2013년 10월 31일 목요일
Japan tourist attraction uses digital penguins to increase visits
Sunshine Aquarium, a 35-year old Japan tourist attraction, wanted people to easily locate it amongst other point of interests and activities in Tokyo.
The aquarium is located in an extremely dense part of the city and is nearly a kilometer from the nearest station.
So, what did officials do to put it on the map? The aquarium went down the augmented reality route.
Firstly, it worked with Hakuhodo, one of Japan’s largest advertising agencies, to identify a solution to the problem of being in competition with countless other tourist spots.
Hakuhodo came up with a concept of Penguins guiding people to the aquarium. The company used ten cameras to capture the movement of Penguins so that it can be mimicked exactly in a mobile app.
Once a user opens the “Penguin Navi” mobile app, they will see Penguins on the road (augmented reality) that walk and move exactly like real Penguins. These Penguins guide people to Sunshine Aquarium.
Hakuhodo also made available the QR code of the app in nearest public transport stations. The company says that humans are magically drawn to cute animals.
Results
- Attendance at the Sunshine Aquarium increased 152% over the previous month despite no change in exhibition content.
- People who downloaded the Penguin Navi app spent on average more than nine minutes at a time playing with it.
- More than 32% of users opened the app more than seven times and 93% of users planned to recommend it to friends/families.
NB: Other innovative applications of augmented reality: Frankfurt airport’s QR code wall, Tesco Homeplus’ virtual subway store in South Korea, and Chinese e-commerce player Yihodian’s 1,000 virtual stores overnight.
- See more at: http://www.tnooz.com/penguin-japan-tourist-attraction#sthash.qG1u3oM4.dpuf
Obamacare site flaws due to government's innovation problem
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
The endless number of Obamacare website screw-ups highlights the lack of innovation within the U.S. government, according to the man who used to be the Obama administration's chief tech guru.
"It's embracing 1960's era technology," former U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told CNNMoney. "A core issue there is a same set of problems we've seen in the past."
As the first CIO of the United States, Kundra's been credited with instituting a cloud-first policy to help make the government more efficient. It's a policy Kundra says could have saved folks building outhealthcare.gov time and money.
For example, Kundra says his understanding is that the Obamacare website uses 800 servers just for authenticating users,
"You could actually have deployed that in a cloud solution without buying a single server," he said.
Kundra has since left Washington for Silicon Valley where he serves as executive vice president of marketing at Salesforce (CRM), a company devoted to cloud technology. He said the government could have used Silicon Valley's help with the high-profile website. The site's many contractors may have contributed to the site's inefficiencies, technical errors and lack of ownership over its problems, Kundra said.
"Decisions were made to ... custom build everything rather than saying, 'Who does this best on the planet?'" Kundra noted.
But government bureaucracy rarely functions like Big Tech corporations do.
Clay Johnson, who is also a former member of President Barack Obama's technology team, said government contractors recognize that the way to make money is to throw more people at the problem rather than figuring out a way to deliver the best solution at the lowest cost.
"Healthcare.gov got this way not because of incompetence or sloppiness of an individual vendor, but because of a deeply engrained and malignant cancer that's eating away at the federal government's ability to provide effective online services," he wrote. "It's a cancer that's shut out the best and brightest minds from working on these problems, diminished competition for federal work, and landed us here — where you have half-billion dollar websites that don't work."
Government agencies would like nothing more than to have the best and brightest minds in the world working on healthcare.gov, Johnson said. But the best they've got to choose from are a few dozen companies.
It's a culture that calls for several cooks in the kitchen with little accountability. At a congressional hearing last week, contractors involved in the healthcare.gov roll out deflected responsibility and blamed other contractors, deadlines, and in come cases, administrative decisions.
Kundra says historically, Obama has made an effort to counter "a culture of faceless accountability," rolling out a plan to reform IT management.
But the Obamacare website ultimately fell victim to the same obstacles to innovation that many other government initiatives have in the past. 
New Google Glass is on the way
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- New Google Glass is on the way
- Second generation of Glass will work with eyeglasses, have ear bud
- About 10,000 testers will be able to invite three friends
- Google Glass currently costs $1,500, even for testers
(CNN) -- A new version of Google Glass, the company's breakthrough entry into the world of wearable tech, is on the way.
Current testers, or "Explorers," in Google's parlance, will get a chance to swap out their current models for the new ones, the company said in a Google+ post.
The new Google Glass hardware will work with eyeglasses or shades, and include an ear bud to replace the speaker in the current model. The bone-conduction speaker, which, similar to some hearing aids, literally sends sound waves through the skull to the ear, has been called faulty by some testers.
The swap begins Friday and testers will have 60 days to decide if they want new Glass.
