Magic Mirror

Augmented Reality Magic Mirror
A type of augmented reality (AR) system/rig where a glyph is displayed to a camera and a video display shows the video captured by the camera with the augmented reality data overlayed. The end result is that the video display looks something like a mirror–showing the user, the glyph and the augmented reality data all at once. This contrasts with the Magic Lens type of augmented reality.
For example: A glyph is distributed on a postcard. The user logs into an augmented reality website. The website activates the user’s webcam and asks the user to present the glyph. The user shows the glyph to the webcam. The augmented reality website then displays a 3D model or other digital information mapped over the glyph in the live webcam display.

Glyph

Augmented Reality (AR) Glyph
A Glyph is a printed symbol used in Augmented Reality applications to allow access to digital content. AR glyphs are often referred to as “Markers” in technical writing and code.
Augmented reality applications that use glyphs take advantage of a hardware camera to recognize the image in the glyph, then align the artwork in relation to that glyph.
For example, an augmented reality iPad application would use the camera in the iPad2 or later to recognize a printed image (the glyph) and then place artwork over that image in the video display of the iPad.
Glyph-based augmented reality applications require possession of the glyph or image. This is one of the key differences between Glyph and GPS based augmented reality.
An example of an augmented reality glyph from a children’s media project.
This augmented reality glyph looks like a heavy black square outline around a black and white image of Dusty, a Dogsharks character. From a children's augmented reality application.
This augmented reality glyph looks like a heavy black square outline around a black and white image of Dusty, a Dogsharks character. From a children's augmented reality application.
Note that the artwork features Dusty, a character from Dogsharks. The heavy black outline of a glyph is what the augmented reality application uses to determine how to place the “augmented” artwork in the video. The artwork in the center of the outline is what the augmented reality application uses to determine which artwork to display. This glyph could be placed anywhere (a book, a sticker, a billboard and so on) and anyone possessing the AR application that recognizes the glyph could access the augmented content.

Web Typography: Using Em Units.

Typography is a Warzone (Color iteration)
Image by Network Osaka via Flickr

Making things online often means using text and typography. Fiddling with font sizes online can be a real pain. This is because all the computer platforms are a little different in how they treat text and pixels. Also, since I’m a fan of making websites that people can use in ways that best suit them, I like to make it so that the type can be made larger or smaller. This is just a little blog post that explains how to do this. Continue reading “Web Typography: Using Em Units.”

Happy Halloween: Dogsharks Macabre

I spent the past several weeks working on this Dogsharks cartoon, writing and recording the music (based on Saint-Saens‘ Danse Macabre) as well as working on timing out the drawings and camera movements etc. Hope you enjoy it!

If you like this one, perhaps you’ll like some of the others over at the main site (linked above).

Twitter as Oral History Project: 1YR old retweets

Head of Odysseus from a sculptural group repre...
Image via Wikipedia

The project outline of the 1YrAgo Twitter handle.

[Warning: navel-gazing ahead] One of the salient features of Twitter is its ephemeral nature. We post our short snippets of life or thought and then on we go. Our post gets buried and eventually forgotten in the piles of others’ thoughts and life-snippets. Continue reading “Twitter as Oral History Project: 1YR old retweets”

Augmented Reality Mask: A project for Dark Arts Burlington VT

Following on the success of a previous augmented reality project, I created a digital mask for curator Deidre Healy‘s Dark Arts in Burlington, VT.

An augmented reality Halloween Mask created for Deidre Healys Dark Arts gallery show.
An augmented reality Halloween Mask created for Deidre Healy's Dark Arts gallery show.

This new piece, Mask, was based on the idea of those French-style masks with a rod that you hold over your face. I created a simple grotesque 3D model in Blender and then made use of the FLARManager and FLARToolkit frameworks in conjunction with Papervision3D. Continue reading “Augmented Reality Mask: A project for Dark Arts Burlington VT”

Other data sources: The stock market as sentiment

Today Apple became more valuable to the stock market than Google. While the stock market doesn’t have a monopoly on defining value, the nature of trading stocks publicly makes for an interesting data source. Perhaps a data source that you can use to provide context to your own data gathering initiatives. Continue reading “Other data sources: The stock market as sentiment”

Web tool reviews

As some of you know, I write a weekly column over at Inman News. I tend to write about either my take on a web marketing concept (with a heavy dose of web analytics) or review some piece of technology (with a heavy dose of web analytics). The column comes out on Tuesday mornings for free and then gets put behind a pay wall on Wednesday (the pay wall is Inman News’ thing, not mine). Continue reading “Web tool reviews”