Seems like today is filled with examples of science fiction becoming reality and adding to my WITII? list of “What if the Impossible Isn’t?” Below is the latest example of some significant advances in gesture based computing, Minority Report style. Be sure to follow the link to the full article for some great videos to show you how this works.
For me gesture based computing is but one of the many exciting ways we are finally closing the gap between ourselves and the “machines” we interact with. These kinds of far more natural based interfaces which also include things like touch based interfaces, voice controlled and direct mind/brain controlled interfaces.
In 2008, I attended a meeting in Madrid, Spain that featured the coolest demonstration I had ever seen. The problem was that I wasn’t allowed to talk about what I had seen because the company was still in stealth-mode. More importantly, several governments, including the U.S. government were still exploring various parts of the technology for next-generation computing systems, so parts of this were very confidential. By the end of that year, Oblong Industries had revealed itself, but still little was said about its project. Finally, people are starting to talk about it.
While we may not have been at this year’s TED conference, apparently, Oblong was. And apparently, it wowed the crowd. And it should have. If you’ve seen the movie Minority Report, you’ve seen the system they’re building.
No, really. The co-founder of Oblong, John Underkoffler, is the man who came up with the gesture-based interface used in the Steven Spielberg movie. And now he’s building it in real life.
In a former lifetime when I was championing metadata and standards around the world one of the most common questions and reasons for doubting this was the future, was that it would be impossible to ever have enough metadata. Where was it all going to come from and who was going to create it all? With most people still thinking that metadata was the same as library cards in the catalogue and that all metadata had to be entered by us humans, it was a reasonable concern. I remember my dear friend Erik Duval and I, and others, suggesting that this was not impossible at all and that much of the metadata would come from automated metadata generation. At the time we could only point to a limited number of very early examples. Clocks and GPS sensor in cameras for example could automatically add time and location to the information of each photo which also includes all the details of the camera used, exposure settings and more. But this was barely the beginning and now it seems like I’m finding more examples everyday and ones which are creating metadata at a truly breathtaking rates and scale. And not just simple metadata but very rich and deeply detailed sets of metadata are being created.
A recent example (below) prompting this post was how SimpleGeo, (a relatively small startup that hasn’t even launched!), is already indexing over one million locations PER HOUR. Listen to to SimpleGeo founder Joe Stump describe some of the metadata this is generating and just one example of how this could be used in this quote from
"Location-based devices only provide a latitude and a longitude, sometimes an altitude," he said. "What they don't provide is a ZIP Code, city, state, county, weather data, messages and photos posted near the site. They don't provide business listings, Wikipedia entries, census data (for demographics), articles written or posted near the location," all of which SimpleGeo does. For example, a location-based game set in San Francisco could accurately display its players gleaming in the California sun, or obscured by Golden Gate fog, based on the real-time weather data from around town.”
Even this is but the beginnings of the gathering of metadata snowflakes as they pick up speed rolling down the hill turning into an exponentially growing snowball and avalanche of metadata. Watch more so for the kinds of previously unimaginable benefits and capabilities which all this metadata will enable.
In a former lifetime when I was championing metadata and standards around the world one of the most common questions and reasons for doubting this was the future, was that it would be impossible to ever have enough metadata. Where was it all going to come from and who was going to create it all? With most people still thinking that metadata was the same as library cards in the catalogue and that all metadata had to be entered by us humans, it was a reasonable concern. I remember my dear friend Erik Duval and I, and others, suggesting that this was not impossible at all and that much of the metadata would come from automated metadata generation. At the time we could only point to a limited number of very early examples. Clocks and GPS sensor in cameras for example could automatically add time and location to the information of each photo which also includes all the details of the camera used, exposure settings and more. But this was barely the beginning and now it seems like I’m finding more examples everday and ones which are creating metadata at a truly breathtaking rates and scale. And not just simple metadata but very rich and deeply detailed sets of metadat are being created.