The roughly 10,000 current testers also be able to invite up to three friends into the program, which requires testers to fork over the current $1,500 price of the glasses.
"Over the next few weeks, all Explorers will have the opportunity to invite three friends to join the program," the post said. "They'll be able to buy Glass online and can have it shipped to their home, office, treehouse or igloo. We're counting on you to get Glass to the people you think will make great Explorers."
Google has not said when Glass will go on sale to the general public, though it is expected to be some time next year.
Google Glass, worn like regular glasses, has a high-resolution display and lets wearers use voice commands to shoot photos or videos and access features like e-mail, text messaging, Google Maps, Google search and a handful of other apps.
It's not clear what hardware changes will be made to make the new Glass work better with other eyeglasses, though some in the tech press were speculating that users will be able to insert prescription lenses into it. It's possible to wear both Glass and eyeglasses currently, though many users who have tried have called it awkward.
The post didn't say how the overall design of Glass will be tweaked in the next version. Looking a little bit like something out of an '80s sci-fi movie, some have said the device looks ... well ... goofy, at least on the sometimes geekish early adopters who have been sporting them.
Glass has been a groundbreaker in wearable tech, a movement that's shaping up to be the coming wave in the technology world.
Samsung has weighed in with Galaxy Gear, a smartwatch that works with its Android smartphones.
2013년 10월 29일 화요일
Android apps for editing Word docs on tablets
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/Android-apps-for-editing-Word-docs-on-tablets/articleshow/24862406.cms
The Google Play store has several applications for working with Microsoft Word files.
The Google Play store has several applications for working with Microsoft Word files. When shopping for an app, check the feature list carefully, as some free programs allow you only to view files on your Android device, not edit them.
Apps that offer document editing include the $15 full versions of Documents To Go or OfficeSuite Pro 7, the free Kingsoft Office or the free Olive Office Premium. Features and user reviews vary by app, so study up before downloading to make sure you get everything you want.
Quickoffice, another popular app for working with Word files, was recently withdrawn from the Google Play store, but for a reason. Last year, Google bought the company behind the software, and last month it made Quickoffice free for Android and iOS users.
The new Quickoffice app requires a free Google account and stores files online with Google Drive. The new version does not support online syncing and storage to other services like Dropbox, as previous versions did.
Apps that offer document editing include the $15 full versions of Documents To Go or OfficeSuite Pro 7, the free Kingsoft Office or the free Olive Office Premium. Features and user reviews vary by app, so study up before downloading to make sure you get everything you want.
Quickoffice, another popular app for working with Word files, was recently withdrawn from the Google Play store, but for a reason. Last year, Google bought the company behind the software, and last month it made Quickoffice free for Android and iOS users.
The new Quickoffice app requires a free Google account and stores files online with Google Drive. The new version does not support online syncing and storage to other services like Dropbox, as previous versions did.
Are Smartphones Turning Us Into Bad Samaritans?
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304402104579151850028363502?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Busy with our tablets and smartphones in public places, we may be losing our sense of duty to others
We can't afford to be so preoccupied with our gadgets when we're in public spaces, says writer Christine Rosen in a conversation with WSJ's Gary Rosen.
In late September, on a crowded commuter train in San Francisco, a man shot and killed 20-year-old student Justin Valdez. As security footage shows, before the gunman fired, he waved around his .45 caliber pistol and at one point even pointed it across the aisle. Yet no one on the crowded train noticed because they were so focused on their smartphones and tablets. "These weren't concealed movements—the gun is very clear," District Attorney George Gascon later told the Associated Press. "These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They're just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They're completely oblivious of their surroundings."
Another recent attack, on a blind man walking down the street in broad daylight in Philadelphia, garnered attention because security footage later revealed that many passersby ignored the assault and never called 911. Commenting to a local radio station, Philadelphia's chief of police Charles Ramsay said that this lack of response was becoming "more and more common" and noted that people are more likely to use their cellphones to record assaults than to call the police.
Indeed, YouTube features hundreds of such videos—outbreaks of violence on sidewalks, in shopping malls and at restaurants. Many of these brawls, such as the one that broke out between two women during a victory parade for the New York Giants in 2012, feature crowds of people gathered around, cameras aloft and filming the spectacle.
Our use of technology has fundamentally changed not just our awareness in public spaces but our sense of duty to others. Engaged with the glowing screens in front of us rather than with the people around us, we often honestly don't notice what is going on. Adding to the problem is the ease with which we can record and send images, which encourages those of us who are paying attention to document emergencies rather than deal with them. The fascination with capturing images of violence is nothing new, as anyone who has perused Weegee's photographs of bloody crime scenes from the early 20th century can attest. But the ubiquity of camera-enabled cellphones has shifted the boundaries of acceptable behavior in these situations. We are all Weegee now.
