Where’s the innovative work in AR?

ProgrammerJoe (Joe Ludwig) writes: My discouragement has less to do with Layar specifically than it does with the entire category of tricorder augmented reality. The view through the mobile phone and its camera is less useful than a top-down map would be for every piece of data I have seen so far. For my layer … Continue reading “Where’s the innovative work in AR?”

ProgrammerJoe (Joe Ludwig) writes:

My discouragement has less to do with Layar specifically than it does with the entire category of tricorder augmented reality. The view through the mobile phone and its camera is less useful than a top-down map would be for every piece of data I have seen so far. For my layer in particular, the rider is very likely to know where the stop is. In situations like that where location is unimportant, both the Reality View and Map View actually get in the way.

This experience has led me to two conclusions. First, augmented vision is pointless until head-mounted displays are available. I already felt that way, so now I am just more firm in my belief. Second, filtering data to a useful subset for display is actually the hard problem. Job listing sites, travel sites, Ecommerce sites, and review sites already knew this, which is why they spend so much effort on search. Turns out the problem is the same for mobile location-aware services.

The problem here is that we’re looking at a entire toybox and trying to figure out which game to play?

Some people are looking at markers, interpreting a video display and displaying mini-Darth Vaders or animated coloured cubes. Other people are drawing information from GPS, compass, accelerometer, comparing to built-in databases and overlaying graphics on them. There’s minimal consideration for user interface, for the appropriateness of content – there’s just the hype and the fear of being left behind. There’s too much focus on graphics on screen and, as a result, the use case is people being led around the streets by their phones without consideration of the arm strain, eye strain and the possibility of not noticing the quickly-approaching hatchback car as you cross a road.

At the moment, I’m disappointed that every AR press release is mee-too-ism. There’s a hype storm and the winds are buffering us even as we sleep. We’ve even seen the backlash from folk who are starting to realise that it’s not the panacea. AR is not a useful technology in itself – it becomes useful when you include context – whether that is time, location, heading or any of the data that input into the device.

There’s more to AR than cramming icons onto a tiny screen. Who wants to view the world through a 3.5″ screen anyway? It’s not even about icons on screen! Where’s the innovation in haptic and audio AR?

What market is next for ‘i’ treatment?

Does anyone remember what the mobile market was like before the iPhone? Kontra, author of the counternotions blog does. Remembrance of Things Past So for a more reasoned perspective, let us take a breath and remember what the world was like before Apple introduced the iPhone: Carriers ruled the industry with an iron fist To … Continue reading “What market is next for ‘i’ treatment?”

Does anyone remember what the mobile market was like before the iPhone?

Kontra, author of the counternotions blog does.

Remembrance of Things Past
So for a more reasoned perspective, let us take a breath and remember what the world was like before Apple introduced the iPhone:

  1. Carriers ruled the industry with an iron fist
  2. To access carriers’ networks handset makers capitulated everything
  3. Carriers dictated phone designs, features, apps, prices, marketing, advertising and branding
  4. Phones were reduced to cheap, disposable lures for carriers’ service contracts
  5. There was no revenue sharing between carriers and manufacturers
  6. There was no notion of phone networks becoming dumb pipes anytime soon
  7. Affordable, unlimited data plans as standard were unheard of
  8. A phone that would entice people to switch networks by the millions was a pipe dream
  9. Mobile devices were phones first and last, not usable handheld computers
  10. Even the smartest phones didn’t have seamless WiFi integration
  11. Without Visual Voice Mail, messages couldn’t be managed non-linearly
  12. There were no manufacturer owned and operated on-the-phone application stores as the sole source
  13. An on-the-phone store having 65,000 apps downloaded nearly 2 billion times was not on anyone’s radar screen
  14. Low-cost, high-volume app pricing strategy with a 70/30 split didn’t exist
  15. Robust one-click in-app transactions were unknown
  16. There was no efficient, large scale, consistent and lucrative mobile app market for developers large and small
  17. Buttons, keys, joysticks, sliders…anything but the screen was the focus of phones
  18. Phones didn’t come with huge 3.5″ touch screens
  19. Pervasive multitouch, gesture-based UI was science fiction
  20. Actually usable, multi-language, multitouch virtual keyboards on phones didn’t exist
  21. Integrated sensors like accelerometers and proximity detectors had no place in phones
  22. Phones could never compete in 3D/gaming with dedicated portable consoles
  23. iPod-class audio/video players on mobiles didn’t exist
  24. No phone had ever offered a desktop-like web browser experience
  25. Sophisticated SDKs and phones were strangers to each other

If you remember what the MP3 music and player market was like before iPod?

