A glance @ '09 and a look ahead.

So it's 2010! The '00s are over and one doesn't need to be a historian from the future to see the Web has changed humanity and the world in the past decade in a way we are still trying to understand. There is a whole generation now that only knows life with the Internet, web2.0 is evolving, social networks are the new digital countries, cyber life to a growing number is as important as the real, and ignorance has become an option as people are able to connect, share, and access information about anything at the click of a button.

For ten years I have experienced technology ever increasing in our daily routines and watched 3D on the Web become more common place with multi-user environments, games, digital globes, and more. Google Earth, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and the like have made this an exciting past decade of web3D and other mixed reality technologies for sure. To keep this post short, let's look at some of the highlights from the previous year.

Augmented Reality - Adding a layer of digital information over the real was one of the hottest trends in '09 with a shlew of entertaining apps, great AR focused events, growing community interest and blogging. iPhone / Android mobile apps and web-based advertising applications really helped bring this decades old technology to the mainstream. Showing POIs (points of interest) seemed the biggest craze in mobile AR helping people find such things as subway information, Tweets, wiki info, and a variety of other layered information. Some of my personal favorites from '09 were Junaio, Yelp, Urbanspoon, and LAYAR.

I expect the AR explosion in 2010 to continue with more mobile POI apps (to the point of saturation), more showing 2D/3D geo-located objects, and definitely more location aware games. The number of AR companies opening or developing platforms that will allow for user created content like Neogence's Mirascape will grow. I also expect to see serious applications for AR, more AR focused start-ups, and more interest in 'standards' for AR browsers.

BIM (Building Information Modeling) - The architecture, design, and building communities have really begun to move towards the use of 3D, real-time, dynamic building modeling software to increase productivity in building design and construction. These 3D BIM models assist in the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle which encompasses building geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, and properties of building components.

In 2010, more firms and builders will design and plan with these virtual models as it does save money, time, materials, and adds multiple layers of efficiency. I expect to see more integration of BIM with web3D technologies like virtual

worlds, gaming platforms, and augmented reality.

Unity 3D - THE game authoring tool of '09, Unity 3D redefined the gaming industry. The engine, that works on both Mac and PC, allows developers to publish to Web, iPhone, and Wii.

With easily over 18 million player installs, it has become the platform for web games including Cartoon Network's Fusion Fall, mobile games (several of the top ten on iPhone), and a growing number of virtual worlds.

I know from talking with Unity folks there will be more mobile platforms and consoles to publish to available this year. I also expect to see more Unity 'worlds' that are not focused on gaming. At a past event, their CEO stated that 1/3 of the people that downloaded the tool used it for something other than gaming. Another prediction I have for Unity is seeing it as an augmented reality player. I expect to see great things from them this year and perhaps participate in some exciting announcements.

HTML5 - the next revision for the markup language of the World Wide Web. HTML5 aims to 'reduce' the need for proprietary plug-ins like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. This has generated quite the buzz and it is still years out for final spec status. Great examples appeared throughout '09 including one of my favorites from 9elements. This example may require you get an updated player but its worth it.

HTML5 introduces a number of new elements (e.g.audio, video,canvas) and will allow web developers the ability to make amazing web applications and sites with functionality we see with 'Flash-like' sites without the need for such a plug-in. I expect to see more examples and websites of HTML5 using the new elements and 3D content. This leads to the following:

TRUE 3D WEB - Two of the most exciting announcements in 2009 for me were X3Dom and WebGL. These technologies will proliferate the open 3D Web and allow for what so many geeks have wanted for so long, hardware-accelerated 3D running natively in a web browser.

X3Dom is a system that allows for web pages and applications to use interactive 3D content (X3D) that is hardware-accelerated via WebGL to run in the browser no-plug in needed. The video below shows an interactive animated World of Warcraft character being displayed in the Chrome browser minus any additional plug-in for viewing.

WebGL is a low-level API to display hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in webpages on any platform supporting OpenGL 2.0 or OpenGL ES 2.0. Originally initiated by Mozilla as Canvas 3D, WebGL is now being developed by the Khronos WebGL group. For this year I expect to see more use cases from Khronos with WebGL and COLLADA, and definitely more examples of WebGL and other 3D technologies.

Avatar the movie - Besides the fact that this movie rocked and had amazing CG, the tools and technologies behind how this movie was made are revolutionary. One example being the virtual camera system. This system is a new way of directing motion-capture film making that displays the actor's virtual character in the digital scene in real-time. This allows the director the ability to adjust and direct as if shooting live. The video below is of a virtual camera system I played with at the Autodesk Design Center awhile back. Motion sensors on the camera are read by motion detectors in the corners of the room to display a corresponding viewpoint into the digital scene.

