.

While there are other augmented reality applications that do similar things and are free, how does the application justify charging? Well there are a few nice touches, for instance you are able to see the tube status so know how the trains are running, or see what sights are on the bus route so you can be ready with your camera. Sure there is bound to be a free iPhone application that tells you the tube status already but do you really want to have 10 apps installed when you can have 1 that does it all?

Touching on the fact that POIs are chargeable for a second, I do think this is the way things will go. Free software only you takes you so far before the investors start wondering where the return on their investment is.

There is a bit of confusion over the actual integration with the bus routes, the home page states that it has all the main bus stations in central London. Bus stations and bus stops are very different things, I live near a bus stop but the bus station is miles away. Since one of the features allows you to type in an address and find out the best way to reach your destination, either by bus or by train I am assuming that they do have bus stop level information and that the difference in terminology is a cultural thing.

Product features:

The map includes the key bus routes in central London, and provides all the best sights and attractions that the city has to offer.
The main bus stations of central London are available.
Precise location of each station on the map (with a red circle), and also on Google Map.
A bookmark manager allows you to save your stations and routes.
The trip planner tool allows you to find automatically the best route to get to your destination with London Buses. Travel time is also estimated.
Interactive map to choose your stations for the route.
The route planner included in this application does not require a network connection to operate.
The application locates the nearest Bus stations from your position in London.
You can provide an address in London, the application indicates the stations closest to that address.
London Tube Service updates (Live travel news) are available.
The application is available in English, French, Spanish, Deutsch and Japanese.

There is demo video on YouTube, but to be honest it’s not that good. Filmed on a bright sunny day making it almost impossible to see what is going on and no commentary.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_OPrXNt1og

Visit the official website here.

Hidden iPhone Augmented Reality Feature

lester — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:24:11 +0000

The world this morning appears to have gone crazy for a hidden augmented reality Easter egg feature in the Yelp iPhone application. Yelp is a Yellow Pages type service who yesterday launched a mobile application for the iPhone to enable you to search for local business on your phone. Today we hear that they have managed to sneak a hidden Easter egg past Apple that unlocks an augmented reality feature to overlay your search results on the camera screen.

The application is very Layar like in that you tell it what you are interested in, eg a bar and it overlays the search results on the camera screen and gives you a handy compass so you can find your nearest target.

To activate the hidden augmented reality feature, install the Yelp application from the app store, shake your iPhone 3 times and if successful you will get a blue box indicating that a new feature called Monocle has been unlocked. Now you should be able to overlay the search results.

Yelp application in action
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9KiSTTIenY

To activate the feature you need to shake the iPhone 3 times, I had to laugh, how hard can shaking your iPhone 3 times be?

Shake it to activate it
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VcBo5unNkc

I’m wondering if Yelp did sneak this past Apple, if they did I wondered how long it will be before the application is pulled from the store?

Heavens Above Augmented Reality

lester — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:43:47 +0000

Morning all. A couple of demos today.

Have you ever tried to install a satellite dish? It’s not difficult, to some degree it’s just fix it to the wall and point it in the same direction as all the other dishes. The tricky bit is getting a good signal, for that you ether need a sat meter or a sat bleeper (it bleeps louder when you have a good signal). As you can imagine space is littered with satellites, so why you think you are locked on to the right satellite and have a great signal you might be picking up the signal of it’s neighbour so end up wondering why you have no tv channels.

Just like the numerous augmented reality applications that enable you to find the nearest underground stations, you can now get hold of a mobile augmented reality application for the iPhone that shows you the positions of the satellites. The application is from DishPointer and is great if you want to install a satellite or just annoy people at BBQs, either way it makes a great demo

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFtcgYRcu4

Sky Maps

If knowing the location of satellites is not your thing, then how about an application that tells you the names of the constellations and the locations of the planets. If you have a Google Android smartphone then they have an application called Sky Maps that will do just that. Point it at the sky, set a reference point and then see all the heavenly bodies revealed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COlvfEXvOlw

Install

iPhone users can isntall the DishPointer application from here.
Android users can install the Sky Maps application from here.