  • Dozens of models with awful interfaces (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Half a dozen lame ways of loading your music (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Slow slow slow loading of music over serial (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Tiny amounts of storage in tiny devices (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Large amounts of storage in big clunky devices (I ‘m looking at you Archos)
  • Cross encoding into proprietary music formats (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Battery life counted in minutes (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Shoddy plastics, serial ports (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Expensive subscription models for proprietary tat.
  • One device eligible for use with bought music (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • Zero music portability (I had a Thomson Lyra)
  • And the list goes on. (Did I mention I had a Thomson Lyra)

So Apple revolutionised this market with the iPod, just as they have recently done the same with the mobile market. What market should they change next?

The Tablet market, no?

Thinking different about AR

Gene Becker starts tearing into the current crop of AR Hypeware with a litany of design faults such as Inaccuracy of position, direction, elevation Line of sight Lat/long is not how we experience the world Simplistic, non-standard data formats Public gesture & social ambiguity Ergonomics Small screen visual clutter These are going to plague AR … Continue reading “Thinking different about AR”

Gene Becker starts tearing into the current crop of AR Hypeware with a litany of design faults such as

  • Inaccuracy of position, direction, elevation
  • Line of sight
  • Lat/long is not how we experience the world
  • Simplistic, non-standard data formats
  • Public gesture & social ambiguity
  • Ergonomics
  • Small screen visual clutter

These are going to plague AR apps though many of the issues are relevant to any mobile application. We have additional limits not mentioned such as in the difference between online storage (which is theoretically unlimited yet static) as opposed to online storage (which is even larger and even dynamic to the point of interactive but subject to signal drop out and bandwidth issues which limit the utility).

I’ve thought about some of these issues – Line of Sight being one specific issue and my resolution was using the OpenStreetMap vector data as an opaque underlay (as opposed to the AR overlay) on an AR camera view in an attempt to obscure some items which should not be seen in line of sight. It’s a hack, it’s a cludge, it’s yet another layer to manage but it might just work.

The Ergonomics and Gesture/Social Ambiguity arguments are going to depend where the AR use it but suffice to say that there’s a lot of work for Mobile apps to use AR ‘vision’ at the moment and not enough work in ‘AR audio’ and ‘AR haptics’. These are going to make it very possible for better AR experiences that do not require holding your phone at an awkward angle. These also, coincidentally, solve some of the issues with small screen clutter – something that has already been solved in both iPhone apps (where we can see examples of excellence as well as the polar opposite) and, ironically, in another Apple device which doesn’t have a screen.

The data formats issue will become moot at some point as we see standards arising not only from platforms gaining prominence not only in the AR space but also in all Location-Aware applications and the Open Data formats which are being pursued by forward-thinking governments.

The problem is that it’s an exciting time. It’s not dissimilar to the web but at least everyone was on a single protocol base there. We all used IP, we all used HTTP and HTML.

Where do we go from there with AR? Where are the published datasources which any AR browser can hook into? At the moment we will have a proliferation of different platforms, companies wanting to have plugins for their platform developed for every service. This is the wrong way to go.

global conversations

Graham Linehan writes: We are sharing links to thought-provoking articles, we are making each other laugh, we are keeping each other up to speed on current events…we are communicating with each other on a platform that encourages good manners, that rewards us when we’re interesting and lightly smacks our hand when we’re not. For the … Continue reading “global conversations”

Graham Linehan writes:

We are sharing links to thought-provoking articles, we are making each other laugh, we are keeping each other up to speed on current events…we are communicating with each other on a platform that encourages good manners, that rewards us when we’re interesting and lightly smacks our hand when we’re not. For the first time in history, the human race is having a global conversation, and despite all our differences, we actually seem to be getting on quite well.

Public Twitter fights notwithstanding, this is the beauty of Twitter. I see Twitter beating the broadcast news by hours and the newspapers by days. I see people of all ages talking in a public manner and without much needing for policing – it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of conversation without it seeming seedy and ‘chatroom-like’. Some people don’t get it and liken it to a chatroom but that just shows they’ve never engaged with it.

It’s not about reading how your favourite singer is “making a cup of tea” or how your favourite cycling athlete is “going out for a ride”. It’s more about finding who within your network – both geographical and social is doing something exciting, who’s holding an event, who’s baking cupcakes, who’s wanting to talk tech, or beauty or creativity or whatever.