Thanks again 2000s for all the tech you spawned. I am excited to see how the innovation that started then continues to evolve the Tech Generation in the new year and decade.

Tis the Season....!

Happy Holidays and best wishes in the New Year!

Now back to tracking Santa on Google Earth!

Augment Our Reality: Part1 - AR Dev Camp

Augmented reality has become quite the buzz word recently since mobile apps and print marketing are increasing the implementation of the technology to the mainstream. Well documented open source toolkits are allowing developers to create a swarm of AR applications that bring this way of accessing information to everything from your Android/iPhone to your Flash-based website.

As with any emerging tech, there comes the time that the community (developers, hobbyist, entrepreneurs, businesses, academia, governments) has to come together to address and solve the issues needed to further advance the technology. So on December 5, 2009 was the first ever Augmented Reality Developer Camp held at the HackerDojo in Mountain View, California.

"After nearly 20 years in the research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as one of the next major waves of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information, and experiences. We believe AR must be fundamentally open, interoperable, extensible, and accessible to all, so that it can create the kinds of opportunities for expressiveness, communication, business and social good that we enjoy on the web and Internet today. As one step toward this goal of an Open AR web, we are organizing AR DevCamp 1.0, a full day of technical sessions and hacking opportunities in an open format, BarCamp style." - AR Dev Camp Wiki

The camp was an amazing day of discussion, examples, hacking, networking, and drew a crowd from AR novice to pro. The scheduled topics included a variety of interests from AR, 3D printing, and digital worlds. Being one of the event organizers kept me at a meta-level but I did jump into parts of informative sessions when I could. Earthmine had a great session and in addition to the many amazing things they are doing, they can create 3D building models from photo scans to centimeter accuracy.

There was a great 'Hello World' tutorial by Sid Gabriel for AR on Android and also a session for creating AR for Flash using the FLAR Toolkit. Metaio's CTO Peter Meier announced that Junaio, Metaio's AR social network platform, will open its API now for developers and starting Monday, developers can use the new interface to build their own applications that interact with the Junaio platform.

The lightning rounds led by Sid after lunch included applications that really wowed the crowd. Examples included Maribeth Back and her team showing impressive AR work they are developing at FXPAL, NASA showed an example of an Air Traffic Control system that tracked aircraft with overlayed data annotations, I shared an example of AR using X3D, and even a little AR ghost hunting on the iPhone (ARGH video). For all the great examples in the lightning round, check out the AR Dev Camp wiki.

I recommend all read Chris Arkenberg's great write up on the camp for a deeper insight and of course there are a variety of photos (these are Gene's) from the Mountain View event online. I thank all who attended, all the sponsors that contributed, and the core team for making it happen. This event would have been nothing but an idea without Mike Liebhold, Gene Becker, Chris Arkenberg, Anselm Hook, and those that organized the other camps. Yes, there were concurrent camps in New York, Manchester UK, Amsterdam, and more are scheduling all around. Props to those initial collaborators that made it the AR event held round the world. Let's see how this moves the future of AR closer to the now.

Thanks to AR NewsRoom for the video below and coverage of the event.

Saving the best for last - FountainBlue's Virtual World Event

So Friday Sept.25 on the heels of the Engage Expo was FountainBlue's Annual Virtual World Conference "Virtual Worlds: Where We Were, Where We're Going, What Does It Mean to You?" The conference, held down at the Sun Microsystems campus, showcased presentations and panel discussions that featured key stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and investors in the virtual world space.

The event kicked off with a presentation from host Michael Gialis, New Business Development for Sun Microsystem's Lab and Chief Technology Office. Michael is also one of the founders of the Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group and his presentation included results from a recent Virtual Worlds Roadmap industry survey.

After Michael was CTO of Masher Media Barry Holroyd. Later in the day, Masher Media's virtual world was presented and I must say that it has a great art direction, looks fun for those of all ages (I will play it), and is another great example of Unity3D technology for multi-user virtual worlds. Benjamin Duranske an Associate at Pillsbury Winthrop gave an insightful presentation on the 'Overview of the History of Virtual Worlds, What is it, Where Has it Been?'

Following these opening presentations was a series of panels. The first panel covered virtual world business trends. Moderator Sibley Verbeck CEO of The Electric Sheep Company led this panel including Joshua Bell Director of Technology Integration Linden Lab, Tim Chang Principal at Norwest Venture Partners, Benjamin Duranske, and Michael Gold CEO of Electrotank.

