Martin, a robotics researcher friend of mine, showed me this video at the weekend:
Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
It certainly got us talking about where augmented reality may be headed, particularly for advertising. While the video is perhaps a little over exaggerated, the technology is rapidly getting there. Take, for example, the new augmented-reality mapping from Microsoft:
I’m not much of a “gamer”, although I have to admit I am able to reference my life by what computer game I was playing since I was about 10 years old (for the record – Jet Set Willy, on the trusty ZX Spectrum) – maybe before then, if you include the clunky Radio Shack games I played on my Dad’s computers.
Jet Set Willy (1984: ZX Spectrum), Sonic the Hedgehog (1991: Sega Megadrive), Monkey Island (1990: PC), Doom (1993: PC), Worms (1995: PC), Abe’s Oddysee (1997: PS1), Grand Theft Auto (1997: PC), Rainbow Six (1998: PC) and many more; they all chart a certain personal view of the evolution of console and computer gaming. And it’s incredible to think how things have changed.
I can mark eras of my life in the same way you might signpost your autobiographical memory with where you were living. Sad but true. It tends to be just the one game as I don’t devote masses of time to gaming – when I find a game that I like, I stick with it.
Recently, I persuaded my wife that a PS3 would be a great addition to our family because “a PS3 is so much more than just a games console – you can use it to view all those digital photos and videos of our son”. And I’m glad I did as I think I’ve found the game to mark the next era – LittleBigPlanet. This game is incredible. It has brought the traditional platform game into the future with a fun, creative and collaborative online world that is constantly changing and ever evolving. Irrespective of what it represents in terms of amazing media and technological innovation, it also represents a return to pure and simple platform based game-play, with a few twists. And, possibly most importantly, it is impossible not to feel happy playing this game. It looks like we’re going to have some fun with this one…
It looks like the semantic web is about to gain traction with the Yahoo! Search open platform that was announced last month. In summary, Yahoo! is hoping to spread the use of semantic web standards by supporting microformats and RDF – promising enhanced search results for content adhering to such standards.
And with this promise of an enhanced search presence will come the marketing need for publishers to create content that capitalises on this. Just as SEO emerged as an industry all of its own, I expect Semantic Web Optimisation to emerge as an industry all of its own in the very near future.
[Before submitting this post, I quickly searched on the topic (yes – I appreciate the irony of having used Google!) and came across this article – essentially saying the same thing as me above. But please can we not fall into the trap of applying version numbers after “Web” for every evolution in web technology that occurs!]
I’ve just taken a quick look at friendfeed.com – it’s basically a lifestream service, where people can aggregate and publish their web-lives. It’s done rather nicely – enabling you to quickly create your own lifestream from various feeds (here’s mine) and not too different in look to the lifestream I quickly hacked together with pipes – but done way better and on a grand scale! You can also track friends’ feeds easily too, making it a much more two-way tool than others out there – say Tumblr, for example, which publishes your combined feeds. There’s definitely a need for this – with the whole micro-blogging/twitter/lifestream thing, it is useful to show this data in one place and provides an excellent way for potential stalkers to gather all their up-to-the-minute information on a particular target in one easily digestible feed 😉
The “social graph” is a global mapping of everybody and how they’re related. I had a play with a visualisation tool for Facebook relationships last night and it was great. Slightly scary but fun nonetheless. However, our weblives are not just about Facebook (although Facebook does provide a platform to bring them all together). Google’s OpenSocial is promising to provide another way to pull them together but, as Brad Fitzpatrick points out, a centralized “owner” of the social graph is a dangerous thing. Social networks need to be made open and portable. And they can be.
Tim Berners-Lee stated in a post yesterday that
…we have the technology — it is Semantic Web technology…
In other words, the connections and relationships made possible by the semantic web (or social graph – use interchangeably from hereon). He goes on:
Now, people are making another mental move. There is realization now, “It’s not the documents, it is the things they are about which are important”. Obvious, really.
and on opening up this data:
It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.
