Metaverse One

 One thing I thoroughly enjoy is seeing the many ways that technology is changing the industries of the world. I often venture to various industry meetups in SF and abroad to see how early adopters and innovators use tech to evolve what they do. Over the years, I have become a spectator of how tech is evolving the fashion industry. Sure I can use any fashion tips I can get, a guilty pleasure is watching Project Runway (I am a fan of Heidi Klum & Tim Gunn), and let's not forget this is a global trillion dollar industry.  The fashion industry consists of four levels: the production of raw materials, principally fibres and textiles but also leather and fur; the production of fashion goods by designers, manufacturers, contractors, and others; retail sales; and various forms of advertising and promotion. These levels consist of many separate but interdependent sectors, all of which are devoted to the goal of satisfying consumer demand for apparel under conditions that enab...

So a few days ago I posted the following about an online hands free home configurator developed from a partnership between IDEAbuilder Homes and SpiralConcepts. Here is the original post  and the repost  by sci-fi author Bruce Sterling on the Wired Blog. When out in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech scene it is not the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry I hear about leading the charge in technical innovation. It is the chatter of the millions given and insane evaluations of those either in the cloud, selling user data, social, gaming, or insert buzz word here. Yet more and more construction companies are incorporating technology to improve various areas of the building process. I observe all around SOMA how construction companies like Swinerton  and  Webcor  are using data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) process to build better. I applaud Skanska 's  use of tablets  and  experiments with augmen...

So earlier this week San Francisco based Leap Motion , formally Ocuspec, released their Leap hands free controller. I got a personal demo of the device last week at their office in SOMA district and "Wow"! Developed over the past 4 years, Leap Motion moves far beyond the current technologies designed for hands free control. Leap is an entirely new way to interact with computers that lets you control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements. It's more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard, and more sensitive than a touchscreen. The Leap is a small iPod sized USB peripheral that creates a 3D interaction space of 8 cubic feet to precisely interact with and control software on your laptop or desktop computer. It senses your individual hand and finger movements independently, as well as items like a pen. The Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter. The compan...

Assassin's Creed has to be one of the better game series I have played in a while. On March 31 was the official announcement for the first Assassin's Creed game with full motion control! I am happy to see this as I feel that most games don't take full advantage of the Kinect's capabilities for interactive gameplay. Welcome to April! :)

Charting unknown territory is definitely nothing new for the Danes. Danish companies such as Vestas , Lego , and Unity3D are conquering their industries in a way that would make their viking ancestors proud. Now entering this group is Playingmondo , a platform for creating and interacting with location based experiences. For those not familiar with location-based services , the Playingmondo app, available for iPhone and Android, uses the built-in GPS in the mobile phones to allow users to interact with digital content created around real world locations. This content can be viewed in a variety of ways including augmented reality. Already there are numerous Playingmondo playgrounds all over Denmark and in other countries, and even though a majority of the experiences are games, there are also experiences focused on health, education, tourism, and cultural heritage. The Playingmondo website is where you can join a community to find virtual playgrounds near you, meet up with your team m...

Cool combination of the Kinect and an avatar from Bitmanagement Software GmbH ! IVN from Bitmanagement Software GmbH on Vimeo .

So now that we have a Microsoft Kinect at the office (thanks Beesley), here is the first video of me using it to control navigation on digital globe X3D Earth. The display is on our Spatial View 3D projection, no glasses needed, TV for a whole new dimension of coolness. I have to admit that controller free navigation is the way to go when zooming around the planet. I just need to tweak some of the gesture controls and get the whole globe file local so it doesn't take so long to load and tile. Those familiar with my work I am sure can guess where this is going. For those that don't like guessing, stay tuned!

GDC 2011 just finished last week and wow do I have a game developer hangover! What an insane week of intense sessions on gaming, walking the expo floor, aisle conversations, meetings, and great parties. This year I was in on a media pass and got full access to the latest and greatest from the game industry. No I didn't get the Google Chrome Notebooks or Motorola Xooms they passed out to the entire audience of certain sessions, but by far this year's show was the best for things I am interested in. Even though I am not a game developer per se, there were plenty of sessions in areas of interest. The Kinect had several sessions, there was a full day of Unity3D, a few sessions about augmented reality, and some on web3D technologies. A bonus of being media, I got the chance to participate in new product/game releases. Ogmento had a location based multi-player AR game for iPhone that GDC attendees could play called Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary. Find out more about the game here ....

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A few months ago I posted about the Kinect device from Microsoft. Kinect, since its launch in November, has sold over 2.5 million units in less than 30 days. This makes it the fastest adopted consumer electronic device ever, surpassing the recent title holder the iPad. Now what is really impressing me is how the hacking community has gone wild with the device and I recommend visiting KinectHacks.net to see what I mean. The technology behind the Kinect intrigues me. I know very little about 3D depth sensors and RGB cameras, so to learn more I decided to visit the Intel Lab Seattle that has been doing research in this area long before Kinect was released. Located by the University of Washington, Intel Lab Seattle is a Center of Excellence in Context-Aware Sensor-Driven Systems. Interdisciplinary projects and an emphasis on prototyping novel systems and user evaluation drive its agenda. Led by Director Dieter Fox , the research staff are recognized experts across a range of topics fro...

So Microsoft has created a controller-free gaming and entertainment experience for the Xbox 360 console platform called Kinect . Originally labeled Project Natal, the device is a webcam style add-on peripheral that enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images. Obviously this is Microsoft's answer to the Wii and PlayStation Move motion control systems. Ole Kjeldsen , Director of Platform and developers at Microsoft Denmark, gave a great presentation on Kinect at the NEXT 2010 event a couple weeks back. The potential for the type of games and applications that can be made from this device have very interesting possibilities. One such game Milo , is highlighted in the video below. So even though Kinect is scheduled to launch worldwide starting with North America in November of this year, I got the chance to play with it during ...