The second panel discussion covered virtual world case studies and was led by moderator Jeffrey Pope, Founder of Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group, Former Virtual Worlds VC and Virtual Worlds Entrepreneur. Panelist included Jack Buser Director of Sony Playstation Home, David Helgason CEO of Unity, Greg Nuyens CEO of Teleplace (formerly Qwaq), and Damon Hernandez (me) Lead Web3D Outreach for the Web3D Consortium.

Some notes taken from and published on the Fountain Blue website:

• Virtual Worlds offer a dynamic, ever-changing landscape of technology, community, interaction. Although Virtual Worlds have evolved over the past few decades, it is now coming to the mainstream, and its impact is deep and broad. It affects many facets of the way we do business from the financial, economic, technology and legal aspects, as well as HOW business is done, leveraging software the enables creative and dynamic interaction between people with virtual presences and online communities overall.

• Virtual worlds are evolving from the walled gardens of the 1990s to more and more dynamic, interactive and creative sites that incorporate user content and creativity. This seems to be following the familiar evolution of the web itself; America Online and Prodigy became supplanted by more open browser standards from Mosaic.

• Indeed, Virtual Worlds are evolving from a fad and a toy to a valuable business tool, serving and connecting various stakeholders. The graphics abilities introduced in the 80s and 90s brought in the era of avatars and games which were wildly popular, with some running still today. Now these graphics are being harnessed in virtual environments to effect value in a variety of non-game related use cases.

After the panels and lunch, Chris Platz, Creative Director of Sirikata from Stanford Humanities Lab and Computer Science, shared some of the amazing projects being done with Sirikata, Stanford's open source virtual world platform. Really interesting things being done here by this group with virtual museums and virtual live music performances. Following was Nicole Yankelovich, Principal Investigator, Collaborative Environments program including Wonderland v0.5 where Sun Labs demoed the new features/functionality and capability of their re-architected platform.

The last part of the event's track was to let visiting entrepreneurs that had been selected from an executive plan submission process pitch the audience and an investor panel for feedback. In addition to this pitch/feedback time, they also had the opportunity to show their applications and services in an available demo room. Among the presenting entrepreneurs was Immediate Mode Interactive, a group of pros from Florida that have an amazing collaboration service that runs simultaneously on mobile and web in 2D and 3D environments. Their service was super intuitive, easy to setup, and a low cost value add for any looking to use virtual worlds for collaboration among various devices and platforms.

Among the audience was a group from my generation that is throwing an event next year covering immersive tech and mixed reality technologies. Check out their website and I recommend all attend the event next year in LA. These gents were a pleasure to talk to as they saw the bigger picture of where all these technologies are converging.

A great job by event organizer Linda Holroyd and her virtual world team of volunteers. Check out the Fountain Blue website for all the notes and presentations for the event. It is well worth the click.

Engaged all week long

So this week is full of back to back virtual world events, catching up with friends in the industry, and making new ones. Mid-week kicked off the Engage! Expo 2009. Engage! Expo strives to be where companies learn how to combine their existing business with the unparalleled engagement opportunities and new revenue streams of user engagement online.

The expo had session throughout the day that were broken into the categories of:
*Virtual Goods Conference - the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies using virtual goods, items and gifts;
*Digital Law Conference - provides a detailed examination of the legal issues raised by these technologies and offers key insight into where the industry is headed and what the associated legal implications are;
*Social Media Strategies - the social media track seeks to help business understand the best practices, current trends, and effective strategies of social media and user engagement;
*3D Training, Learning and Collaboration (3D TLC), - the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies using virtual worlds.

I stayed mainly in the expo hall and didn't attend many sessions as they get redundant fast when one goes to the amount of these events as I do. Although asking others how the sessions were brought mixed reviews. I found that those new to virtual worlds or that played in them hung on to every word as gospel while the more technical attendee said only the occasional nuggets of wisdom would appear from time to time. I am upset I missed Corey Bridges session as the guy is a riot and always an entertaining panelist. In his session he gave the advice to, "talk to your lawyer with your pimp hand."