So, yes – I am excited but how are we going to do this? Think data feeds, microformats and openID – things that would tend to be met with blank stares if I were to suggest them to clients. But show a client how you could remove barriers (such as log-in/ sign-up) to that all important “conversion” (with openID or microformats – here’s an excellent microformat implementation doing just that) and show how this person would be able to instantly tell all their friends about it (via their social graph) and then they’ll be interested.
With all the feeds available from the various apps that make up my weblife these days, there’s a wealth of data that can be brought together into a single data stream – or “lifestream“, if you will. Using Yahoo! Pipes to mash up these feeds, I’ve hacked together something that displays all this fantastic data on one page – with the idea of this eventually being displayed on a timeline. I don’t expect the hordes will be rushing to view my aggregated weblife in a single life stream but there are some rather nice applications for this in a wider micro-blogging context.
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Some of you will have already heard about Joost (formerly known as The Venice Project) – an IPTV thingy from the folks who brought us Kazaa and Skype. There has been much speculation about its implications for the media, advertising and marketing industries – bringing together the wonders of the internet and TV in one glorious multimedia dream (well – that’s what the hype will have us believe anyway). Find out more over at Wired and MIT.
Anyway – I’ve have been having a bit of a play and it looks rather nice indeed. Not that I’ll be watching TV all day – it’s all purely in the name of research, of course!
I’ve also got a bunch of beta invites for anyone who wants to check it out for themselves – just let me know your email that you want to use for your Joost account…
MS Photosynth is an app or a Firefox plugin (and yes – this is a Microsoft product!) that connects to geo-coded photo sites like Flickr and enables you to browse through similar pictures in 3D. The tech preview is visually very impressive but I’ve not yet seen a real-life demo so the verdict is still open. The video of the demo does look good though.
In my mind, this represents an interesting step forward in the cross-overs between web 2.0 apps and 3d browsing. It also raises interesting questions about where Microsoft might be headed in the 3d browsing space (aka “3pointD”). Particularly considering the rumours around Google’s developments in this field – where Google Earth and SketchUp could be brought together to create a “Google Planet” – a virtual-real-world Second Life, if you will. As has been suggested – maybe, in the not-to-distant future, “every Google Account [will] include a plot of land on Google Planet?”
I stumbled across this rather slick video this morning, introducing how internet technology is evolving. I quite like it…
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Amongst all this Second Life hype, I’d like to add a little prediction – on the back of trends in buzzwords in the media – that 2007 will see the rise of “web3.d” applications. Where the 3d web (i.e. apps like second life) and web2.0 (i.e. social apps like myspace and del.icio.us) collide in a mash-uptastic frenzy. Oh yes.
If anyone has any “web3.d” ideas, you can catch me down the Red Lion this afternoon to discuss further. That’s the Red Lion in Second Life, of course.
I feel the need to air some thoughts after recent goings on in the “convergence” realm. It’s a term that has been bashed about for years now – with every new development being heralded as the harbinger of a new dawn of convergence in digital media and the like. And this last year has been no different. We have the other weekend’s Homechoice (aka Video Networks) and Tiscali merger. There’s that BSkyB and Easynet deal last October. There’s a peer to peer IPTV service about to surface. And finally, there’s something a sales guy said to me this afternoon. In fact, something that got me thinking about all this in the first place. Something about “convergence”, “entertainment hubs” and how we’ll all “obviously be browsing the internet on our TVs in the next couple of years”. Well, sorry, but I beg to differ. Will digital media delivery really converge on a single device as many people seem to think? Surely, as more electronic media devices become IP enabled, media delivery will start to diverge not converge? Okay – so I’m getting bogged down with semantics – I guess that the term “convergence” really refers to overlapping realms of different media with new technologies. But I’m not sure that this single device view is the right direction for IPTV. Particularly whe you consider the most successful interactive TV programmes I have worked on have been those that encourage interaction using a completely different device and media – such as mobile and SMS – rather than relying on a remote control or a keyboard.
