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Intel Develops Depth Sensing 3D Cameras to Track Emotion

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August 28, 2013

Intel is developing depth sensing 3D cameras and software that are able to detect an individual’s emotional state. While refined motion detection technologies are not entirely new, Intel’s product goes beyond tracking the physical movements of objects to determining what the movement actually means. Intel’s depth sensing technology will first be available in webcams and may eventually become available in laptops, smartphones and tablets. Continue reading Intel Develops Depth Sensing 3D Cameras to Track Emotion

Consumers Can Select Viewing Angles for Sports and Concerts

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August 15, 2013

The new OmniCam360 camera system uses a collection of cameras to create multiple angles for live televised events such as soccer matches and music concerts. The system provides viewers with the option to choose their viewing angle, including a 360-degree view of the event. The camera was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin, Germany. Viewers can use a computer, tablet or smart TV in order to select views via their virtual cameras in real-time. Continue reading Consumers Can Select Viewing Angles for Sports and Concerts

Augmented Reality App Offers Custom Views of IKEA Catalog

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August 13, 2013

IKEA is launching an augmented reality app that works in conjunction with its AR-capable catalog. Consumers can visualize virtual furniture layouts by essentially superimposing furniture on top of the live view of a smartphone or tablet camera. Consumers select a piece of furniture from the catalog, and point their mobile device toward the physical catalog as a reference point for angle, light, position and size. A virtual version of the furniture will then appear on the device. Continue reading Augmented Reality App Offers Custom Views of IKEA Catalog

New Eyeglass Technologies Create a Range of Possibilities

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July 15, 2013

Three new technologies have recently arrived that bring new features to eyeglasses designed to improve vision and eyeglass shopping, but none of the three bring the Internet to one’s eyes like a Google Glass. Two of the three are actual eyeglasses: One can help an individual’s vision with adjustable lenses, and the other gives medical professionals enhanced viewing of patients. The third is an app that provides consumers the ability to try-on eyeglasses virtually before buying. Continue reading New Eyeglass Technologies Create a Range of Possibilities

E3 2013: Disney Infinity Has Potential as Major Franchise

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June 13, 2013

During this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, Disney Interactive promoted “Disney Infinity,” its upcoming video game environment and merchandise hybrid that incorporates physical toy figurines based on popular characters from the company’s films and television shows. Kids can interact with RF-outfitted action figures, power discs, and play set hexagons that can integrate film locations and theme park attractions. Continue reading E3 2013: Disney Infinity Has Potential as Major Franchise

Amazon Debuts Virtual Coins for Appstore and Kindle Fire

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May 17, 2013

Amazon.com distributed tens of millions of dollars in new Amazon Coins virtual currency earlier this week by depositing 500 Coins, the equivalent of $5, into the accounts of every customer using a Kindle Fire. The company will also offer Coins at discounts of up to 10 percent when purchased in bulk. In an effort to increase customer loyalty, the Coins can be used for products and services available at the Amazon Appstore and within Kindle Fire tablet apps. Continue reading Amazon Debuts Virtual Coins for Appstore and Kindle Fire

NAB 2013: Cloud-Based Production with Adobe Anywhere

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April 5, 2013

First announced at last year’s NAB, cloud-based production service Adobe Anywhere is scheduled to launch in May and will be on display at next week’s NAB (booth SL3910) in Las Vegas. The toolset enables collaboration for creative professionals using Adobe Premiere, After Effects and logging tool Prelude. It uses Adobe’s Mercury streaming engine, a server that streams relevant video frames and scales quality based on available bandwidth. Continue reading NAB 2013: Cloud-Based Production with Adobe Anywhere

3D Virtual Try-On: iPad App Helps You Shop for New Glasses

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March 4, 2013

A new augmented reality e-commerce application for Glasses.com may not only revolutionize how consumers shop for eyeglasses, but could also have a significant impact on online shopping. The iOS app scans multiple angles of your face and uses a QR code (held up to your head) to determine the scale of your face. Then the app can superimpose glasses on images of your face to offer a virtual fitting room experience. Continue reading 3D Virtual Try-On: iPad App Helps You Shop for New Glasses

Virtual Theater: PlayStation Home Members can Access Movies and TV via Crackle

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November 28, 2011
  • Sony PlayStation 3 users will be able to stream movies and TV shows and enjoy them with friends from multiple locations with an updated version of Crackle.
  • Instead of accessing Crackle via the console’s Internet browser, users can enter a virtual movie theater with custom PS3 controller navigation. “Fire up PlayStation Home — if you’re a free member, that is — and navigate over to the LOOT EOD Theater, the Hollywood Hills House, or the Sunset Yacht areas,” reports PCMag.com.
  • The streaming service allows users to create avatars and use them to interact with up to 11 friends (or 60 strangers) in a virtual movie theater with access to hundreds of movies and more than 1,000 TV episodes. “Think of it as an opportunity to have a giant recreation of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ with strangers,” suggests the post.
  • “We are very excited to bring familiar social experiences from the real world into a virtual environment, so people around the globe can connect and communicate with each other while sharing their favorite movie, show, music, or event,” said Sony DADC VP David Sterling. “This is the next big step in social networking and it will transform the way people consume media.”
  • Sony is also planning PlayStation Home support for Ustream content and streaming radio service RadioIO later this year.

