C3 Technologies is a Swedish company offering photo-realistic 3D city visualizations for search and navigation. The extreme detail available offers endless opportunities for the creation of augmented and/or social experiences and may soon be available on mobile devices.
A Swedish offshoot of SAAB, C3 has ultra sharp 3D maps of major cities based on de-classified government aerial photography technology. … They are actively licensing their 3D photography through an SDK such that it can be used for mobile applications on iPhone, iPad, and Android, or in your computer via a Javascript API for Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and IE. Now covering 100 cities in the US and Europe, C3’s maps are among the most detailed I’ve ever seen, and the company is expanding into interior spaces as well. You could explore an ultra-realistic 3D map of a building before you ever set foot inside it.
As Emgard explains in the … video, the applications for social mapping are clear. With a high-quality three dimensional map you can show friends exactly where you want to meet – you could tag a tree or lamp-post with no problem! I’m sure we’ll also see virtual tour apps – guides so clear that you can’t possibly get lost.
An amazing new application of multi-touch technology called Amnesia Connect was released yesterday, demonstrating the future of gesture-based interaction between devices.
[Amnesia Connect] allows instant and seamless sharing and transfer of any content such as photos, music or embedded apps between multiple handheld devices using a Microsoft Surface table using a single gesture.
Following months of research and development, Amnesia Razorfish has replaced the typical ‘send and receive’ interface with a more natural ‘gesture-based’ interface. A smartphone owner can now move their content freely between two devices by simply dragging content off their phone onto a Microsoft Surface Table and back onto another device instantly.
Book Saver, from Ion Audio, is a device designed to allow you to digitize your home library, at the cost of $150. For more information check out the company’s site and promotional materials.
Book Saver has two cameras that take separate images in rapid succession of each page within an open book. Both cameras of Book Saver also have a flash for allowing the page to be fully illuminated during the scanning process. Book Saver’s cradle, where the book is placed during the scanning process, is also angled as to not require you to hold pages down to get a flat, even surface. While similar devices require up to seven seconds per one page, Book Saver takes only one second per two pages!
Reported to become available in the summer, it will be interesting to see if it hastens the end of publisher’s use of DRM on ebooks, an end that was recently predicted in PricewaterhouseCoopers report, Turning the page: the future of ebooks.
In the long term, most experts expect cumbersome DRM will disappear and that developments on the eBook market will follow those that have been seen on the music market. Music publishers abandoned DRM in spring 2009, after a lengthy battle against file sharing. Experts believe that abolishing DRM is necessary sooner rather than later because illegal content will be available anyway as the market develops, and that DRM will not be able to perform its protection function. Most experts expect that soft DRM will become established.
Update: Soon after posting this I found the following video’s online; a promotional video from Ion Audio and a hands-on from this year’s CES.
What will our library spaces look like post-print? Dutch designers Roelof Mulder and Ira Koers have created an example at the University of Amsterdam as an entry for the Dutch Design Awards, where it won the prize for best private interior.
[They] converted an existing 27,000-square-foot library into a massive study hall — without any visible books — to accommodate the 1,500 to 2,000 students who visit daily.
Instead of stacks, the place is littered with workspaces. And instead of lending bureaus, it’s got a so-called red room: a space filled with more than 100 plastic red crates, where students can pick up books they requested online. (The university’s physical collection is stored in various closed repositories and book depots.) (Which is all well and good for collaboration, but what about making out in the stacks? Sigh.)
In the push to develop mobile applications for our libraries, should librarians be paying more attention to the technological differences between mobile and smartphones, especially with low smartphone penetration in Canada?
Comparing a basic mobile phone to a spiffy new smartphone is like comparing a circa-1993 desktop computer to a Macbook Pro. They’re related in a basic sense, but the discrepancies are immense.
