You obviously don't come to this blog for the bleeding edge technology updates of say TechCrunch of Endgadget, so you'll forgive me for posting "old" news.

I thought this was an interesting post about mixed reality and social networks and Google Wave.

And completely unrelated...Flowing Data has posted a nice tutorial on creating an area graph using Flare.

Junaio was recently released on the IPhone.  It is another AR Browser like application, but allows you to place objects in the scene.  In the video on the link the women places a dinosaur in the scene next to the Golden Gate Bridge.  She was even able to scale it using gestures, which is pretty cool.  Then she posts it to Facebook, and when her friend looks at it he jumps back as if he is startled to find a dinosaur in the picture.  I'd be concerned with the friend's ability to distinguish low res 3d visuals from reality if this were true.  My favorite part of the video is when she using the AR browser application to find information about the square she is standing in.  She pans around and touches an icon to find out that there is a coffes shop in the square.  When she puts the camera down the coffee shop is RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER.  If we need an AR Browser to tell us that there is something right in front of us then...well either these are tears of laughter streaming down my face, or I'm really really sad for the future of humanity.  :).

Anyway, I'm mostly jealous that I can't try out the application because my IPod touch doesn't have a camera.  I too want to stand there and take pictures of strangers to put pumpkins in their hands.  It looks like a really well made app, and they've put some effort into it.  Wish I had their skills...  At present I'm struggling with my app.

First off, I hate the term Augmented Reality.  Augment whose reality?  I much prefer to term Mixed Realities.  It speaks more to a blending of virtual and physical objects.  With this last sentence, I give away my generation.  I am part of that generation that still sees the Internet as something separate from the "physical" world.  The latest generation doesn't have that distinction.  So again, which reality are you augmenting?

You might have heard something about Augmented reality before.  It has become quite popular for marketing. Another form of it has become really popular as an AR Browser like Wikitude.  The AR Browser basically overlays information on top of the phone's camera.  This is typically commercial information, e.g. nearest restaurant.  The tag for that restaurant sits in the direction of the restaurant.  Now that the novelty of AR is starting to wear off, people are questioning its value at all.  Does it really add to the user's experience?  In most cases, probably not.  Does anyone care that you can hold a virtual whopper through your computer web cam?  Like I said, the novelty is wearing off.

I am working on a project that plans on using Mixed Reality, or an AR Browser, as a navigation tool.  I was asked, why go to all the trouble of the AR Browser and not just put points on a map.  I've been giving it some thought...I actually think that navigating with an AR Browser is actually much more intuitive.  As much as we like to think everyone loves our maps, and has no problem using it, the truth is people can't read maps (well a lot of people can't, at least).  What's easier, find points on a map, figure out where you are on the map, which direction you are facing and which direction you want to go; or hold up the phone turn till you find what you are looking for and start walking?  Some of the former can be automated, such as pinpointing your location on the map, and using the compass to turn the direction of the map. Both unfortunately suffer from hardware limitations.  The compass for example is really sensitive to interference.

 Yes, it is akward to hold up the phone, but it is done a million times a day for other reasons so it isn't hard to adapt.

 It's easy to draw comparisons with the hype surrounding Virtual Reality in the 90s and the hype of today.  Virtual reality didn't really catch on in mainstream, I mean who needs the neck strain of wearing those helmets.  The problem is, these are two different conceptions of space.  Virtual reality worked to bring things to you while sat in a single place.  The promise of time travelling virtually for example.  AR Browsers are meant to direct you to the place.  I think they stand a better chance of not falling by the wayside because of this.  You are taking the "virtual" wherever you go with you.

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.