The Rise of Smart Glasses

Posted on November 26, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

I recently read a post in the Business Insider that The End of the Smart Phone Era is Coming detailing the coming smart glass technology from Google and Microsoft. They got a fact and the trend a little wrong (Microsoft isn’t even a player in this game yet), but the idea is sound. Smart glasses, in whatever form will eventually eliminate bulky smart phones as a primary window into our personal communication world, and we’re looking to use it in location-based storytelling.

So what did they miss? Well, first off you can’t buy Google Glass, not as a developer nor in any other form (as of this writing). If you were at the Google I/O conference in summer 2012 you had the possiblity of pre-ordering a developer set, but there hasn’t been much news since then. The best write up I’ve found is on Tech Radar. In technology terms, Google Glass isn’t anything revolutionary and for me the real players in this area are Vuzix and Explore Engage. Samsung may make a play, much like Epson has started to do with the Moverio glasses, and I guess Apple will play catch up at some point.

The Players

Who is Vuzix? They’re the company which makes Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), the grandparent of the current smart glass children as well as augmented reality and video eyeware. They’ve already developed a pair of see-through smart glasses (STAR 1200), and you can sign up today to be part of their developer program to get a pair of the M100 (similar to the Google Glass from factor). Explore Engage is another smart glass company, and are running a crowdfunding campaign on Pozible.com right now to fund production and release of their see-through smart glass design AR2020, which actually looks like a pair of…glasses.

Lost In Reality signed up for the developer program at Vuzix, who have planned to release their developer and SDK in early 2013. The M100 looks like an over-sized Bluetooth ear piece and extends a display in front of your eye like the Google Glass design. Their SDK + M100 set will only set you back $999.00, while Google wanted $1500.00 to pre-order. The thing is, the Google Glass and M100 designs are just the “interim” device. The real goal is a see-through set of glasses, which is what Vuzix and Explore Engage have coming next. Where is Google on see-through technology? Nowhere as far as I can tell (but I’m sure their R&D folks have been working with these as well), but I can imagine Apple or Google trying to buy one of the companies eventually.

A Quiet Rise

Now, smart glasses won’t kick the phones off the radar overnight. For one, the current glasses are not really powerful enough to act as stand-alone devices to replace all the smart phone capabilities (and why should they?). With Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connection, The M100 can connect to cloud apps or to iOS/Andoird devices. The M100 has an internal processor and an can run Android, but will need a smart phone to do heavy computing for other applications. The added value the M100 brings is not just a little screen in front of your eye, but also allows head tracking and GPS so applications can work with user head orientation. Check out this infographic on the emerging technology roadmap from Zenni Optical.

The Epson Moverio BT-100 glasses are also Android devices, and need a smart phone connection to do anything interesting beyond playing movies. And Google Glass? They will most likely need to talk through your smart phone as well. This is the other big thing the Business Insider didn’t tell you. It’s not the death of smart phones if you need one to run most of the apps on Google Glass you originally bought for your HTC Desire X (that was going to be a joke but HTC really did drop the “X” in a product name).

So, if see-through smart glasses are the future, why is Google showing this Glass version with just a small screen along with Vuzix and the M100? Well, check out the AR2020 crowdfunding project, they’re asking for $3500.00 for a pair of see-through Clear-Vu glasses with a display by Optinvent (plus you get SDK access). The true see-through smart glass technology is just too expensive for the consumer market at this point. First, people need to adopt smart glasses into their lives, and then it will be feasible to release the see-through version after mass production can be ramped up.

To be truely useful, smart glasses will need to stand on their own, without needing to buy yourself a smart phone as well. This is seen as well in the Epson glasses, which are basically for personal movie watching. They cost a lot but aren’t uselful for most AR applications unless you hack a connection to your smart phone to fly your AR Drone around. Of course, they weren’t designed as AR eyeware. So why should we keep an eye on Samsung? Because they’re one of the world leaders in display technology. Even if they don’t release their own branded version of smart glasses, chances are see-through display technolgy may come from them. Oh, but what about Microsoft? Yeah, what about them? They’ve filed a few patents, but they are not a hardware company (no, the limited release of the Surface doesn’t change that view), so I only see smart glass lawsuits coming from the Redmond address.

We are about to witness the gradual rise of smart glasses in the consumer market, but not the death of their phone-form siblings.

5 LESSONS FOR STORYTELLERS FROM THE TRANSMEDIA WORLD

Posted on October 15, 2012 by jose — No Comments ↓

It’s an amazing time to be a creator; the edges of the art are only just being explored by people who have a crazy idea and the grit to try it out. Be one of those people.

