We've been following the development of Layar, the cross-platform smartphone augmented reality app-- because it just might be a model for the future of AR. Its utility has been zooming, and it just hit its 200th AR geotagged data layer.
The 200th layer is a system that helps users find the real-time availability of public rental bicycles that are part of the Le Vélo STAR system in Rennes, France. The add-in to Layar, developed by In Cité Solution, gives you the location of the nearest bike parking spot, and handily tells you how many bikes are available at the moment.
Neat and eco-friendly, it's a near-perfect demonstration of the power of AR apps to improve day-to-day life. In Cité has plans to develop their Layar apps further by adding social networking powers for Rennes. They may also expand the service for bike, bus, and metro systems in other cities, and will release part of their solution as open-source so other developers can build similar apps for their own locations.
Western society's habits, according to a new survey, are resulting in overly individualistic behavior that makes us depressed. But before that news makes you sad, a different piece of research says the social networking boom may be able to help.
The Northwestern University study examined depression and anxiety in different nations around the world, comparing in particular individualistic nations like those in the West, and collectivist nations like China. Interestingly the U.K. came top in individualism (that stiff upper lip perhaps?), followed by the U.S., Australia, and Western Europe. And though you may think that's a good thing, it comes at a price: Around one in ten Brits are sufferers of depression and anxiety, compared to one in twelve in Europe and a mere one in 25 in China. Though there's likely to be a genetic component in action, it seems likely that Western individualism is causing stress and sadness.
So what's to blame? Is it our social habits? The change in society that means kids no longer play together in the park? Or is it the rise in mobile phones, Internet use and social networking--in some minds evil technology that are mainly a solo habit and which must be inherently bad for you?
Well, according to the American Life project and Pew Internet, it's not the latter. Mobile phone users have a 12% larger circle of close friends than people who don't use mobiles (are there any of them left, anyway?). People who engage in life-sharing activities via systems like Facebook or Twitter, posting status updates or pics of their activities have 9% bigger friendship groups than those who avoid social nets. And though there's a knock-on negative effect of less interactivity with your physical neighbors, there's an unexpected diversity bonus: Social networkers are much more likely to be friends with people from different backgrounds. With the social networking phenomenon currently exploding in popularity, it might be a good sign for our society.
As is usual when a transformational technology arrives and starts impacting on society, there's inevitable hand-wringing and calls for a return to the old status quo from some quarters (remember how TV was supposed to kill real person-to-person communication?). But as these studies show, the effects of our technology are both positive and negative, and most likely highly unpredictable on a individual basis (individuals as in people, and as in different technologies.) And the upshot of that conclusion is simple: Don't Panic. Enjoy the opportunities our technological world has to offer: There's bound to be another surprising development just over the horizon.
Though Time Warner's CEO Jeff Bewkes has his own agenda to push regarding the future of TV, speaking to the Daily Beast recently he mentioned the future of free-to-air TV. He thinks it hasn't got one, and he may have a point.
Among various other pronouncements on Time Warner's business, Bewkes was asked about how free TV's future might go, and he didn't mince his words: "their business model is becoming increasingly not viable" before long, if they don't enforce some kind of carriage fee they "may not survive."
Is Bewkes merely trotting out the same old line about the future of the TV (and newspapers and books and...) being on the Internet and as paid-for content? Kinda. But he backs up his thinking with some sensible points: Fewer people are watching the free broadcast networks, they're doing so for fewer hours each day, and ratings are sliding ever downwards. In terms of money the advertising revenues are down (probably a knock-on from the economic low as well as real-term decline) and that leads to reduced earnings, and thus lower spend on shows. And that is the point at which you begin to get a death-spiral: Less cash spent on programming can easily translate into less attractive shows, which then pushes viewing figures further downwards. Factor in news like Oprah Winfrey's thoughts on moving her top-rated show from broadcast TV to a future cable channel she owns with Discovery Communications, and the future does look slightly bleak for broadcast television.
Did the Internet do all this? Not really--it's a combination of things, including streaming shows over Net-TV systems like Hulu, but also the recession, aggressive tactics from cable TV companies and booming technology. Which Bewkes thinks is actually a good thing for the media industry as a whole. He sees consumers becoming used to accessing their content over many different platforms: Set-top boxes, netbooks, TV-connected PCs, tablets, and smartphones. He also suggests that consumers will be getting a double-whammy from media in the future: You'll have to pay for it, and you'll also get advertising forced on you.