A recent example (below) prompting this post was how SimpleGeo, (a relatively small starttup that hasn’t even launched!), is already indexing over one million locations PER HOUR. Listen to to SimpleGeofounder Joe Stump describe some of the metadata this is generating and just one example of how this could be used in this quote from
"Location-based devices only provide a latitude and a longitude, sometimes an altitude," he said. "What they don't provide is a ZIP Code, city, state, county, weather data, messages and photos posted near the site. They don't provide business listings, Wikipedia entries, census data (for demographics), articles written or posted near the location," all of which SimpleGeo does. For example, a location-based game set in San Francisco could accurately display its players gleaming in the California sun, or obscured by Golden Gate fog, based on the real-time weather data from around town.”
Even this is but the beginnings of the gathering of metadata snowflakes as they pick up speed rolling down the hill turning into an exponentially growing snowball and avalanche of metadata. Watch more so for the kinds of previously unimaginable benefits and capabilities which all this metadata will enable.
Note: I am much better at starting things than finishing them and have this bad habit with starting postings that never get posted. This one has been sitting in my drafts folder for several months now and long overdue to finally get to you so here it is. The iPad announcement has since come and gone and will help fuel some of what I'm looking for but as you'll read I'm still optimistic and holding out for a future covered in "digital goo". - Wayne
Seems I’m on a bit of a print sprint of late (see previous List with a Twist posting for example), though I’m surely spending more time in front of a screen than ever. Today’s update is about the future of magazines and an update on my long standing quest and wait for the arrival of true digital paper or digital “goo”.
I LOVE Magazines!
I read a lot of magazines—more than one a day—on a very wide range of topics. And I’m one of those silly people who reads every page of the magazine, including all the ads. So as digitally inclined and geeky as I may be, let’s get this out of the way up front: I LOVE magazines.
Things I love (and want to retain) about magazines:
Focused topical areas
Relative, informative, and clever (sometimes) advertisements
Great glossy color photos, graphics
Serendipitous discovery of cool new ideas, products, etc.
Reading anywhere I’m sitting, having it in my hand/lap rather than on my desk
Just the right size/heft for handheld/lap reading
Easy on the eyes for extended reading
Cleared for take off and landing times! (reading anywhere such as planes)
No cords or batteries
However, as with any love or relationship, here are a few things I don’t like so much and would like to see improved:
Physical delivery format limits me to mail subscriptions, magazine stands, etc.
Weight. On my last flight 28 lbs/12.7kg of my bags were magazines!
Wastefulness. Apparently 15% sale of magazines in bookstands is considered high!
Static images only
Read only
Requires good external lighting
No easy search/find capabilities, especially across issues
No connections to related items of interest
No cut, copy, paste, share, keep (I used to have boxes full of torn-out magazine pages)
No disctionary or lookup
No easy way to archive them
Can I do some of this reading and resolve some of these problems on my laptop, tabletPC, smartphone, eReader? Yes, but not well, and with no where near the same reading experience of real magazines.
I Love Books Too
I don’t equate magazines at all with books, though books too are another love. Many of the items on my like/don’t-like list apply to books as well, but my Kindle has resolved most of my don’t-like list items and it has increased my book reading quantity and quality. I’ve still got some key items on my wish list for the next eBooks version such as a touch screen interface, handwritten notes, etc., but the ease of getting new books no matter where I am, access to so many (including almost all of the classics for free), linked note-taking and having my entire library with me all the time (including manuals for all my boat equipment) has been one of the best experiences in the past few years.
And for me, Kindle passes the most important test of all for book reading—I can lose myself in the story. By this I mean I am unaware that I’m reading, paper or otherwise and I'm in the story or in my thoughts as I read! Much of this is due to the very paper-like screen technology (E Ink in the case of Kindle and many other eReaders) as well as its baby bear (not too big, not too small) size and weight.
eMagazines?