Here’s an interesting article about Transmedia Storytelling, what is and tips for success when using this new communication tool.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1680902/5-lessons-for-storytellers-from-the-transmedia-world

Posted in Transmedia Storytelling

Lost in Reality @ Welsh App Showcase 2012

Posted on October 15, 2012 by jose — No Comments ↓

Lost in Reality was invited by the CISNET project to attend the Welsh App Showcase 2012 at Swansea, Wales, last 26th of September.

This was a great opportunity to meet people, not only from the app business, but also from creative industries, where we hope to find potential partners to produce content for LIR. Also, this was a chance to expand our visibility outside Lisboa and Zurich.

Posted in Travels

Pirate Summit and X Media Lab Basel

Posted on August 27, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

Pirate Summit

Arrrr, the European Pirate Summit is happening in Cologne, and I’m heading there to meet interesting people, get new perpesective, and naturally to represent Lost In Reality. Our awesome Android developer Francisco is working hard on the next feature set for the app, allowing a user to create location story content from the device and geo-tag it. This will allow users to write location-based stories, which can be saved and later shared with other people – the plan is coming together. Our Zurich team is supporting with the UX/UI development and coding is on-going in Portugal.

This will be my first trip to Cologne, with the exception of going through the train station one early morning on a backpack trip through Europe a long time ago. Back then I wsas traveling with a big pack filled with cameras and film and I think only one pair of pants. I’ll fly up there on the weekend after the Zurich Frontend conference and shoot graffiti around the city before the summit starts. I’m also wondering if there are any interesting urbex locations to check out. Startup Stay seems to be they way to roll, that or Airbnb, what respectable bootstrapping entrepreneur would do it any other way? I don’t have coin for the Hilton (and don’t want to stay in a stale hotel anyways). Aside from meeting interesting people I’m hoping to pitch Lost In Reality at the pirate summit pitch competition. I put in our application and am hoping we get selected, as they say in Germany, drucke die daumen. I don’t know why they say that exactly, but it makes at least as much sense as keep your fingers crossed.

X Media Lab in Basel

Our UX expert recommeded this one, it’s a gathering of digital media professionals at the Kunstmuseum Basel. I didn’t even know that conferences this cool even exist, but that’s all part of the startup fun, having new experience and finding out about things you never knew existed. So what is X Media Lab?

X Media Lab is the internationally acclaimed creative industries event. XML creates a meeting place uniquely designed to assist people and companies to realize unique new forms of interactive cultural content, through concept development, business matching, and direct access to world-class networks of creative professionals.

So, it seems like an excellent place to talk about the future of storytelling, and location is going to a big part of that. You can nominate your project to be presented there to gain feedback from mentors, and naturally to network. So, naturally I’ve submitted Lost In Reality and am hoping we get the chance to show off our concept and Android prototype of location based storytelling.

Tagged with: Pirate Summit, X Media Lab
Posted in Travels

Creator App User Interface Development

Posted on August 26, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

Lost In Reality is an app for location-based storytelling, but our vision is that it will also be for story creation. As you walk around through life, develop little stories in your head as you explore your environment, you add text, video, pictures, etc. as geo-tagged points. If you’re writing poetry in your head walking through Berlin (for example) you can add it to the app, and they will be collected together as a location story. Naturally we’re building an interface to share your work with other people (if you desire). In our user experience and interaction development our Zurich team had a work session in Winterthur (near Zurich) where we set about dissecting user needs from a story telling and reading standpoint, and produced many small written post-it notes with our ideas. From this cloud we set about creating wireframes and user interface concepts for our reader app. Now that our Android prototype is working, we’ve focused our UX/UI development efforts on the story creator user flow. Since I bought a GoPro camera for trail running, I figured it would work well for capturing my office where I do work for Lost In Reality. I like two screens and a wide Wacom tablet with easy access to my startup notebook. Room to sketch, room think, and room to create.