German Firm has Plans to Market Direct Eye Contact Video Conferencing

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November 22, 2011
  • Technology R&D firm Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin has announced a major breakthrough in direct eye-to-eye contact for video conferencing. Fraunhofer HHI hopes to implement the new technology in consumer laptops and office desktop systems.
  • “Called the Virtual Eye Contact Engine, the software module analyses the scene in real-time 3D from three cameras mounted around the display,” reports 3D Focus. “It computes the depth structure information of the person’s head which is used to generate a 3D model. The 3D model is then used to compute the view of the virtual camera for both parties and the rendered output appears to show each person looking directly at each other.”
  • Fraunhofer HHI believes the technology will help resolve the problem experienced with eye contact during video conferencing. “Eye contact is one of the most important elements of non-verbal communication and without this, each person can feel slightly disconnected from the conversation,” suggests the article.
  • “We are working on a product release for our system,” says Ingo Feldman, scientific project manager 3D Video & Immersive Media Group. “We expect the first version on the market in about one year’s time…On one hand we plan to provide an office desktop system with high quality virtual eye contact correction. On the other hand, we plan a consumer market solution which is capable to run on laptop environments. As we are a research institution, we are always interested in industry partners which will finance our product development.”

Trap.it Offers a New Approach to Search, From the Makers of Siri

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November 21, 2011
  • “A new take on the search engine called Trap.it uses the same AI technology that Siri does courtesy of the CALO project (which was funded by DARPA), and has launched its public beta,” reports Digital Trends.
  • Described as something similar to a hybrid of Pandora and Qwiki in its approach to an “information experience,” Trap.it uses Facebook and Twitter accounts to help curate the Web for individual users.
  • “Via the ‘discover’ bar, you ‘trap’ information that comes up in visual-heavy icons with short text summaries. Hovering over these images lets you vote up or down if this is what you were looking for, share the information, or bookmark it for later,” explains the post. “Your feedback on these ‘traps’ is how the search engine learns and gets smarter, so eventually you’re receiving more and more spot-on results.”
  • “It’s yet another signal we’re moving from search to discovery,” suggests Digital Trends.

Human-Centric: Will Post-PC Computing be the Next Disruptive Wave?

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November 2, 2011
  • In his compelling O’Reilly Radar post, digital media entrepreneur Mark Sigal offers his take on the post-PC wave and its major players.
  • Post-PC is the fourth computing wave that follows mainframes, PCs, and the Web.
  • Sigal suggests that Post-PC devices, which Morgan Stanley expects to number 10 billion by 2020, are becoming the most personal, mobile, social and human-centric tools that marry hardware, software and services.
  • For example, Sigal cites John Gruber of Daring Fireball, regarding Apple’s Siri voice-based system: “Siri is indicative of an AI-focused ambition that Apple hasn’t shown since before Steve Jobs returned to the company. Prior to Siri, iOS struck me being designed to make it easy for us to do things. Siri is designed to do things for us.”
  • Apple, Amazon and Google are the companies that best represent emerging trends in this space.

Should Google and Microsoft Fear the Potential of Siri?

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October 27, 2011
  • Tech analyst Tim Bajarin says both Google and Microsoft have been downplaying the significance of Apple’s Siri because they know it could seriously impact their core search businesses, especially as it gains access to even more online databases.
  • “You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone,” Google mobile chief Andy Rubin told Walt Mossberg at the recent AsiaD conference.
  • Microsoft’s Andy Lees suggested that Siri “isn’t super useful” and added that the voice interactivity of Windows Phone 7 when connected to Bing harnesses “the full power of the Internet, rather than a certain subset.”
  • Bajarin counters that, “Apple has just introduced voice as a major user interface and that its use of voice coupled with AI on a consumer product like the iPhone is going to change the way consumers think about man-machine interfaces in the future.”
  • Siri is not just a voice UI, but a gatekeeper to natural language searching of online databases that may eventually make Apple the third major search company worldwide.

Next Generation Web: Will Siri Spark Machines Talking to Machines?

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October 25, 2011
  • In a post that describes what should follow after Siri, GigaOM suggests, “Apple’s artificial intelligence is only the tip of the iceberg as we combine ubiquitous connectivity, sensor networks, big data and new methods of AI and programming into a truly connected network.”
  • The next generation of the Web will “connect machines to machines and connect those machines back to people” with advancements in low-power, cheap sensors and “better ways of programming computers so that they can understand data from several million end points.”
  • The necessary connectivity exists currently and improvements of sensors for tracking everything — weather, inventory, traffic conditions, etc. — will provide the necessary information.
  • From there, programming and better AI like Siri, “will allow machines to parse the data from billions of sensors and notify people to take action only when needed.”

Will a Sense of Humor Draw Users to Siri Virtual Personal Assistant?

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October 18, 2011
  • According to The Wall Street Journal: “It turns out that Siri, the new voice activated personal assistant for Apple iPhone 4S has a dry sense of humor.”
  • For example, when asked “Who’s your daddy?” the phone answered: “You are” in an authoritative tone — and in response to “Beam me up,” the phone reportedly responded: “Sorry, Captain, your tricorder is in Airplane Mode.”
  • The article adds that in response to “Open the pod bay doors” (a reference to Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which also features a “talking” machine), users say the iPhone responds in a frighteningly slow voice, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
  • Consumers are reacting to the artificial intelligence by asking the iPhone outlandish questions as websites dedicated to the concept are already emerging. The “personality” of Siri’s software could very well be the first step in driving consumer adoption.

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