That's a way of thinking that's extremely U.S.-centric, since in the U.K. the venerable old BBC manages a free-to-air broadcast of two separate domestic channels (and a huge rag-bag of extra content channels over free-to-view digital TV and paid cable and satellite systems) thanks to income from the tax-like TV licensing system. No one's suggesting that Time Warner, or any other U.S. operator, would ever switch to this sort of system but the BBC does deliver its programming (highly regarded around the globe) without adverts as a reward for paying the license access fee. Free to air TV is also likely to continue being successful across Europe, where there are fewer monopolistic cable and satellite companies--like Bewkes' one--placing a stranglehold on free broadcast networks.
If you could earn virtual coin in exchange for doing simple real world tasks, would you do it? Now there's a way to find out: Gambit, a company that specializes in monetizing social gaming, has teamed with Crowdflower, which manages crowd-sourced tasks for clients to create a weirdly novel hybrid system. Players who complete tasks for Crowdflower companies can earn social gaming credits in exchange for their work.
The system, dubbed Gambit Tasks, is a simple mechanical turk-like problem-solver. As Gambit puts it, imagine a Crowdflower client company has thousands of images it needs checking for copyright. They'd submit the task to Crowdflower, who'd forward it to Gambit and it would appear as an offer to Gambit players.
Basically, instead of relying on advertising or strangely spam-like commercial product tie-ins as some social gaming sites are doing (like the controversial Zynga games on Facebook) Gambit has realized there's money to be made by renting-out its gamers' time. From a gamer point of view, the system would seem to have significant benefits: Should you feel like upgrading an element of the game you're playing, you don't have to fork over any cash, subject yourself to extra advertising or sign up to some Internet-advertised service you don't really want--you merely have to be one member of the crowd solving a problem for Crowdflower. In the case of the example, you'd have to check a certain number of images for copyright to earn game credits in Gambit.
The idea is seemingly very simple, but will it work? One advantage in its favor is that younger games players (who surely make up a significant percentage of Gambit's customers) can take part, and gain enhanced game credits even without access to a credit card, or parental permission to sign up to unwanted Net deals. It's crowdsourcing put to a sensible use, versus the way designers use it sometimes, and it's much less scammy than some of the other social game credit systems out there.
The Associated Press has just rolled out a service to make it simpler for news publishing companies to make apps for practically every smartphone out here. And guess what? In typical "we own the news" AP style, the finished apps can grab feeds from the AP.
The system is coming in collaboration with Verve Wireless, which actually developed the AP's mobile service for it--clearly the two think their technology is successful and can easily be expanded to suit other news organizations. And it taps into the whole apps-are-everything drive on the Net at the moment. The press release notes that the solution will offer other publishers "best of breed" tech to "accelerate their mobile strategies." The reasoning seems pretty sound--Verve notes that "mobile apps drive 4x-10x greater usage because they are fast and easier to use," presumably over accessing the data via a browser on a smartphone--which is perhaps a little clunkier than reading text via a simplified app. Verve also notes that dedicated apps like this are a powerful brand message, because the "apps are stored on cell phone screens," which is a odd way of saying it, buy they do have a point: Clicking on, say a Reuters app connects you mentally with who's providing you with the data more than clicking on a simple browser.
With the AP's massive weight behind it, the new white label app is likely to gain some traction from publishers who can't afford to develop their own full-blown smartphone apps--especially since its essentially free: Verve/AP will take a cut of advertising revenues, which have to be maintained at a high enough level in order to earn continued Verve support. The system will also give publishers one heck of a reach--Verve supports app development for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, WebOS and Windows Mobile.
The fascinating thing about this is that the system would seem to be a very forward-thinking solution, integrating AP right into the workings of the Internet news sphere. But the AP has, to some thinkers, demonstrated an incredibly closed-minded stance as regards the internet, and the way blogs and online news sites link to each other--particularly defending AP-generated content with attack-dog like fierceness. Maybe the Verve collaboration is an indication that the AP's finally getting Net news? Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking, and the AP's merely trying to jam its tentacles into as many corners of the net as possible--quite likely given that the finished apps can also blend in AP news to their feeds.
"Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account?" Google asks, and privacy advocates and techy-minded people will quickly answer "YES!" Now Google's Dashboard lets you see, but not delete, what's stored about you in Google's vault of mysteries.
The news will please those who are concerned that Google's business involves it storing large (and possibly vast, deep, and highly personal) datafiles on how you interact with its search engine, mail and other services. That's probably why Google chose to reveal Dashboard at an international data-protection conference this week in Spain. Google notes that "with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data," which sounds sweet and fluffy, but you can assume that there's a degree of lawsuit-avoidance mixed in with this plan.