The show has grown smaller over the years with only about 18-20 booths in the exhibit hall. Part of that is a reflection of the economy but I feel a chunk can be contributed to the over-hype cycle for virtual worlds coming to an end. Regardless of size, the expo floor was a blast this year and quite the mix-up of sponsors. About a third of the booths were services (transactions, fraud protection, user metrics gathering, etc), followed by content creators, and a handful of actual platforms. I worked the Web3d Consortium booth and the bonus of the small size was that we got a chance to talk with a majority of the people attending. Our booth showcased the 3D web standard running various examples of web3D on iPhone, multi-user worlds, interactive 3D medical scans, augmented reality, digital earths, and more. Many a visitor was wowed by the power and reach of the 3D web standard and asked the right questions on how it could help their businesses.

It was an expo full of being amazed. I was amazed at the number of people knowledgeable about virtual worlds or even that had a business related to them, that knew nothing of the 3D web standards that have been around for so long. I was amazed by how far Telepresence (formerly Qwaq) as a platform has developed since I last looked at it. I highly recommend those interested in 3D multi-user worlds for business collaboration look at it as their VW solution. Their platform makes it easy for those not familiar with gaming (usually older audience) participate in virtual worlds with ease. I was amazed by Utherverse.net (.com is their adult site) for reasons that could only be seen in their handout material or at the booth. I was amazed at how far my wise-cracking friend put his foot in his mouth after calling an ER doctor a chiropractor. I was amazed by the technology I saw others working on in private chat sessions, and much more.

As always, a great show from Chris Sherman and his staff. I thank them for their support of the Web3D Consortium and look forward to representing the 3D web standard again at future events. For this round though, two full days of being "engaged", a decent amount of after parties, booth breakdown/set up and I am done. Well at least until the Fountain Blue event tomorrow.

A quick response to QR and Data Matrix code.

So lately I have been seeing more Data Matrix and QR code around. Data Matrix and QR code is a 2D barcode consisting of black and white "cells" or modules arranged in either a square or rectangular pattern that represent encoded information. Unlike augmented reality markers, data matrix code only represents text or raw data.

Data Matrix (DM) symbols are rectangular in shape and usually square, they are made of cells: little elements that represent bits. Depending on the situation a "light" module is a 0 and a "dark" module is a 1, or vice versa. Every Data Matrix is composed of two solid adjacent borders in an "L" shape (called the "finder pattern") and two other borders consisting of alternating dark and light "cells" or modules (called the "timing pattern"). Within these borders are rows and columns of cells encoding information. The finder pattern is used to locate and orient the symbol while the timing pattern provides a count of the number of rows and columns in the symbol. As more data is encoded in the symbol, the number of cells (rows and columns) will increase. Symbol sizes vary from 8×8 to 144×144. -Wikipedia

People that work on computer hardware and other electronic devices are familiar with seeing DM code on various parts.

Now I see it on advertisements, sidewalks, billboards, business cards, and the most random of places. These codes are great ways of dispersing information quickly. The image to the right is a QR code for the new animated movie 9 coming out soon I found at the Metreon. When scanned it takes you to the website for the movie.

I use QR markers for a variety of things when activate, point, and click is all I want to do to get information. I have a QR code business card that when scanned transfers all my contact information. I post QR Markers on the top left of this blog that hold info or links. As seen in this video below, I have placed QR code markers around the Architecture For Humanity office as part of our mixed reality COLLAB (name of the space) project. Scanning the markers takes the user directly to the website for the related project, sponsor, or tenant.



The markers in the video and in the image to the right, are a form of matrix code called QR (Quick Response) code. QR code was created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994 and is very common in Japan where it is currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. The QR Code format specification is available royalty-free. QR code usually has larger images than DM, can store Japanese characters, but is less secure and easier to hack.

How do I read DM and QR code? All you need is the proper 2D barcode scanner software. Most Japanese mobile devices have 2D barcode readers. I personally have used barcode reader applications on the iPhone and two phones running Google's Android mobile operating system. Some of these apps worked better than others and the ones I used were free to download.

How do I make my own DM or QR code? There are numerous DM/QR generator software and generator websites available. I like the company Kaywa that has online QR code and DM code generators for fast, easy marker code creation.

I expect to see more of these tags out and about. They add that element of "secret decoder ring message" and are a great way of accessing information with the touch of a button.

iPhone Developer Camp 3

This past weekend I attended my first iPhone Developer Camp. This year was the third annual iPhone Developer Camp, IDC3, which was developers, UI designers, testers, and other that came to share ideas, collaborate, and make some pretty cool apps. The event encourages individuals at all levels to continue to stretch the development boundaries of the iPhone and iPod touch.