Analysts and their fevered iTablet dreams

The hype mill is running overtime. TheStreet’s Scott Moritz writes: Apple’s Tablet Can’t Prevent Sales Malaise Like never before, Apple is at the top of its game. But like any champ, the focus has to be on the next big win. For Apple, the stunning growth streak lives or dies with the upcoming Tablet. So, … Continue reading “Analysts and their fevered iTablet dreams”

The hype mill is running overtime.

TheStreet’s Scott Moritz writes: Apple’s Tablet Can’t Prevent Sales Malaise

Like never before, Apple is at the top of its game. But like any champ, the focus has to be on the next big win.

For Apple, the stunning growth streak lives or dies with the upcoming Tablet.

So, Apple’s success is dependent on a device which may not appear, which may not exist and which Apple has never announced nor promised. Not only that, even if the unannounced Schrodinger’s Tablet does finally exist, apparently it’s not going to sell as well as it might? How does he know? Well – of course – he doesn’t. He just has to fill some column inches. (also see: Scott Moritz: always wrong but keeps trying )

And is this just a rehash of his previous article from March this year?

No question, the tablet will dazzle Apple fans who typically don’t think twice about paying upwards of $2,000 for the latest, greatest Mac. But beyond the core fan base, Apple will discover what other PC makers have known for a while: Consumers find big tablets hard to swallow.

Very droll.

This is why Apple’s stock always dips after their planned events. They might come out with the most revolutionary phone in the universe, but they didn’t produce a Tablet. They might produce the Tablet but they won’t have produced a 48″ screen that folds into a pocket. They might produce a giant folding screen but they won’t have produced a Moon Pony.

Things we know.

The iPod touch will be updated. It’s overdue.
The AppleTV will be updated. Shipping times are long.
Scott Moritz is probably wrong. He usually is.

That’s pretty much it. Anything else is fevered conjecture and link-bait.

Will the Tablet fail?

Frankly I’d rather not offer conjecture here but considering Apple’s turnaround with the iMac, the turnaround of the company into music, the success of the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone, the rise of interest in Mac OS X: I’d rather not bet against them.

All I needed to know about games…

…I learned from writing my own. Lewis Pulsipher at GameCareerGuide writes that All I Really Needed to Know About Games I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons He has some core points which apply to any game but especially one which involves multiple users (a Massively Multiplayer Online Game) for example. As a designer: You don’t … Continue reading “All I needed to know about games…”

…I learned from writing my own.

Lewis Pulsipher at GameCareerGuide writes that All I Really Needed to Know About Games I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons

He has some core points which apply to any game but especially one which involves multiple users (a Massively Multiplayer Online Game) for example.

As a designer:
You don’t need high-level technology to make an “immersive” game.
For human/psychological games (as opposed to computer-mediated challenge games), players enjoy the journey, not the destination.
Some people like to be told stories; others like to make their own.
The objective is to make the players think their characters are going to die, not to kill them.
We all like to improve.
User-generated content enriches a game immensely. (In this case, adventures, monsters, classes, etc.)

Lewis continues:
As a player:
It’s more fun with more than one person.
Cooperation is required for survival.
Think before you leap.
Get organized!
Don’t run headlong where you’ve never been.
Keep track of the stuff you’ve got; otherwise you may forget something that could save your butt.
Always have a viable “Plan B”.
Always have a way out.
Don’t depend on luck!

If your game can take into account all of the above points then you’re well on your way to developing a game that I’d like to play. Nintendo shows us that we don’t need the most cutting edge graphics to make a game that truly involves the players – in fact – the cartoony lack of realism in the games on the Wii platform serve to make it more memorable rather than less when compared to the Hi-Def Not-Quite-Realism that you find on the PS3 and XBOX.

For myself, the ‘fun’ in the game has always been in the story and there is some pseudo-theory around this, the concepts of ‘gamist‘, ‘simulationist‘ and ‘narrativist‘. I identify with the latter category, being more interested in the story, in the interactions and in the ‘soft’ outcomes. In contrast, a simulationist will strive to have the most realistic ‘reality modelling’ experience possible. They might enjoy Call of Duty more than Left4Dead or Halo because the content is ‘realistic’. Zombies and aliens, despite being fun, are not real. Lastly, the gamist is in it for the game. For the challenge, for the achievements and perhaps even competitively for the win. There’s nothing wrong with being in a category and it doesn’t make what you enjoy into BadWrongFun and it’s perfectly possible to jump between categories depending on the game itself. For example, while playing “Infamous”, I was in it for the story and I found “Prototype” to be an unenjoyable button-masher aimed at Gamists but when playing any first person shooter against other humans, I tend to be a determined gamist, it’s all about the challenge and all about the winning. Similarly I want a racing game to have realistic drift physics even if the content is all about superfast floating flying machines armed with missiles and if I die, I just come back to life. It’s a joint gamist/simulationist experience for me.