Our screens often keep us from noticing what's going on around us. Alamy
But if everyone is filming an emergency, who is responsible for intervening in it? Consider an event from December 2012, when a man was pushed onto the subway tracks in New York City. Struggling unsuccessfully to heave himself onto the platform, he turned, in his final seconds, to see the train barreling down on him. We know this because a freelance photographer who happened to be on the platform took a picture of the awful episode and sold it to the New York Post, which ran it on the front page the next day, prompting public outrage about profiting from a man's death. The photographer noted that others on the platform closer to the man made no effort to rescue him and quickly pulled out their phones to capture images of his dead body.
The brutal nighttime stabbing of Kitty Genovese on a New York City sidewalk in 1964 became a symbol of the uninvolved bystander: Many people heard her screams, but no one went outside to assist her or to intervene in the attack. The incident spawned much hand-wringing and some intriguing social-science research about why we don't always come to each other's aid.
In a 1968 study, the sociologists John Darley and Bibb Latané tested the willingness of individuals to intervene in various emergency situations (a "lady in distress," a smoke-filled room). They found that the larger the number of people present, the more the sense of responsibility was diffused for any given individual. When alone, people were far more likely to help.
In subsequent experiments, carried out by Irving Piliavin, bystanders were much more likely to help an actor on a subway car who pretended to be ill and asked for help. Why? As psychologist Elliot Aronson wrote in his classic textbook "The Social Animal," "People riding on the same subway car do have the feeling of sharing a common fate, and they were in a face-to-face situation with the victim, from which there was no immediate escape."
The problem with many of our new gadgets, as the San Francisco shooting suggests, is that they often keep us from experiencing these face-to-face situations and the unspoken obligations that go with them. Most of these duties—to be aware of others, to practice basic civility—are not onerous. But on rare occasions, we are called upon to help others who are threatened or whose lives are in danger. At those moments, we should not be anticipating how many views we will get on YouTube if we film their distress; we should act. To do otherwise is to risk becoming a society not just of apathetic bystanders but of cruel voyeurs.
—Ms. Rosen is a Future Tense Fellow at the New America Foundation and senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.
2013년 10월 28일 월요일
Wake up and smell the virtual coffee: The OPHONE will take your breath away
You’re well-versed in virtual pets, virtual reality and many other virtual variants of physical entities. But what about virtual coffee? Yes, this is a ‘thing’, it seems.
The Next Web is at Wired 2013 today in London, where David Edwards, a professor in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University and founder of Le Labatoire, was on hand to give a glimpse into the future of your favorite caffeinated beverage.
Le
Laboratoire is a contemporary art and design center in Paris, where
creatives experiment “at frontiers of science”, and out of this has come
a virtual coffee bar serving up a series of bean-based experiments
involving beakers and burning, vapors and tubes.
They’re
chiefly sensory-based – while you will get a mild hit of caffeine from
inhaling the various vapors, they won’t give you the full coffee
experience. “It’s much more of a ‘head’ experience,” explains Edwards.
But one of these experiments really caught our attention, which is called ‘the OPHONE’ (not to be confused with OPhone), a little Bluetooth-enabled cylindrical device that emits aromas based on messages sent from a mobile phone.
The
general idea is this: you send your OPHONE-owning friend a quick whiff
of caramel-infused coffee rather than, say, a text message. The
recipient then pulls their OPHONE out of their bag, breathes in a
beautiful blend of the good stuff, and then continues on their way.
From
the sender’s perspective, they have a mobile app from which they
construct coffee-based symphonies – so it may start with caramel, move
on to nut, introduce a hint of chocolate and so on. The OPHONE then
follows these instructions to the note, sending out the smells in
sequence.
In
terms of who might use such technology, well, this remains to be seen.
But foodies, chefs and anyone who enjoys sensory experiences without the
full physical effects could get on board with the kinds of things
coming from Le Laboratoire.
Indeed,
it’s worth noting here that this ‘food and beverage-hacking’ can apply
to anything, including whisky, so if you want to sample various malts
without getting off your head, well, this should be possible just by
breathing in.
As
for the OPHONE specifically, no launch date or price has been set yet,
but it’s expected to go to market in the US some time in 2014.
Meanwhile, be sure to check out all our coverage from Wired 2013 here.
2013년 10월 22일 화요일
Visualise Studio Explains How To Use Virtual Reality For Marketing -- And Not Suck
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/24/visualise-oculus-rift-demo_n_3981902.html
Visualise, the team behind some of the web's most impressive ultra-high 360-degree resolution images - from the London Olympics to the Queen's Jubilee - have unveiled some impressive new concepts for Oculus Rift-enabled imagery and advertising. And judging by our brief hands-on, their ideas should set brands' and marketers' minds racing for high-concept, and high tech, apps and experiences in the near future.
