I've been thinking a lot about the latest Mixed Reality news to come out from Mobilizy about their open standard for Augmented Reality browsers.  This is discussed here and the standard is available here.  The standard is based on Google Earth's KML specification, ammending it with AR browser functionality.  While there is buzz around it, the lack of detail has created loads of questions.  Will it cover 3D, heights, orientation, etc... I'm excited and skeptical at the same time.  I like that they are creating an open standard, and on the surface KML seems to be a good standard to build on.  Last thing the world needs an entirely new specification, so at least they are trying to build on an existing one.  KML immediately provides locational information, as well as style information for the icons that hover on the AR Browser's screen.  The description of the placemark provides support for HTML tags.  Perhaps the most appealing part of the idea is being able to load in an AR Browser or in Google Earth.  KML though lacks a lot, from a GIS perspective at least.  No attribute information outside of the descriptions.  No metadata.  So I'm skeptical...  I want to see more of the standards before I rush to start using it a future project that I hopefully will be working on.

3D support is an interesting question though.  I think this is a question being asked by people who don't really know about KML and Google Earth.  Google Earth can already parse 3D geometry in the form of a Collada file.  Just look at all the files created in sketchup and geotagged ready for Google Earth.  So it isn't the specification that needs to support 3D, but the AR Browser.  I myself asked thought of it wrong when I threw the question out to the twitterverse (no one said anything), but I was thinking taking Collada specifications and incorporating it into KML.  This of course would make KML a beast of an xml file to parse.  Best to keep them as two separate standards and let them do what they do best.  Since Layar announced their 3D support recently, I wonder what type of file format they are using.  If it is Collada, then it wouldn't be difficult to 'augment' the ARML standard to includ ARCollada or something more clever. 

Back in Colorado for the week.  Then headed to the AAG Conference in Las Vegas next week.

 Before I left, I needed to create some Service Areas using Network Analyst.  It didn't need to be exact but more of a visual example.  I started by calculating the length of each road segment using the geometry calculator.  Then I assigned average speeds to each type of road (e.g. 30 kmh for a 4wd road).  Then for travel time I divided the length (in km) by the speed to get the time it would take to travel that segment.  I also calculated this in minutes by multiplying the travel time in hours by 60.  Finally I created the network dataset using ArcCatalog, created a new service area layer then processed it calculating a 2 hour service area.  It kept stopping at 45 minutes and I thought I was doing something wrong, given that I had never done this before.  Turned out I had an overshoot at one the point where it would stop calculating.  The lesson - never trust someone elses data.  I should have run a topology before doing any of this, and saved myself a headache.

 I was jetlagged last night and woke up at midnight.  So I spent my time learning about Augmented reality.  I still dislike the term, because I feel that the data that supposedly augments reality is really part of reality anyway.  The wikipedia page as a good introduction.  It also had a link to a video about Wikitude Travel.  Now that is pretty cool.

Was thinking about the Seattle Examiner switching to online only.  We hear a lot about big brother references, but this one made me think of it again.  In 1984 Winston Smith's job is to alter newstories to fit whatever the government's current thinking is, new allies were always allies and never enemies, etc...At least with a hardcopy paper newspaper, it is harder to change the story.  But if everything is online, it is easy to change history because the newspaper stores the data.  Not really a conspiracy theorist, just thought it was interesting given the Seattle Examiner's shift and the NYTimes and Guardians APIs realeasing historical newstories.  What does this have to do with GIS - absolutely nothing...