Games are more fun when you’re not alone and I find the co-operative balance of games like Left4Dead to be immensely compelling because it’s the first game I’ve ever played which must be played cooperatively. Yes, there’s a certain mechanics to making sure you have the right equipment and you know the way in a game like that but similarly the ‘chaos’ introduced by other humans in the game is just the very reason I play – especially as they, through communication, can add unobvious twists to the game itself (like playing Call of Duty using only knives or Left4Dead using only pistols). My love of the story means my motivation to have the right equipment and ensure effective communication with the team is entirely because there’s nothing more frustrating than having to play the same ‘level’ again and again due to the mechanics of a game being poorly thought out. I’ve experienced this mostly with console games which require you to have twitch fingers as well as intimate knowledge of which button has a circle and which has a triangle. The fact this ‘out of game’ knowledge is required, completely jolts me out of immersion in the plot and reminds me I’m mashing buttons on a game controller.

An aside to this is the necessity of controlling player character death. There’s nothing more frustrating than your character dying because her avatar edged a pixel over some mathematical value which dictates whether the character stands or falls. At least, again in Left4Dead, some designers have thought about this. It’s not perfect but it beats the extremes of either falling when your pixels are 51% past the border or being able to stand in mid air because one of your pixels is still touching the edge of the cliff. Always err on the side of playability – as it says above, your job is to inspire the fear of character death in the players, not set out to actually kill them. Don’t punish the player for the poor edge detection algorithm in your game engine or for touching something that doesn’t look dangerous in your description or image.

Don’t miss the point about user-generated content. Some companies see Open Source as being a method of saving on developer time or a political statement designed to attract a certain demographic. I have long been of the opinion that you should let people make up their own stories. Being too restrictive here means there’s no Harry Potter RPG and there are only videogames for the franchise which permit a very limited range of activity. The potential content is controlled, closed, censored and choked. Chairman Mao Zedong of China said:

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.”

before doing his own controlling, closing, censoring and choking.

Whether or not you think he was using this to entice dissidents out of hiding is not what I’m here to debate but what I will say is that this school of thought is pretty much responsible for Twitter and Youtube. What can be more fun than seeing your creation being used in new and innovative ways. Back a hundred years ago in 1996 when I produced my first book, I loved seeing that someone has written extra content or modified my rules – because it meant they read them. I was often asked to explain my design decisions and why several rules were labelled as ‘optional’ and entertained by someone else’s take, someone else’s story using the background and content I had originated.

I’d love to hear some opinions on what is your favourite game and why. Do you identify most with Gamist, Narrativist or Simulationist (also labelled Narratology and Ludology in Aphra Kerr’s book: The Business and Culture of Digital Games.)

Location-aware OpenGov & Crowdsourced Data

I’ve been reading a lot about OpenStreetMap because, for many reasons, travel is something that I’m intending to do a lot more of. Using your Maps app on your SmartPhone when in a foreign country is just a license for your carrier to print money. When you consider the amount of data transmitted it’s evident … Continue reading “Location-aware OpenGov & Crowdsourced Data”

I’ve been reading a lot about OpenStreetMap because, for many reasons, travel is something that I’m intending to do a lot more of.

Using your Maps app on your SmartPhone when in a foreign country is just a license for your carrier to print money. When you consider the amount of data transmitted it’s evident that until roaming costs are brought under control. there’s no sense in using online maps when travelling. Which kinda defeats the purpose.

So, OpenStreetMap, if you download the maps (something that you cannot do with Google Maps) seems to be a much more sensible proposition especially now that storage on SmartPhones is getting to the point that this becomes practical.

So, is a map enough?

Of course it is. But where things become interesting is when you combine them with other sources of data. Such as the newly opened data we’re getting out of OpenDataNI or some of the data which is available from NISRA (though the latter seems all embedded in PDF and not raw data at all).

This sort of ‘real life’ data is of immense interest, if people realise they can ask for it.