Tagged with: Android, Creator, Prototype, UX/UI
Posted in Development

Lost In Reality Pitch Video

Posted on August 19, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

Shortly after completing Startup Pirates Lisboa and founding the concept for Lost In Reality we applied to StartMeUp. StartMeUp was an event from the Entrepreneurship Society of the New University of Lisbon for new startups to present their idea to an investor group, network, get feedback and then use that to improve their products and concepts. For this we had to write up a business plan and also a pitch video (optional but it seemed necessary). Time was short and we worked hard for two days creating a pitch video for the pitch competition and posted it to Vimeo. In the end we combined some images that visually communicate the concept of being lost in reality with some animation and video we shot during Startup Pirates of Fernando Pessoa (the famous Portuguese who lived in Lisbon). I added in voice-over, choosing to go with a calm tempo that seemed to fit with the tempo of the music mix. For two days of start to finish editing and voice over (done after my 8 hour job) it came out ok. Getting the material ready for StartMeUp was a great experience for us. When you actually have to write down what you’re doing and collaborate to craft the message in a video you learn a lot about how you (and others) perceive your startup idea and is great for focusing your efforts for the next steps in development.

Lost In Reality Elevator Pitch from Mark Melnykowycz on Vimeo.

Tagged with: Pitch, Video
Posted in Development

Lost In Realty – Prototype on Android

Posted on August 15, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

The concept of location based storytelling sounds great on the pitch stage, but ideas are meaningless without some action. With our team split between Lisbon and Zurich, we did most of the UX/UI concept development in Switzerland and then Android development was done in Portugal. In our prototype app we have been developing location based stories and coding them up in the Android app for user testing. Our next steps include learning how users react to location based storytelling, what works and what doesn’t, and what we can do to optimize the experience. Stories can include text, images, video and audio as desired by the author.

Currently the app let’s you search for stories that are around your physical location, although in this demo I just had one loaded on the device title, Love in Switzerland. At the moment all stories and content need to be pre-loaded onto the device. In the future there will be the option to search and download stories when our server is setup. Then as you walk around a city story content is triggered and you’re notified that it’s there. You open the app, read a part of the whole story, and then continue on your journey, with new parts of the story being revealed as you physically move through the city. I’m going to code up a story from the Zurich Street Parade and some others set in Zurich for user testing.

Tagged with: Android, Development, Prototype
Posted in Development

Zurich Street Parade 2012 – An Afternoon Worth Remembering

Posted on August 14, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

It’s strange when you write something and then years later it comes out in your head, perfectly describing what you want to do. I once went to a wedding, and it made me think about life and love and I wrote a short book and called it, Revolt from the Singles Table. At the end I wrote,

“Everything worth remembering is a journey into the self – which, when completed, we look back upon with awe, wondering what it would be like to tap that essential nerve again.”

Since we’re setting up interesting stories to test our demo app with, the 2012 Zurich Street Parade now seems like a perfect afternoon to remember. The thing about the street parade, it’s one of those things where you live in the moment. The people are strange and the music is loud, and you just let your mind go and join in with the energy of the event. Zurich doesn’t do Halloween, and Street Parade fills that void, everyone has the ability to dress as they are and love being looked at. It’s a time to celebrate everything you want to celebrate about yourself. In a club you can hide in the darkness and shadows, but at the Street Parade you’re on display for everyone to see.

Large semi-trucks are turned into mobile music stages complete with DJ, bouncers and techno children dancing like there was never a yesterday and we could expect no tomorrow. The people in the streets crowd around and pay homage to the music like pilgrims praying to nameless Gods. Morphsuits were big this year, people walked around like names less green and yellow humanoids, the yellow one tried to kiss everyone and like to invade your personal space.

The street parade is once a year, and it would be cool for someone touring Zurich on Christmas to walk along the parade route and here the music in their ears and juxtapose the winter snow with a summer dance festival. Location-based storytelling is coming, and we hope it will let you leave a more interesting life.

Tagged with: Location Story, Street Parade, Zurich
Posted in Location Based Stories

Paper Protoyping Kit

Posted on August 13, 2012 by mark — No Comments ↓

One my favorite things in the world to do is UX brainstorming. I love taking my shoes off and talking with co-workers about the location-based storytelling user experience. A key purpose in any UX/UI workshop is to get ideas out and recorded on paper so they can be seen, played with, and translated into user flows and frontend design concepts. What do we need for a UX workshop? Ideally I like to have a prototyping kit complete with:

Post-it notes, stickers, Pens, Colors, A3 paper, Pirate eye patch, Coffee, iPad

These area all the necessary things to put down ideas, diagram out a story data model and wire-frame out user interface concepts. The iPad is loaded up with the iMockups app, which means we can quickly take the ideas from our UX brainstorming session and build up an interactive prototype to play around with the clickability of our designs and to show other people. A big pad of A3 paper means we can write out large idea maps, tape them to the wall, and add post-it notes as add-ons where needed.

Tagged with: Pirate, Prototype, UX/UI
Posted in Development