The Future Of Home Shopping

lester — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:03:06 +0000

Ikea. Love it or hate it. Chances are at some point you will have tested the strength of your relationship there. The number of times me and the misses have been shopping at Ikea and I have walked out abandoning my shopping cart in the middle of the store. There is something about spending 2 hours foraging for individual pieces that are spread out in random locations that drives me crazy. When my Ikea rage dies down and I get home the fun begins in trying to understand the instructions to actually assemble the thing. But I digress, today’s blog is not about my shopping experiences but how Ikea are using augmented reality to help shoppers test out items in the home before going to the store.

The idea is a simple one, print a marker that corresponds to the item you are interested in buying, place it in the room where you think it will fit, then view the room using your mobile phone or webcam and see how the item blends in with its new surroundings.

My.IKEA
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Utp3-kTPKY

There is an interesting piece on mobiadnews that goes into more details about the Ikea application. If your eager to give it ago, you’ll also find links to a demo here.

I’m not to sure of this video, having no sound its hard to tell if this is something official from Ikea or someones pet project, but it is an interesting idea on how those hard to follow assembly instructions could be improved.

Ikea 2.0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4b4ArHZupM

87 Layers And Counting

lester — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:20:21 +0000

A quick congratulations to the guys at Layar today who have now taken their product global and have an amazing 87 layers available for their augmented reality browser.

If you are not familiar with Layar, Layar shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone (augmented reality to you and me). There is an older post here that will get you up to speed.

We have a lot of new reads to the blog recently (welcome), so if your new and your trying to get up to speed on the hype behind augmented reality, imagine you see an advertisement in a magazine for new car. You could of course phone the car dealer, or using augmented reality you could point your phones camera at the special marker embedded with the advertisement and get directions to your nearest dealer. Sounds great right? That’s one of the many layers available.

From Magazine to Mazda in 80 Seconds.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0okCzYp6s34

The Mazda layer is just one 87 different layers available, using Layar you can find everything from houses for sale to the location of the nearest hospitals so if you have an Android device you’re bound to find something interesting. Browse the catalog for the full list of available layers.

The Layar application is available to download from the Android market.

Finally, for more information about Layar take a look at 10 minute video presented by Raimo van der Klein, CEO of Layar, as he announces the new global release of the Layar Reality Browser and walks through the new features. You can watch the video here.

The Five Lives Of Criss Angel

lester — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:31:16 +0000

Go get yourself another cup of coffee and before you dive into a weekends worth of unread emails have a go at this flash based augmented reality game titled the Five Lives of Criss Angel. The game actually looks like a pretty difficult brain teaser, it might take you till lunch time to complete it. What better way to easy your way into the week?

Offical game teaser

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa4Msn6NTK0

Longer game review

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIGnu4BEZKw&feature=related

To play just visit here print the marker yada yada, you know the rest.

Finally if you’re of a techie nature and want to know what technologies were used to develop the game, then here is link to one of the developers home pages. patchedreality.com

Try The AR CannonBallz Game

lester — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:43:30 +0000

From the same people that brought you the AR Shopper application comes CannonBallz.
The premise of the game is simple, visit the webpage, allow the application to use your webcam then dodge the cannon balls that are fired at you from the pirate ships.

A rather nice touch to promote the game virally is you can save your high score to Facebook.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMKv3tk2Rys

Try the game here:

Sticky Light And The Sekai Camera Application

lester — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:50:56 +0000

Over the years I have been to a fair few tradeshows and exhibitions, I’ve even been known to arrange a few in my time as well. Walking around a tradeshow trying to find the interesting exhibitors to visit can be fraught with danger, I always seem to make eye contact with the weirdo that hasn’t spoken to anyone for a few hours and wants to give me their life story. Over beers I could tell you some horror stories.