Dashboard summarizes the data on each Google product you use, all in one place for convenience, and also links directly to privacy settings so you can influence--though only for those systems that require you to use a Google login. This is stuff like the number of Gmail conversations you've had, or the gadgets you've installed in iGoogle, documents in Docs, your YouTube profile and favorites and so on.
Of course, Google will still collect reams of data on your habits no matter what your privacy settings are (targeted advertising is, after all, how Google makes its millions), and will continue to collect data on Google searches you do despite this system not requiring a login. So Dashboard is a step forward, perhaps borrowing some of the concept of glasnost that the Obama administration has been beginning to spread around, but it's merely a peephole into the digital version of yourself that Google's building up--it doesn't offer you much in the way of genuine control.
Last week we introduced you to AIDA (the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent)--get used to her if you can. MIT and Audi are hoping that this robot, or one that looks even more like Pixar's EVE, may be gracing your car's dashboard to help you drive in the near future.
The tiny robot's something like an advanced GPS system-cum-integrated car computer, designed to keep your mind mainly on the road ahead rather than on distractions. AIDA will apparently direct you to your destination, and quickly learn your favorite routes and locations. It'll then suggest detours, based on real-world traffic conditions or optimal routes to suggested alternative destinations--such as a shopping center if you've shopped at that particular time before. She'll also remind you to buckle up, sense if you're stressed (from a galvanic skin response measurement)
At least the designers chose to give the thing a face that's not too far off the attractive Apple-esque cuteness of Eve from Wall-E, rather than the blank countenance of a Cyberman, the scary extermination-threatening prong of a Dalek or (perhaps disappointingly) the cutesy plastic body of a Fembot.
The question does remain though, of the device's personality. Clearly it's a system with a degree of AI, and how it expresses itself is going to be very important in terms of how effective a driving aid it is. At all costs it should avoid the Genuine People Personality of Marvin the Paranoid Android ("Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they've welded me to a dashboard"), the whiny nasal sarcasm of K.I.T.T. ("Are you sure you want to turn down that road?"), or the dumb but chummy nature of Buck Roger's Tweaky. Getting the personality of AIDA right is going to be vital--a balance of friendly and helpful, without nagging sounds about right. Otherwise, robot or not, AIDA's going to be just as irritating as the overly-critical flash and blood right-seat driver that may be familiar to you.
Touchscreen smartphones are the thing in the U.S. this year, with sales growing so rapidly it would give the Ares I-X a run for its money. And next year the pace of the change is going to be even faster. Welcome to the touchscreen era.
Comscore's data looks at the three months ending August of this year versus the same period last year, and the numbers pretty much speak for themselves: Among U.S. smartphone subscribers aged 13 and over, some 33.8 million owned regular push-button smartphones, against 23.8 million owning touchscreen ones. While that data looks stacked in favor of regular push-button phones, check out the growth rate. Smartphone ownership grew a whopping 63% over last year, proving this is the smartphone age all right--dumbphone sales simply can't compete with that growth. And touchscreen smartphone sales exploded 159% at the same time, which is incredible.
The launchpad for this explosive growth is the iPhone, of course, with 33% of the market share. LG's Dare and Voyager, somewhat surprisingly came in second and third with 8.7% and 7.8% of the market, BlackBerry's Storm was next at 7% and Android only gets a 7th place rank with just 3.6% share for the T-Mobile G1. This, with the exception of LG's devices, tallies roughly with experience--you often see someone with an iPhone in public, and the Storm's a pretty regular sight too. It also makes sense when you see how much more capable these units are as convergent devices than regular smartphones (a fact reflected in dropping single-use iPod sales), with the touchscreen facilitating game-playing, movie-watching, and so on--much more capably than non-touch smartphones. And with prices dropping, they're penetrating even more of the market.
The trend is most definitely going to continue in this direction. There's a hoard of Android phones about to hit, and Qualcomm (which makes much of the high-tech jiggery pokery that goes into advanced mobile phones) is predicting that next year there will be a step-change in pricing. The average sale price for the chipsets inside smartphones drops roughly 3% per year, as economies of scale and increasing expertise kick in. But next year the company sees a "substantially higher" drop likely. It's also predicting that the Snapdragon processor, in smartphones like Sony Ericsson's X10, will really take off--thanks to its significantly higher power and better graphics performance.
With news like this, all those nay-sayers who think the iPhone and its ilk aren't worth it will have to change their tune. Mobile phones have come a long way since their birth, and we've already moved from the analog into the digital era. What on Earth is the next era going to be? 3-D displays?
Google's tentaclesextend everywhere online, including e-commerce--thanks to Google Checkout, for one. But now it's got a new system, Commerce Search, which companies can use to inject smart search skills into their online stores. Just in time for the holiday season.
