Sunday, July 12, 2009

Couple of Augmented Reality Links...

Article today in NYTimes discussing some of the latest Augmented Reality apps showing up on mobile phones.

They included a link to discussion of an app made by IBM for Wimbledon called IBM Seer Android. Some videos of the app in action are available.

I'd expect that a set of services exist behind the scenes that make this application (and like others that will work like it) possible. Guess I have some work to do in finding out a little more about how they built this application.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Racing is not fun...if you're dead

Today was the my first trail race - participating in the Powderface42 (well, I just did the 1/2 marathon, so for me it was the Powderface21).

As we looked to get the pre-race instructions, we were informed that there would be a 15 minute delay. Turned out that a bear had been sighted on the trail - and precautions need to be taken before releasing the runners our on the race course. After the organizers and volunteers had put measures in place (bear spray and noise makers in the vicinity of the sighting) - we were all asked to run in groups. Although it was a race - we were given the guidance - "Racing is not fun...if you're dead". With those words of wisdom, we finished the prep and started the race.

The race is very hilly, many climbs along the way - total amount of climbing (according to my gps) was in the neighborhood of 4400ft (here's an elevation profile).

Results aren't published online yet, but the posting at the event had my coming in at 2:47 which put me in 37th place. For a first 1/2 marathon on a tough course, I'm happy with the result.

The race was a great deal of fun (what could be better than hills, mountains, mud, trees, and rivers?), was very well organized and the volunteers were great.

Looking forward to next year's event already!

P.S. I'll provide some links to some photos as they get posted.

Lee.


Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Augmented Reality

Finding the topic of Augmented Reality to be quite fascinating - some of the demos that I've seen on the IPhone have looked phenomenal.

I've been trying to ramp up a bit and pick up some knowledge in the area - some resources that I've come across so far include:

Augmentality - Blog covering augmented reality
Twitaround - demo showing an app on iphone - locating and viewing other twitter users
Nearest Tube - another demo - related to the tube in London

Seen that there's a few books up on Amazon on the topic - considering picking up a couple to get a few more details. Would be interested in any opinions from someone that's already well read in this area.

I can't help but think that a Smarter Planet would include augmented reality - imagining it combined with RFID, intelligent datasources, flexible & service based solutions.

Lee.

Migrating

Been migrating to a new MBP and its taking a surprising amount of time to move data off the old laptop and to find the apps that I want to install and use. It's been a while since I've been on the Mac platform and it's good to be back.

Some of the apps that I've been working with so far (and having some fun with) include:
- Tweetdeck
- Dropbox (pleased that I can synch across Mac and Win boxes, even virtual images)
- VirtualBox
- Skitch
- Keychain

and just getting started with Blogo and Curio. The other surprise so far is how quickly the harddrive is filling up. Apparently been getting a little sloppy with downloading various disk images and need to do some cleanup.

Lee.