In person Visualise have a few demos to show. Our first hands (or rather eyes) on with the Oculus Rift was a tourism example, designed to help wearers explore London from their rooms (or a marketing pod in a shopping center or airport).
The next stage for Visualise would be to take these ideas, and make them even more immersive - whether for users at home with their own Rift sets, or for brands building custom experiences for theme parks or promotion.
Of the myriad possible uses for the next-gen of virtual reality, marketing might not seem like the most thrilling.
But if you take a trip down to the Visualise Studio in London for Social Media Week, you might come away with a different impression.
Henry Stuart, co-founder of Visualise, said that they are constantly looking for new ways to show off their work - and get brands interested in signing up to the (potentially…) hefty bandwidth costs involved in creating their captivating high-res images. Hence Oculus Rift. As we've explained elsewhere, the Oculus tech is rough around the edges, but already hugely immersive. It's an obvious choice for showing off 360 images - and inspiration for thinking about new ways of taking them, too.
The power of VR is simply the immediate impact it has - especially on people who are haven't tried it before.
"It's one of the most amazing things to try on people," Stuart said. "Nearly always when you show people new technology now they've seen it before - or they at least know about it… There's nothing I've seen before where you put it on someone and they might literally scream."
In person Visualise have a few demos to show. Our first hands (or rather eyes) on with the Oculus Rift was a tourism example, designed to help wearers explore London from their rooms (or a marketing pod in a shopping center or airport).
On the web it's a fine demo. On the Oculus? It's close to amazing.
We put on the goggles, and were transported straight to the top of the London Eye. We could look around the pod by moving our head, and the display responded immediately, letting us pick out details in the skyline in a very natural way. If we focused on a particular point of interest, the demo whizzed us straight into London for a 360 look around that landmark. Glance at the floor and we were back at the Eye, ready for another trip. Some of the landmarks - for instance, a boat in the middle of the Thames - incorporated 360-degree video too. Anyone who has used Google Street View is familiar with this type of imagery. And the resolution of the Rift doesn't allow you to view the amazing detail of the Gigapixel images to their full extent. But the immersion, the speed and the inventiveness of the experience is really impressive.
It's this kind of immersion with which Visualise are starting to experiment - taking their ultra-high res pictures and presenting them in a way that is more natural, and far more exhilarating, than has been possible before. Right now the low-res Oculus doesn't show their pictures off to the highest possible point - but there are ways around that too.
"One of the things we've been playing with is setting up a Kinect at the studio," Stuart said. "We can track people's movements so that when you've got the headset on, you can hold your hands up like binoculars and it zooms in to what you're looking at… It's incredibly intuitive."
"Sony are getting involved [in VR] too - I think a lot of people are going to jump into it. I don't think it's going to be as ubiquitous as other modern devices - phones or tablets. But I certainly think it will take off."
The next stage for Visualise would be to take these ideas, and make them even more immersive - whether for users at home with their own Rift sets, or for brands building custom experiences for theme parks or promotion.
Some possible high-level concepts include an NFL experience, where you wear the Rift and are transported into the role of quarterback. Your movements are tracked with sensors, like in any motion control game, but your view is a 360-degree, HD video view that of a real quarterback - 90,000 screaming fans, rushing Defensive Ends and all.
F1, football, journalism - all could have obvious, but hugely interesting and for Visualise potentially lucrative applications.
The potential opportunity for brands, especially when VR content is still thin on the ground, is significant too. Remember when most of the truly innovative iPhone apps seemed to be made by beer and shopping companies? That was not a coincidence.
"The next frontier is to have a camera which can instantly capture much more," Stuart said. "We're trying to work with companies to develop a 360 camera which is much better than what we have now."
Visualise are just one player in what could be a huge market. But their clearly full of ideas. We might still be a couple of hardware generations, and years, from truly mind-blowing VR . But with any luck they're one example of a company who could give you some mind-blowing images to look at on day one when your personal Rift finally arrives.
Twitter Reportedly Plans To Overhaul Its Private Message System
http://readwrite.com/2013/10/17/twitter-messaging#awesm=~okYsS3zvS5E5Gz
Twitter wants make it easier for users to ping each other privately instead of publicly, AllThingsD reports. Although details are scarce, the microblogging service could reportedly launch an expanded private-messaging feature that would bring it more directly into competition with texting services offered by carriers and apps such as WhatsApp and KakaoTalk.
Coincidentally (or not), Twitter has made recent changes to its direct messaging feature that make it easier for users to send and receive private messages on its network.
Image via petesimon on Flickr
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