In its introduction to the new system, Google explains exactly why it's getting into this business: E-shopping continues to boom, but many sites haven't optimized their e-shopping experience yet. And with an 8-second limit on the average visitor deciding to stay or shop elsewhere, there's lots of potential customers being missed.
Which is where, of course, Google enters the fray. Its main goal is to add some of Google's goodness to commercial sites, enabling faster product location, smart searching, product filtering, and so on. Its technology, borrowed and enhanced from the search site and other Google systems, would seem ideal for small- to medium-sized e-businesses who don't want the difficulty and expense of designing their own e-shops to be that sophisticated. Check out the Google promo clip below.
It all seems pretty neat. The promotional system provides a clever options for up-selling particular items in your stock, and the cleverness of Google's search is undoubtedly a boost over some of the clunky and inefficient UIs we've all encountered in e-shops. The cloud hosting is brilliant for smaller businesses too--if one product hits sudden popularity, it's simply going to tax Google's servers more, rather than crashing your own. Google's analytics will also let you do much smarter business management, and if you're really on the ball, it could result in more optimized sales of products.
There's just one down side: Google design. Put one way: It's spartan. Put another: It's boring, tedious, dry, dull, and unexciting--for a search engine, that's fine, but for a store trying to lure you into buying, it's a potential weakness. There's not much indication here that by adopting Google's commerce engine you can radically adjust the system to layer your own super-unique look and feel on top of your own e-store, which means every shop that uses the system is going to be pretty similar. In other words, the benefits of using Google for your e-shop come at the cost of looking a little like every other e-retailer using it.
The arms race to lure music-loving clients is heating up at the moment: First Google gets a music service, and now MSN does too. MSN's download service launches tomorrow, and Microsoft's schmoozed all four big record labels to help it get off the ground.
Deals with EMI, Warner Music, Universal and Sony BMG mean that MSN Music will go live with over a million tracks--a tenth of what iTunes offers, but still nothing to be sniffed at. The number is likely to go up over the months as smaller and independent labels are signed up. It'll sit in the Music segment of MSN's new homepage, and runs on exactly the same tech as Microsoft uses to power Zune's store (though the two systems are definitely separate). The tracks are 192kbps encoded in MP3 or WMA format, and are DRM-free.
Microsoft's being a little tricky with the pricing--at its U.K. launch you can only buy credits in groups of ten for £7.99, with a credit being good for one track--but it seems like pretty much any other music download service that's already out there, like iTunes or Amazon's. There is one clever twist though--you can actually stream most of the track catalog to your PC for free, which Microsoft is making work by having embedded graphic ads in the custom player app you have to use to access the streams.
That's actually quite clever, since it lets Microsoft cover two different markets at once--downloadable tracks like in iTunes, and streaming music like Spotify or Pandora. But how is MSN trying to differentiate its offerings from all the other ways you can access digital music online? The answer is it probably isn't going to. Microsoft can't really hope to make serious inroads into a business that's absolutely dominated by Apple--instead it's probably trying to make a reasonable profit from habitual MSN users who will occasionally buy or stream some music while they're at the site.
MSN's executive producer Peter Bale pretty much confirms this with his description of the new service: "We think reading about music and listening to music are two halves of the same thing and we wanted to offer MSN users access to a competitive download to own service." The main thrust being why leave MSN and login to iTunes to buy a track when you can do it all in one place?
Will this work? It's impossible to tell--the marketplace is becoming increasingly crowded, and MSN Music store isn't doing anything particularly revolutionary. Its name is a draw, of course, and it'll likely see a fair amount of traffic just because of this. But it'll have to innovate some time soon if its to keep relevant, as there're only going to be more competition joining the battle for music fans as time goes by. And there's one last thing--quite where the rumored MSN/MySpace partnership fits into this is anyone's guess.
The system, dubbed 
The news will please those who are concerned that Google's 
The question does remain though, of the device's personality. Clearly it's a system with a degree of AI, and how it expresses itself is going to be very important in terms of how effective a driving aid it is. At all costs it should avoid the Genuine People Personality of Marvin the Paranoid Android ("Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they've welded me to a dashboard"), the whiny nasal sarcasm of K.I.T.T. ("Are you sure you want to turn down that road?"), or the dumb but chummy nature of Buck Roger's Tweaky. Getting the personality of AIDA right is going to be vital--a balance of friendly and helpful, without nagging sounds about right. Otherwise, robot or not, AIDA's going to be just as irritating as the overly-critical flash and blood right-seat driver that may be familiar to you.