What about a location-aware app that:

  • stays open and records one set of location data every minute. What’s the interest there? It tells you where the fast and slow bits of the roads system are. Collate this data with a hundred other users across the province (never mind any other country) and you’ll generate an instant map of where the traffic snarl-ups are. Make it so that you can shift through the data according to time of day and you’ve got the basics of a route planner that will help you see traffic trends ahead. That’s much more useful than having someone sit and count cars all day at a junction.
  • stays open and records any bumps and jolts in the roads system using the built in accelerometer that comes with every new SmartPhone. Built in a threshold value and send any data that exceeds this up to the server. You’ll have to take into account the driver hitting the kerb or the iPhone dropping out of it’s holder but those should be outlying data points – what you’ll get is a bump map (or more accurately, a pothole map) of the province. So you can either avoid those roads or ask your local politician why this has gotten so bad and not been fixed.
  • permits the average citizen to report civil issues such as vandalism, broken kerbstones, potholes, non-functional streetmaps, illegal dumping or other civic issues. They take a photo, maybe add an audio report or text tag and the data is sent up to a server. Combine them into a map and look for which councils have the most issues. Offer the data to the councils to help them find the issues that plague them. Keep a report open on which councils respond better.
  • listens for keywords that a driver may shout. And we can see which parts of the road and which times of the day frustrate the most drivers. Yes, it’s a simplistic measure of Road Rage but a relatively cathartic one. Maybe the DoE Roads Service can focus on those areas with the most reports and see what they can do to alleviate it. It’s not always going to be other drivers.
  • gives you some advance warning of roadworks? There must be a database of this somewhere within the Roads Service – the question is how to get that data. And have the app do it’s own reporting so we can crowdsource what data we can’t get from official sources. I’d certainly be interested in seeing the difference between reported roadworks and planned roadworks – I’d expect there to be none?
  • tells you where the nearest taxi is and gives you an indication of it’s availability. All Taxi companies install GPS units in their taxis – we just want to know who is available and close so we can get a taxi quick. On the taxi front, why is there not an easy lookup for the new Taxi plates so we can type in the taxi number (or God forbid, photograph it) and be quickly given back the Registration plate it belongs to along with a photo of the taxi driver meant to be driving it.
    Green Taxi Plate

    That would give me heaps more confidence in the system. I don’t want to know his name, how many kids he has or whether he’s got a Microbiology degree – I just want to know if he’s who he says he is. Anyone can stick up a coloured plate.
  • tells you where your nearest bus stop is and tells you where the next bus to that stop is, where it’s going and it’s estimated time of arrival. Every bus has a GPS sender in it so we know the data is available. And we’d need access to the timetables as well. It would mean having useful data on when we’d need to leave the office to get a certain bus whether that bus is delayed or whether we should run for the train instead. Whether or not this be expanded to include reporting of cleanliness or vandalism or even just reporting exactly how late the bus was is up for debate.
  • gives you the approximate location of the flight your gran is on so you can choose not to wait in the expensive car park and go have a coffee somewhere that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Tie that in with the flights timetables and we’re laughing. (Today we were picking a friend up from Belfast City Airport. And the flight was diverted to the International. BCA did not know. It landed safely. BCA did not know. In fact, they had no information at all on what it was doing.)
  • shows you examples of urban archaeology. There are thousands of pictures out there showing what the city looked like ten years ago, fifty years ago, a hundred years ago. Why not use a street map to provide a ‘historical Street View’ so we can see what buildings used to look like, what traffic used to pass here and view landmarks which have long since disappeared.
  • provides a glimpse into the future. I think there’s real potential for architects and city planners to get out of their micro-models and into the real world and use these devices to help visualise what buildings will look like in situ. I’d reckon if that had been done down near the Waterfront, we’d not see the Waterfront hidden by architecture that comes from the breeze block era. It’s a beautiful building. Surrounded by horrors.
    image.aspx
  • shows you all of the tourism events happening today in a visual form. Drag a slider or swipe over to 11 am and see what’s on where. Drag again to 2:30 and see what’s going on there. Community groups and Tourism agencies should be all over this.

The information context we need on all of this is location and time. Without both of these, there’s not enough context to make them truly useful.

We’d need everyone in every country to be using apps like this so there’s definitely an Export potential and a method of getting the information in there. These sorts of apps would be incredibly suitable for the “Mobile Apps Challenge” that is being organised by Digital Circle and Momentum, details of which will be forthcoming once sponsors are confirmed.

All of this becomes extremely exciting when you start looking at the apps which are driving AR to the top of the Hype Curve but even without AR, this is useful stuff.