So far, eReaders and tablets don’t work too well with magazines…at least not for me. I’ve tried quite a few and continue to try more of them—both software and hardware based. But with magazines, I’m looking for a different experience: color is critical, so is size of the images (larger), and yet not larger in weight and size in my hand/lap. However, I’m seeing some help on the horizon for my magazine reading and in the short term (next year), I think some of the new digital formats could provide some near-term solutions.
Check out the video below for something we’ll almost assuredly see in the next few months, and which has some promise. If you’re like me, you’ll need to look beyond the content of this example (Sports Illustrated), but I do like much of what I see in the demo (thanks to Dan Pink for the tip). Peter Kafka also has a posting on this: “Game On: Time Inc. Shows Off a Tabletized Sports Illustrated”
I am especially intrigued by the interface and the nice mix of old and new with such things as retaining all the familiarity of the old, a print- and paper-based magazine, blended with new capabilities, such as richer content with video and audio, search, rearrangement, sharing, and linking. This video is well worth 3 minutes of your time. Have a look and see what you come away with?
Note that pretty much everything you see in this demo, and what I’m most intrigued by are the changes in content and interface features. However just as important as these will be the issues of the hardware and the physical attributes of what comes next.
Here is another example of a different set of perspectives on what the future of eMagazines might look like. It’s worth watching to see what these researchers and developers assessed to be some of the essential elements of the magazine reading experience which we want to retain and what we want to avoid.
I’ve been a tabletPC champion and user for over 10 years (bought one of the first Apple Newtons too!) and still believe that tabletPC-based features, especially screen-based features such as multi-touch, “flippable”, handwriting recognition and input, and so on will become standard features on all laptops and all screens for that matter. At this point in time, tabletPCs are the best and almost only choice for any digital magazine reading I do, but the benefits I get from magazines are not there. Much of the problem is due to the physical limitations of the device, too thick, heavy, and clunky. And there is still no help with subscriptions, integrated note taking, integration of content across devices, common formats, ease of access, and very limited content beyond what is in the print versions.
It is no coincidence then that there is so much rumor and hype surrounding things like the upcoming “iPad” and rumblings from other hardware sources. It may also bode well that some of those in the publishing world are taking a more future-oriented view of these developments, such as is demonstrated by Time Inc. in the video above and by this more recent announcement ofWired's upcoming version for the iPad. Adobe is also rumored to be developing a publishing tool and magazine reader for tablet devices. And here is a recent list of "5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010". At the very least, 2010 promises to be a significant year for more options that may help deliver some of my wish list items for magazine-type reading.
Digital Goo: The Only Book or Magazine I Ever Need?
As excited and optimistic as I am that we will see all of the above, and more over the coming year, I’m holding out for a completely different development—digital goo. This is what I’ve been asking for and evangelizing about for more than 20 years. Digital goo will be the advent of “real” digital paper, virtual paper or whatever we come to call it, and more importantly, will be a major shift in the way we think of, access, create, and consume content.
Here is an excerpt from an old paper that will give you an idea of what I have in mind for “digital goo”. I wrote this back in the 1990’s, so you’ll have to pardon the black and white and television orientation, but I think you’ll get the idea. It is as simple as it is profound, and yes, I’m still waiting.
… imagine a substance at the molecular level where each molecule is a tiny sphere where one half of its surface is black and the other half white. Each black and white sphere can easily be controlled by electrical input so that either the white or the black side is facing up. Now, mix this substance into paint or wood pulp or plastic and you suddenly have the ability to make ANY surface digital and capable of displaying ANY image you’d like with almost infinite resolution.
You can see the possibilities. Imagine binding a few pages of digital paper together to create truly digital books! Oh, and note that the images on this digital paper can move, so suddenly that you can be watching “TV (the content) in a book.” Just throw in some other colors with those black and white molecular spheres and we’ve got color screens literally EVERYWHERE! An equally frightening and exciting vision for most of us, I suspect. Based on what I’ve been privileged to see in research labs for the past few years, the introduction of this technology into the marketplace can’t be far off.