On the BBC’s website today they are doing a piece on AR, one of the new appllications I spotted is the Sekai Camera application that calculates your position using GPS and images at a tradeshow and then using the screen shows you what each stand is presenting so you’ll know all the interesting places to head towards.

The developers ‘Tonchidot’ bill the Sekai Camera (World Camera) application as augmented reality meets social networking and it looks very similar to Layar, Wikitude, and ARound except it’s designed to allow business to publish their own information easily without having to build a plug-in.

Away from AR but in the “I want one of those and by the way what the hell is it” category. This demo is of something called Sticky Light which is a 3D tracking technology. I haven’t heard of it before but the maze demo looks amazing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBxPYhOnKv0

Take a look at Wired for more info.

Augmented Reality Avatar Toys

lester — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:45:03 +0000

Here’s and interesting idea from Mattel to bring action figures from the James Cameron Avatar movie to life. You buy the toys, each of comes with an iTag. The iTag can be scanned with any webcam so you can get additional information about your toy, eg character bios or watch it in action. Apparently if you scan more than one iTag they will interact with each other.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JWk_JIE3Ow

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMAaOxjTKMI

Secondly thanks to guidewire for sending me a link to his favourite AR demo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9HMn6bd-v8

The Ewok rampage game in the clip looks like it would be fun.

If you spot anything interesting be sure to let me know. Either post a comment or email me.

Metaio AR Vision Video

lester — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:24:28 +0000

The guys at Metaio in San Francisco have just launch an augmented reality vision video for some of the products they are working on.

Unfortunately the video doesn’t appear to have sound so you’ll have to guess a bit at what’s going on. I’m not sure what the dragon is doing outside the bank but everyone knows that when you kill a dragon it leaves treasure behind so perhaps it was just making a deposit.

Mataio have an SDK for building augmented reality applications on the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian so have pretty much everything covered, you’ll find links on their home page.

I found this clip on YouTube but do check out the Metaio website for more info and the full demo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5kXIizs76o

They also have a great set of demos for you to try so be sure to take a look here as well. http://www.metaio.com/demo/demo/

Augmented Reality Shopping App

lester — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:13:28 +0000

Ok this application is obviously not for us guys. We are happy visiting one shop, trying on one pair of jeans and then going home. Once we get home, If the jeans are too big or too small then we’ll either just live with it or buy another pair. The Zugara application is not going to help us, but if the application takes off just think of all the football we could watch on a Saturday without being dragged around shops.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxQZuo6pFUw

Transformers Demo

lester — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:52:23 +0000

The Transformers ‘We Are Autobots’ demo has been around for a month now. What’s good about the demo is rather than have you printing out a marker it uses head tracking technology. It even has the option to robotise your voice should you feel the need.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzB4mIPdm9k

This guy however wasn’t content with having just the Optimus head experience and went for a more full on all over look.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BiUyBuC6Bk

Give the ‘We are autobots’ demo a try here.

Augmented Reality Pool

lester — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:05:03 +0000

We have a air hockey table here and I must admit that I am a bit of a wiz. Our security guard has never played before and has been threatening to give me a game for ages. Last Friday was a crap day for me, one of those days were it felt like everyone was queuing up to have a dig. I played the security guard and he beat me. I can’t believe it my reputation is in tatters.

Not only was my mind preoccupied with other things so not fully on the game but he kept making the rules up as he went along. I mean how can someone who has never played before tell you what the rules are? He kept disallowing my goals as well complaining that he wasn’t ready. The final nail in the coffin, the scoring system broke halfway through the game and it stopped counting my goals. His goals counted fine but mine didn’t register so I had to rely on him remembering my score. (I was on 7 points for about 5 goals). In the end I lost by an alleged single point.

Next time I could do with a pair of augmented reality glasses that have this software installed, then we’ll see who has the last laugh. (gets interesting at around 2:20)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AENJxqR0g48

Another AR business card example

lester — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:05:14 +0000

I blogged a little while back about AR business cards. I thought at the time that just displaying a simple image was a bit of missed opportunity but OneZeroThrice.com have posted an excellent example of what an AR business card could be like in the future.