Northern Ireland Water: Sewage Spill Shenanigens

He’s referring to this. Northern Ireland Water discharged untreated sewage into a body of water right beside a bathing and dinghy sailing area at Ballyholme in Bangor. And they were fined £2000 plus £25 court costs. If you think about it, they might as well just start pumping it in there wholesale – might be … Continue reading “Northern Ireland Water: Sewage Spill Shenanigens”

Screen shot 2009-08-26 at 20.25.29

He’s referring to this.

Northern Ireland Water discharged untreated sewage into a body of water right beside a bathing and dinghy sailing area at Ballyholme in Bangor.

And they were fined £2000 plus £25 court costs.

If you think about it, they might as well just start pumping it in there wholesale – might be cheaper than actually treating it. What utter bastards. This occurred in August 2007 so it’s taken two years for the offence to be punished?

I’m surprised at the Environment Agency. They should have gone for blood especially because it was a government body which committed the offence. They may say that no-one is above the law but does £2000 really reflect the seriousness of the offence?

iPhone imitators are Cargo Cultists

Via O’Reilly Radar: “In this week’s Ignite Show Jeff Veen, well-known for his design work on Google Analytics, Wikirank and Typekit, lays out a strong argument for why iPhone imitators are the cargo cults of the digital era. The people building touchscreen knock-offs don’t understand what makes the iPhone great. So instead of creating an … Continue reading “iPhone imitators are Cargo Cultists”

Via O’Reilly Radar:

“In this week’s Ignite Show Jeff Veen, well-known for his design work on Google Analytics, Wikirank and Typekit, lays out a strong argument for why iPhone imitators are the cargo cults of the digital era. The people building touchscreen knock-offs don’t understand what makes the iPhone great. So instead of creating an end-to-end service they attempt to imitate it’s flashiest features – kind of like Pacific Islanders who built “planes” out of bamboo.”

It seems obvious when someone says it but this is how we all feel when someone tells me about how the new XXXX phone from XXXXX will be an iPhone Killer. They also don’t get it that you have to be BETTER not ‘almost as good as’ in more than one notable feature in order to assume that title.

This is what upsets me so much about Nokia’s recent handsets and the Ovi store. It was obvious what was good, they had a year to do something better with a plethora of content and developers behind them. And they still didn’t manage anything like the iPhone and AppStore.

Such a damn shame.

AR – Openness and Interoperability

Y’see, it’s all about the SPAM. From 5 barriers to a web that’s everywhere Interoperability, standards and openness have been what has let the Web scale and flourish beyond the suffocating walled gardens of its early days. The same is true of telephones, railroads and countless other networked technologies. Logically then, a lack of interoperability … Continue reading “AR – Openness and Interoperability”

Y’see, it’s all about the SPAM.

From 5 barriers to a web that’s everywhere

Interoperability, standards and openness have been what has let the Web scale and flourish beyond the suffocating walled gardens of its early days. The same is true of telephones, railroads and countless other networked technologies. Logically then, a lack of interoperability between AR environments would be a tragedy of the same type as if the web had remained defined by the islands of AOL and Compuserve or Internet Explorer, forever. (A lack of data portability when it comes to Augmented Reality could cause substantial psychological distress!)

As they continue in the article, no-one has yet published anything representing an open platform free of legal fears but there is an obvious attempt to create a beachhead by a couple of companies and it’s going to take a while for this to settle.

I have a mixed opinion. Control will go to the user and while I tolerate adverts in the web, I wouldn’t want them in Twitter and I won’t want them in my AR lenses unless they are heavily influenced by context. At the moment I see adverts based on the content of the web pages I visit or, in the case of television, on the time and channel – which leads to a very unsatisfactory experience. I don’t care about your 1U servers or your blades. I won’t be replacing my graphics card and I’m probably never going to buy a giant plush microbe.

If I’m walking along the road using my AR browser, I don’t want to see adverts for tampons, viagra, designer watches, managed servers, custom business logos or whatever. The real world is filled with advertising already, I only want to see adverts that have chosen context.

If we move to a standard display platform, like we have with the web, will I still have control over what gets downloaded to my handset? Remember, the data deal we sign up to with our phones is very different to our home broadband. If we step outside an arbitrary border, we start racking up huge charges. Coverage is often poor and every image is going to be worth thousand and thousands of words so online advertising is going to drain our pockets and leech our patience in new and tedious ways.

I’m all for an open platform – but let me choose the filters by which I can see the augmented world.