Held in Sunnyvale at Yahoo's main campus, the main focus of the event seemed to be the Hackathon competition. Saturday and Sunday were nothing but people with heads down on computers as the Hackathon is an exhibition of attendee and those joining via web projects and was a showcase of some of the best iPhone and iTouch innovators.

The event had great keynotes and even a musical guest BT who performed Friday night. He came back on Saturday to speak about his app called Sonifi. I have been playing with this $4.99 music mixing app and it is fun. It needs more songs as it only comes with one, but BT announced that more are coming soon. I had the chance to ask him some questions after his talk and concluded besides being a kick ass DJ, he knows his tech and can hang with the geekiest.


I saw apps for nurses to allow them to pass along medical charts at shift change, one that recognized sign language, and one from a friend that was there called BCard Express. I will share more about this app when it comes out. May the tech gods bless Christopher Peri for this app as it is extremely useful for those that hate dealing with business cards.

The winner of my award for most innovative and actual winner of the Hackathon event's "Best Open Source Project" was a group that developed an Augmented Reality Kit for the iPhone. I got the chance to chat with the team leader Chris Haseman and look forward to get deeper into this ARkit. It allows developers a chance to build on top of a library for augmented reality applications. This example (a little blurry) was taken at the IDC3 and looks very much like the Wikitude app I was playing with on the Google Android HTC phone. This really is the type of thing that excites me most as AR applications on mobile devices will really drive the mixed reality Metaverse to the mainstream.


There were also vendors at the event with some useful hardware accessories for iDevices. OWLE (Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement) is currently working on a mount that gives you a much more stable way to hold the iPhone, improves your recording quality by including a 37mm camcorder lens and includes a front facing microphone, which plugs into the iPhone’s headphone/mic jack. It also has spots for external lighting and a tripod. FastMac is a device that snaps on iPhone/iTouch that will triple the amount of battery life. It also has a flash-type light on it to solve the problem with in the dark iPhone pics.

Overall I was awed at the apps these die hards could create in a weekend. This was one of the best exhibits of collaboration for innovation I have seen. People of all ages were there. One of the Hackathon entries was made by a young lady around 12 yrs old that wrote the app with the help of her dad. To see true innovation with this revolutionary mobile Internet device, skip the WWDC and attend next years iPhone Developers Camp.

*I am putting together a video of the footage I got from the event so stay tuned.

The world of Ancient Mayas in VR

The Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatán around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras. Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations, the Maya developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing.

The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. This ancient civilization has captured the imagination of millions and one web3D builder named Ladin who decided to recreate elements of this culture to share with the 3D web.

Ladin has built an incredible website The World of Ancient Maya in Virtual Reality. This site is a great mixture of 2D and 3D information and the way more websites should be. One can navigate the 2D site like any other with the option to explore various 3D scenes in Adobe Atmosphere and the web3D open standards. The content is rich, informative, and well organized. There are plenty of scenes to explore and even an animated avatar of a Mayan monarch that can be downloaded. I got the opportunity to ask Ladin a few questions.

Please share a little about yourself and your experience with web3D.
"I'm sorry my English language is very primitive. I live in Czech republic EU. I began to gain my first experience with the web 3D six years ago."

What made you design the 3D world of ancient Mayans?
"I am interested in ancient cultures of pre-Columbian America. I study it for twenty years."

Where did you get the information for the scene?
"I found on the web some Mayan buildings. It was created by Virtus Studio. It was very primitive but I was impressed by that. I tried to make my first objects by different VRML editors. My first 3D world was made with Adobe Atmosphere, but I reverted to the VRML standard. Now I use Vizx 3d tool, VRMLpad, and text editor. Cinema4D I use for a rendering. Usually I want to make only one structure. I must collect a lot of photographs this building from the various viewpoints. I gather information written by authority. I must use my experience, when I can't find any information about some detail. Sometimes I must rely on my fantasy. Then I expand to the surrounding area when is the building made. That's why my worlds is never finished."

What other work have you done with the 3D web open standards VRML and/or X3D?
"I have done the project of my house in 3D. I made the Russian space station "MIR" too."

How do you see 3D web technologies enhancing our exploration of history and ancient cultures?
"I think my web 3D worlds don't show any news,but maybe evoke a feeling of real visitor or ancient inhabitant."

I really enjoyed the interactive scene of Uaxactun. It shows how the sun rose at different times of year over three temples in the area. Websites that focus on educating about ancient cultures and civilizations could really learn a lot from this site on how to make learning more engaging. Thanks Ladin for this awesome site and I recommend everyone take sometime to hang at the pyramids of Chichen Itza.