Imagine you are able to give someone your card and it plays a movie with you talking about your company and your role, that would be cool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmyVtXwYHE

The business card demo was developed using their new Artisan toolkit, the quickest and easiest solution for fully interactive Augmented Reality experiences in Flash. You can get more info here and also play around with some code. It’s all free so take a look.

TwittAround AR App for the iPhone 3GS

lester — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:48:04 +0000

TwittARound is an augmented reality Twitter viewer for the iPhone. With TwittARound you can use the phones camera to look around and see where and how near people are tweeting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vbh7nHalCc

The whole idea of tweeting your location is an interesting and yet scary concept. I have nothing to hide but that doesn’t mean I want to be found so I hope there is some fuzzyness in the API to scramble the location a little.

More info http://i.document.m05.de/

I paid a work related visit to a company yesterday called BestBefore Media who have a product called AudioBOO. AudioBOO is a Twitter type service except it’s based on voice. So instead of typing you record a message up to 5 minutes in length and upload it to the AudioBOO server for others to listen to. It’s for the iPhone and looks like a pretty cool service so check it out at AudioBOO.FM.

The reason I mention it, you can upload your GPS coordinates with your BOO so it would be nice to have a BooARound type application in the future.

In searching for a sample BOO I found one for a guy in Studland. (How cool would it be to be able to say you are from Studland?).

Augmented Reality Face Recognition

lester — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:12:53 +0000

TAT have a rather nice augmented ID demo that is a mash up with face recognition. I believe this is only a concept right now (ie vapourware) but cool nether-the-less.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb0pMeg1UN0

ReadWriteWeb have rather longer description of the application, take a look here.

Between you an me, me and a few buddies have been looking at building something very similar for a while now. We are currently looking at getting a prototype together. Without doubt this is the future.

Augmented Reality Business Cards

lester — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:51:52 +0000

No blog from me for a while (again). I travelled out to San Francisco last week and have been suffering from lost bags and Man Flu. (story so far) Man Flu as you know is far worse than Swine Flu. I spent the weekend sick and alone in my hotel room. But the good news is I am going home today and boy am I looking forward to that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EElqrgk4N0

Today (at least for the next few hours) I am at the MobileBeat conference in the Parc55 hotel, there are lots of developers here talking about all things mobile, if you are one of them drop by and see me on the Symbian stand.

I’m always interested in business cards; there are some really good designs out there. I guess it was only a matter for time before we had an augmented reality business card.

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Nearest Tube – AR Application

lester — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:16:49 +0000

Ah, back from vacation. 2 weeks of sitting in the sun, swimming in the sea and drinking cocktails. Only on holiday does the wife allow me to drink cocktails at 10am each morning.

Now the holiday is fast becoming a distant memory, I was looking around for AR related content this morning and came across the ‘Nearest Tube’ application for the iPhone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fZk0HaIs4s

It’s an interesting idea that, well tells you where the nearest tube station is and gives you the distance and what line they are on.

IBM Seer, Augmented Reality At Wimbledon

lester — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:43:40 +0000

Twitter seems to have gone ARRR Zombie crazy today. Have you noticed how something gets pickup on Twitter and the world goes crazy for a few days, then a few weeks later someone else picks up on the same thing and we have the same crazyness? Next week we’ll be knee deep in Sasquatch demos. Not me though, this will be my last post for few weeks as I’m off on holiday.

In the meantime, as Wimbledon is almost upon us, IBM have launched an application call Seer for the Android. If you are attending Wimbledon then Seer will help you stay in touch with your surroundings at the show.

Just install the app, point the phones camera at various objects at the event and you’ll get back some cool information. For example if you are hungry point it at the bar and it will tell you what food they have and how long the queue for food is, or If you’re are looking for the toilet it will help you find the closest.

You can also get the scores, find out what the taxi queue is like and much more all without having to get out your seat.

Now that’s pretty cool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VZoDmqcZ34

See you in a few weeks.