The advent of broadband has made delivery of video and other digital media possible via the internet but viewing via your desktop or laptop computer screen is not always practical. Equally, browsing and searching the web from your sofa via the TV is not exactly an easy or sociable thing to do. Surely the best solution is one where you would search on your PC then sit back and view on your TV? I know this is exactly what many people are already doing but it often means situating the PC near the TV so that you can run a cable from the PC’s AV output into the TV. What I want to do, and I’m sure a solution must exist (please tell me if it does – otherwise I hereby patent this idea!), is utilise my Wi-Fi network to stream content to the TV. Maybe via a SCART device that doubles as a Wi-Fi antennae, receiving data streams via the local network? Surely such a simple single device must exist? It’s all I need – not some “media hub” or “home entertainment centre”. It seems to completely bridge that gap between the different tasks of searching/ interacting (i.e. “lean forward” tasks) and watching (i.e. “sit back” tasks). Please – somebody help!
Channel 4 have ditched their clunky red button interactive TV service that supports some broadcasts like Big Brother. Some might be shocked by this but, if the truth be told, it makes sense. It’s a bold move that apparently flies in the face of interactive TV “progress” but look at the underlying factors and you’ll see it’s actually a very wise decision. The red button service that Channel 4 offered was only ever delivered over the sky platform, where the initial data associated with the interactive TV service had to be transmitted as part of the broadcast stream via satellite. Over satellite, this broadcast stream bandwidth is very limited and, as you’ve probably seen, results in a very slow interactive experience. Once the base interactive TV application had been loaded, additional data could be retrieved via a sluggish 28k modem. All in all a rather painful user experience. And, believe me, unless you are following a “template” like the i-Ad format (the red button feature for interactive TV adverts, which C4 are keeping) developing for the platform was an even more tedious process! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the driving force behind Channel 4’s decision were their programme producers. When I left Endemol they were struggling to develop interactive TV applications – it simply did not fit into the way TV is produced. These applications require defining and rigorous testing, whereas TV production is a much more fluid process – with concepts potentially changing completely at the 11th hour. Besides, SMS voting is much easier to shoe-horn into a TV concept as a viable revenue stream.
So, step aside clunky satellite interactive TV and make room for TV delivered via a fast broadband connection. The real interactive TV experience is when you don’t even notice you are “interacting” – where viewing is no longer passive but your involvement (like choosing what to watch, whether live or achived) is very much part of the TV experience. Whether you call it internet TV, broadband TV, IPTV or Video On Demand, the underlying concepts are essentially the same. And Homechoice is already there.
As mentioned before I’m keen to see how the areas of TV content, broadband and search technologies eventually come together. I’m sure it won’t be a clean race.
Sky have apparently seen the light and are considering making a bid for Video Networks – the owners of Homechoice. They say they are not for sale and, of course, it is all rumours but I’d say it was inevitable that a big player such as Sky makes a move on these guys at some point. And what with Sky going on a bit of a spending spree right now, you know it makes sense. Sky certainly appear to be angling towards IPTV – having bought broadband provider EasyNet and a few specialist content providers in recent weeks. I’ve been ranting about Homechoice for a while now and think their technology is second to none. To me it’s true interactive TV – you don’t even notice it happening – the interactivity just happens as part of the viewing experience. Not like Sky’s slow and rather hotch-potch combo of a piddly modem and satellite data feed. Does this mean the technology might finally reach further than the 15,000 Londoners currently subscribing to Homechoice? At the moment the cost of installing digital exchanges required to provide the kind of IPTV you see with Homechoice is preventing its growth but perhaps Sky’s credibility and massive subscriber base will help prolificate the reach of this technology beyond the M25. And it might just keep BT’s move into IPTV at bay too. However, one of the reasons I like Homechoice (technology aside) is the simple fact it’s not Sky. I guess Homechoice is hardly a little guy either – with some heavyweight shareholders such as Microsoft’s Chris Larson, Time Warner, Sony and Disney – but it did feel as if Homechoice was one of the last great hopes in the fight against the Murdoch media empire.