Therefore, I’m hoping that the next iteration of eBooks will consist of a few pages of real digital paper bound into the only book/magazine/paper I’ll ever need. These pages will be made by adding some “digital goo” to the regular production of paper, or paint, producing sheets of relatively ordinary looking and feeling paper which are now essentially “just” digital surfaces capable of displaying any content at near infinite resolution including video and animations. This same digital paper could also accept inputs such as touch and handwriting.
For me at least, I still want multiple pages, and I think we may see a renaissance of books as a format and form factor in this regard. Maybe it is just a function of my rather severe ADD affliction, which results in my flipping back and forth through multiple pages of a magazine that I’m reading. I bring most of my laptops to their knees because at any one time, I usually have more than 30 tabs running in my browser, and more than 10 other apps running at the same time. But I think we all have versions of this problem, and having multiple pages, both for just larger display areas (think centerfolds and flip outs) as well as speed of access, means that this will become a very common and highly desirable feature.
Research is going on to support much of this and I’m sure that like most things, it will be here sooner than we expect and also take longer than we expect for us to take advantage of.
Peter Kafka in another related posting on Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine finished with the following paragraph that seems just so apropos for the world of exponential change we are living in and a fitting end to this post:
“But all of this assumes that consumers, who’ve shown no inclination to pay for this stuff on the Web, will be willing to pay for it once it appears on devices no one owns yet. We’ll find out soon enough.”
In Douglas Adam’s fun look at the future in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there is something he called the Babel Fish which was literally a small fish which “when inserted into the ear converted sound waves into brain waves, neatly crossing the language divide between any species you should happen to meet whilst traveling in space.”
As change continues at its exponential rate more and more of science fiction such as this becomes reality. While we are still some time away from full realtime audio translations, we continue to get closer and closer as some of the recent announcements from Google for example demonstrate. In the posting below you can see how Google Goggles enables you to take a picture of some text such as a menu item and have the image converted into text via OCR and then translated.
UPDATE: Here's a recently released video to show you all this and more:
And at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Feb 15, 2010) Google CEO Eric Schmidt demonstrated some upcoming speech to text based translations where your can say a sentence into your phone for example and have this come out as translated text appearing on the screen. This in turn could be converted via text to speech so the person you are talking to could also hear it in their language. Real time translated conversations are likely still several years away, but examples like this show that it will likely be sooner than we expect.
However what caught more of my attention was his more general observation about the confluence of powerful devices connected to much more powerful 'cloud' servers to deliver
"things you can do that never occurred to you as being possible."
Quite right Eric and thanks for adding to the growing list of examples to my ongoing asking “What if the impossible isn’t?”
In his keynote speech today at the Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed off what could end up being a crucial tool for anyone trying to figure out a menu in a different language or a street sign in a foreign country.Google Goggles, which creates search queries based on images instead of typed-in keywords, will soon start to be able to translate from foreign languages usingGoogle Translate. It will do this using optical character recognition to first convert the images of letters into words it can understand, and then put those through Google translate
Oh, biomimetic desigin. Is there anything you can’t do? Well, at any rate, you’re doing this, which is cool enough for now. Qualcomm is putting out a new display technology they call “Mirasol,” which uses reflective bits of color to display an image, much like the way the iridescent scales on butterfly wings do. They claim it draws even less power than e-ink, which is really saying something.
I continue to be impressed by all the great work coming out of Microsoft Research the past year or more and this presentation by Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows some of the most recent examples. They are certainly providing great answers to my constant asking of “What if the Impossible Isn’t?”
I picked up on Blaise and the work he and his crew were doing over a year ago, initially with their creation of the Seadragon technology which they brought with them when they joined MS research and used it to create Photosynth which continues to amaze and impress me as well.
