KDDI Augmented Reality Meets Twitter!

Augmented reality on a mobile phone isn't new, but KDDI has a very nice setup using a phones internal GPS + camera and Twitter. I'm sure you're aware of what augmented reality is like on a phone… Just in case, let’s say that thanks to your phone scamera you can see additional information on top of real settings… Imagine you're watching a street via your mobile phone's camera, some virtual information or ads pop-up on specific details. Now with the usage of a GPS and Twitter, KDDI allows you to see virtual Twitts on top of real sceneries. Imagine that you're walking down a street and people who walked the same street a couple of day priorl Twitted some points of Interest (photo, text and GPS location) you can immediately see them… Ideally, and if many people do this, you could walk on any street in the world and get additional information or must see POIs from other Twitter users…

New marriage...twitter and digital signage

After twitter an the iPhone have some nice ways of playing together now digital signage and twitter get married to make your digital signage as interactive as can be. When reading the web (well not all obviously) I found this article at digital signage today

The convergence of digital signage and Twitter

Bill Yackey editor
• 04 Aug 2009

Like many industries, digital signage is seeing an increased presence on the social media site Twitter. Just by searching the term “digital signage” or the #digitalsignage hashtag, users are exposed to candid conversations about trends, news and products that previously only occurred in one-on-one phone calls and tradeshow floor chatter.

Twitter, and its 140-character messaging style, is also beginning to find its way on to digital signage screens, opening up a new way of engaging audiences and providing user-generated digital signage content.

Perhaps the most forward-thinking company in this area has been LocaModa, which has integrated Twitter into its digital signage social media tool Wiffiti. Previously, Wiffiti served as a platform where users could text messages to a short code and have them show up on screens in bars, restaurants, cafes, etc.

Now, LocaModa president Stephen Randall says the company is “tagging” Twitter terms, allowing Twitter to automatically send relevant messages to the screen which users can respond to. Take the term “weather,” for example:

A Locamoda Wiffiti screen featuring Twitter feeds.

“The most mundane topics like weather can be brought to life with Twitter,” Randall said. “Many digital signage screens feature a weather banner. If you tag Twitter with weather and display it on a Wiffiti screen, you can connect people all around the world. It could be raining I Massachusetts, and you could see messages from people in California talking about how sunny it is or from Japan talking about how it’s freezing. It can still tell you today’s weather, but tell you in a way that makes you feel connected.”

There are other approaches to integrating Twitter into digital signage content without launching an entire platform. Gavin Stark, VP of product development for Real Digital Media (RDM), said that since Twitter offers several RSS feeds per account, they could be integrated into content similar to the way news and weather feeds are:

1) Create a server somewhere that pre-processes the Twitter feed for certain formatting or exclusion rules

2) Take the RSS data straight in as a ticker.

3) Develop a flash page to read the RSS stream and jazz it up

4) Create a Web page (either as a Web archive or live from a server), use Javascript to read the RSS feed.

Stark said that for the BarCamp 2008 convention, he wrote a Web page that pulled Twitter hashtags on an RDM player and showed it on a 42-inch screen with a sidebar showing sponsors and RDM company info.

If you like your iPhone and love to Twitter look at this

This is a video of the first beta version of TwittARound – an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone 3GS created by michael zoellner and this and more can be found on his blog as well.. It shows live tweets around your location on the horizon. Because of video see-through effect you see where the tweet comes from and how far it is away.

The whole application is developed in Webkit (UIWebView / Safari Mobile). A native Cocoa wrapper delegates location, compass and accelerometer to Javascript in the UIWebView. The 3D scene is based on Safari Mobiles brilliant 3D CSS transforms. The Ajax part is done with jQuery. After writing some native iPhone apps this Webkit approach seems to be ideal for rapid development of applications independent of the iPhone UI.

Tennis according to IBM......augmented reality

IBM launches real-time virtual Wimbledon app

Use your phone at the tennis to access an augmented reality

Soon he'll be tweeting right after the serve

IBM is set to launch applications for Android, Twitter and iPhone that use real-time updates to provide a more technologically advanced Wimbledon experience than ever before.

The most exciting is the Seer Android Beta, which uses augmented reality to give users of a T-Mobile G1 the inside scoop on what's happening in the tournament.

Using a video feed from the handset's camera, combined with the digital compass and accurate GPS, users can hold up the phone to different objects and information will display on the screen.

By adding in information such as scores and updates on a heads up display, the user can simply point the phone at a tennis court, find out the court number and also who's playing and more crucially, who's winning.

The information comes from 'net data and IBM scouts wandering around the grounds providing updates.

Twitter and the iPhone

The Seer Aggregator for Twitter will perform a similar function in diluted form, where users can subscribe to hashtags to be given information on scores, seat availability and queue length among other things.

The IBM scouts, players and commentators will also be Tweeting throughout, to provide users with a rich and in-depth experience.

The Wimbledon 2009 App for the iPhone will work in a much more traditional app manner, with users being given information on scores, draws, play schedules and also news and video highlights direct to the phone.