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.

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.

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.

Clouds, SOA and Aging

Well, I haven’t quite reached the stage of yelling at kids to get off my lawn – but I might be getting close.

I attended a session at Impact titled: “Delivering Strong Services: SOA to the Cloud” – delivered by Daryl Plummer from Gartner. Was the first time that I’ve had the chance to see Daryl in person and enjoyed his presenting and the ideas he discussed.

If you attended Impact, you can log in and download the slides – look for session 3097 (or search by the title).

I don’t plan on regurgitating the entire presentation, but did want to discuss a couple of ideas that were a part of the session.

The first is the idea of scalability versus elasticity. I’ve seen this discussed in a number of places and presentations related to Cloud solutions. When I see the reference to elasticity I think in terms of being to scale up or down as needed. I.e. the solution is able to stretch to meet the needs related to the current (and changing)workload. So I find it odd to see discussions of cloud where it is mentioned that cloud provides scalability and elasticity – seems redundant to me. Have I misinterpreted the meaning of elasticity?

More specific to the session at Impact, there was a discussion on the idea of Cloud Service Brokerages that provide service intermediation or service aggregation (for example). As I listened to the presentation my thoughts wandered to the idea of an ESB and viewing these brokerages as essentially providing ESB like services to a number of customers. The would be an EESB – an extra-ESB – and following on that line of thinking starting to see myself thinking in terms of inter, intra and extra cloud based solutions and drawing parallels to how we saw focus on internet use and capabilities evolve over the years.

And hence the aging comment – seems that after you’ve spent enough years in IT you start to relate everything back to what you’ve seen previously. So here I am, in my advanced years thinking – this cloud stuff is just repeating the cycle of thinking that we experienced in inter/intra/extra-net roll-outs. Back in my day…

Lee.

Future of Writing in a Digital World?

Came across “Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World” in the June issue of Wired and wanted to capture a few thoughts about the article.

As mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been working on a book on Patterns-Based Engineering for some time now. In discussions with the publisher regarding timelines, production efforts, etc – I’m hoping that the finished product sees the light of day before the end of the year. So I’m living in the current of producing a book – and wondering - how will this future view of reading change how the book gets released and then read?

Looking at the stories listed in the article, as well as other successes out there such as Cory Doctorow or even the open source movement, its fascinating/appealing/scary to think of putting a book out there digitally with no restrictions. So much effort and time goes into the writing – it’s a challenge to think of just opening it up and letting it go.

I’ve not looked at the system yet, but CommentPress sounds quite interesting as it allows a book to become much more interactive – allowing the readers to start conversations on the content of the book – with very fine grained starting points – right down to the paragraph level. (As an aside, it would be interesting to look at comparing this to the capabilities of Google Wave)

We’ll be having some discussions with our publisher about how digital copies will be made available and their plans for interactivity. At a minimum, we’re looking at setting up a site along with an associated wiki for the EPF practice that we are producing in association with the book. In the meantime, we’ve been talking to many people about the book and looking to incorporate as much feedback as possible.

I’d be interested in any comments/suggestions anyone has on how they’ve changed their authoring efforts based on the “future” of reading and some of the new offerings out there such as CommentPress.

Lee.

RSC 2009: PBE: Principles, Practice and Patterns

Here’s the ppt that Celso and I delivered at the 2009 Rational Software Conference. The content is derived from the book we are producing which will be coming out later this year. Its a brief view into the content allowing us to share the work and gather some feedback.

NSDP02d

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Books Non-fiction PBE software development