It seems like much of their research is centered around visual computing and interfaces and in my post a few days ago “Seeing is Believing 2.0?” I mentioned two other MS Research projects in this area, Pivot and SecondLight. Today this presentation by Blaise is online from the TED 2010 conference where he shows how they are integrating a lot of technology including Flickr, Seadragon and Photosynth along with some Augmented Reality into Bing maps to enable some amazing new capabilities and possibilities.
Watch the video and I think you too will be impressed not only at the technology but with the new level of functionality and value these mashups are driving into maps. It is really the whole area of using location as the grounding context for a huge array of other information and uses.
The New Frontier? Going Inside
In one of my original postings on Photosynth I suggested/hoped that what we would see next was an ability a bit like a “cosmic zoom” * where we could zoom either up or down almost infinitely. Up into the cosmos of space and down onto not only the street but inside of buildings and then below into the sea.
* If you’ve never seen Cosmic Zoom, or it has been a while since you watched this 1968 video/animation from the National Film Board of Canada, I’ve embedded it at the bottom so you can treat yourself.
As usual change is occurring exponentially so it looks like Microsoft already has my wish! As you’ve hopefully just seen in the video above Bing maps now provide an inside view capability where we can go from the outside street views into the inside of buildings. They gain this in part by having dedicated “backpack cams” which can be taken inside public buildings and places to provide detailed inside views. But my real excitement is about the ability to “go inside” via all the geo tagged photos from “the rest of us” that are posted to Flickr. This is where the power of Photosynth really shows some promise to me as it stitches together any number of photos by aligning them in 3D space such that we end up with a highly integrated patchwork of all these interrelated photos. This scales extremely well when you think of how many photos there are in Flickr (5,384 posted in the last MINUTE, 2.2 million geotagged the past month) and the Seadragon technology allows this to all happen extremely fast and with no apparent slowdown no matter how images are involved. You’ll also see in the demo how they are able to add in video including a live feed that is similarly aligned within the maps and photos. Imagine when (surely not if) there is the ability to similarly include all the videos up on the web and not “just” photos.
Look Up!
As if this wasn’t all more than enough to continue my fascination, it looks like they are also addressing my cosmic zoom up wish as well. At the very end of the video Blaise was out of time but managed to demo an upcoming integration of Worldwide Telescope into Bing maps. I what i thought was a very intuitive implementation you can simply look up into the sky to start seeing the imagery and data of the night sky from wherever you are standing (on the map).
Location as Context
As I mentioned at the beginning I think we need to start thinking less about these as “maps” or at least redefine what maps are as we evolve more ways to use location as a central form of context within which we work with an view data, especially visual data. Time is another bit of context and while it is not shown in the video above, because all the photos and imagery is time stamped you can go back and forth in time as well to see what things looked like in the past and then by adding layers on top, Augmented Reality, we can also see future scenarios such as buildings and reconstruction for example. Blaise mentioned in the early part of his demo that they have found examples where Photosynth has included some very old photos and by setting the time back they are able to see the streets of Seatlle with horses and carriages.
Rethinking & Redefining
So as you are thinking about all these new capabilities start to think how this is all part of fundamentally redefining or notion of maps and more so of search, (think spatial) and how we are quickly transfoming from consumer to creators. These and other changes are also tranforming how we find, discover and learn just the right people, things, locations at just the right time.
PS. FWIW, keep your eyes on both what’s coming out of MS Research as well as what lies ahead for the increased amount of collaboration between Microsoft, Yahoo, Flickr and Facebook.
Microsoft stock and business may be rather cold but their research work is HOT from what I’ve been seeing the past year. Let me bring but two recent examples to your attention and see if you don’t agree. These are also more examples for my ongoing quest around “What if the impossible isn’t?” or WITII?
The first is one called MS Pivot which tries to enable us to see the web almost literally as a web rather than just a set of pages. It works primarily with photos right now and I originally came across the underlying technology over a year ago when they were working on Photosynth, which is also equally worth checking out BTW, here is my previous post with my thoughts of how I see Photosynth technology being used.
As you watch, start to rethink your understanding of what search and filtering are really about and see some of the new possibilities Pivot enables.
The other bit of MS research to bring to your attention today is called SecondLight and for a metadata guy like me, this really catches my attention as a way to enable some truly powerful ways of visualizing underlying data, meta or not. This one is really a case of where it is much easier to learn by watching rather than reading so check out the video below and you’ll quickly see what this is all about. The first half of the video will show you what it does and the second half will show you how it works. I’m pretty sure by the end you too will be excited as you start to imagine the possibilities for use and especially for learning.
Whatever you may think of Microsoft, this is a great pair of examples of the kind of research which major corporations can contribute to and which bode well for our future innovations and discoveries. I hope that by bringing these capabilities to your attention we can collectively get better at “readiness for the unexpected” an the premature arrival of the future.
I’ve long lamented the fact that for all the computing power we have at our avail, and in spite of it growing exponentially, it still seems that it is all quite “dumb” in terms of not knowing much about me, my situation, my habits, etc. I wrote about this back in the 90’s that it was like having an assistant with no memory and no learning ability. You had to teach them, each time, how to do everything you wanted them to do, But it seemed inevitable that in the future we would see this change as computers and applications got smarter. We’ve seen some progress in the years since but it has been mostly on that initial low and flat feeling part of exponential change and I think we are just about to hit the inflection or tipping point in this area.
One indicator is the recent announcement below from Siri of their voice based assistant app. It shows much promise and will help you see the distinction between mere voice recognition and voice based assistance. The assistance part comes when the app is able to not just recognize what you said but to interpret it and take actions as a result. For example it hear you say “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” and it will do everything from finding the closest Il Fornaio restaurant, display driving directions on a map and book the reservation for two. There is still much work to be done to make this more ubiquitous and find ways of hooking into many other services, but it is a significant step towards true smart assistance that we all need and I’m optimistic that the exponential curve of the Snowflake Effect of mass customization and personalization continues to shoot every upward.
A new app invites you to command your iPhone in the same way that Captain Kirk addressed the Enterprise’s computer.
Siri's visual interface displays a transcription of what you say, then hands the data off to an appropriate web service or search engine.
Siri, an artificial intelligence-based voice-recognition startup, launched an iPhone app incorporating its technology on Friday. With the app running, you can address requests to your phone verbally, asking it things like, “Will it rain today?” or “Where is a good place for pizza nearby?” and “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” The Siri app parses the sound, interprets the request, and hands it off to an appropriate web service, such as OpenTable, Yelp, CitySearch, and so on. It displays the results onscreen as it goes, giving you a chance to correct or adjust your request via onscreen taps.
It’s the most sophisticated voice recognition to appear on a smartphone yet. While Google’s Nexus One offers voice transcription capabilities — so you can speak to enter text into a web form, for instance — the Nexus One doesn’t actually interpret what you’re saying.
The word and concept of motivation is a very popular one these days, largely fueled by Dan Pink's new book "Drive" (well worth the read)
So this short article caught my attention and matches my sentiments that the preface to the question "What motivates people?" is "it depends". Depends on the context and the situation I or anyone else is in at the time. This is the Snowflake Effect on motivation. As Paul puts it:
“But here's the point: What motivates you, may not motivate me. Also, what motivates you today, may not work tomorrow.”
In 2008, I attended a meeting in Madrid, Spain that featured the coolest demonstration I had ever seen. The problem was that I wasn’t allowed to talk about what I had seen because the company was still in stealth-mode. More importantly, several governments, including the U.S. government were still exploring various parts of the technology for next-generation computing systems, so parts of this were very confidential. By the end of that year, Oblong Industries
had revealed itself
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