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Gatwick Airport Prepares for Augmented Reality

Posted on May 26, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Gatwick airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, has installed beacons indoors for indoor navigation.

GPS (Global Positioning System) provides a way to navigate outdoors, but once you go inside a building, GPS is useless. That’s why Gatwick Airport has installed indoor beacons. By tracking the position of beacons around the airport terminal, smartphone users can navigate around the inside of the building.

Indoor beacons are only useful for indoor mapping. You could use beacons to display a cartoon map showing which way to go, or you could use beacons to help created augmented reality. Instead of looking at a cartoon image of a building, hold up your smartphone and look at augmented reality showing you the directions to go inside the actual building you’re standing in.

Seeing augmented reality instructions overlaid across actual images is far more comforting to guide lost travelers than looking at cartoon maps of the same building. That’s because cartoon maps can’t always update to show any changes such as construction inside a building, but augmented reality will always show you the actual location around you.

Beacons by themselves just suggest indoor navigation mapping is coming soon to large, public buildings like airport terminals or museums. Yet once beacons become readily available in stadiums and train stations, the existence of beacons makes it simpler to create and use augmented reality.

Back in 2016, Apple acquired a Finnish company called Indoor.io, which focused exclusively on indoor mapping or large buildings. Indoor mapping will likely be the first and most obvious reason to use augmented reality beyond games like Pokemon GO. Once people see the obvious and convenient uses for augmented reality for indoor navigation inside shopping malls, ball parks, or even cruise ships, they’ll come to rely on indoor navigation directions as much as people currently rely on GPS driving directions.

With so much activity surrounding indoor mapping and augmented reality, you can be certain the two will work together to create a new experience for smartphone users. Microsoft’s phone operating system is already pretty much dead due to the lack of app support. Once Apple introduces indoor navigation and mapping to the iPhone, android will have to scramble to keep up with a solution that likely won’t be as refined because it will need to be rushed.

This fall, you’ll likely be able to use an iPhone for indoor navigation courtesy of augmented reality and beacons. When people see this new feature available only on iPhones, they’ll clamor for it on Android as well. It will come to Android eventually, but the iPhone will likely lead the way (again) and show the world that smartphones are more than just improved specifications every year.

Expect indoor mapping to become commonplace soon. This will help bring augmented reality to everyday use to the point where we’ll wonder how we ever got along with it.

Technology Over Practicality

Posted on December 22, 2016 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: In 2013, Apple announced iBeacon but now seems to have ignored it.

One of the biggest problems with technology is that companies often introduce it too soon. The fax machine was actually invented back in 1843. The problem was that it relied on telephone lines that were expensive and rare, which meant few people had a need for a fax machine.

The big problem isn’t that technology doesn’t work, but that people had little practical use for it. Back in 1843, the fax machine would still have allowed people to transmit documents over long distances. They just didn’t have the telephone lines to do it so the fax machine had little use, much like carrying an oar around in a car while driving. An oar may be useful for steering a boat in the water, but has no use inside a car.

That’s he problem with many of Apple’s latest initiatives. They’ve fallen into he trap of other technology companies that fall in love with technology for its own sake without taking the time to find a practical use for it first. Back in 2013, Apple introduced iBeacon as a way to use Bluetooth technology to allow people to get messages and ads or special offers just by walking near a store or shelf. From a technology point of view, iBeacon works perfectly. From a practical point of view, why would anyone want to sue it>

To use iBeacon, you have to have a smartphone or a tablet, which most people have. Then you need to turn on the ability to receive iBeacon notifications. That right there eliminates much of the advantages because you must specifically accept them. Since most places do not use iBeacon, there’s no reason to accept them. When you walk into a store or ballpark that does have iBeacon, chances are good you won’t turn on iBeacon notifications on your mobile device because you’ve never had a reason to do so in the past and you still don’t know of a reason to do so in the present.

iBeacon is an example of technology that works but isn’t quite ready for society. What Apple needs to do is find a compelling reason to use iBeacon for consumers. Then promote that one single example and let people’s imagination take over from there to guide iBeacon into being more useful in ways that even Apple may never have imagined.

That’s essentially how the PC industry developed. Apple created expansion slots in the Apple II with no clear idea what people might use them for. All they knew was that expansion slots gave people future flexibility and third-parties rushed to fill the gap with expansion cards that improved the capability of a computer. So even if companies like Apple don’t have a clear idea what the future of technology might hold, they need to find a way to make sure third-parties can exploit that technology.

Right now, iBeacon remains an interesting idea that neither apple nor third-parties seem interested in promoting mainly because nobody can figure out how to make money from it or promote it to the average person. Technology is great but it’s useless when people aren’t ready to use it yet.

Indoor Mapping

Posted on December 2, 2016 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Indoor mapping provides directions and location information inside large public buildings such as stadiums and museums.

The leader in mapping technology is Google. When most people want directions for driving, walking, or mass transit, they rely on Google Maps. When Google started improving Google Maps on Android but not on iOS, Google claimed they needed additional money from Apple to implement those improvements. So Apple went ahead and created Apple Maps instead.

Since Apple Maps started later than Google Maps, it’s still struggling to catch up in mass transit directions and even just accuracy. Initially Apple Maps contained all sorts of errors and missing information but has gradually improved to be decent. Still, Google Maps remains the mapping solution for everyone to beat.

That’s why Apple has long been looking for indoor mapping. The idea behind indoor mapping is to provide directions to different areas inside a large public area such as a shopping mall, museum, or stadium. Just as outdoor maps helps people find businesses to visit, indoor mapping can be even more crucial in helping people find a food vendor or a particular store. Indoor mapping has the major advantage of being closer to the user.

Instead of asking someone to drive several minutes to find a store, indoor mapping offers the idea of linking potential customers with stores and restaurants within minutes of their current location. So indoor mapping is not only a convenience like outdoor maps, but a potential source of revenue from advertising with companies looking for yet another way to attract nearby potential customers to make a slight detour in their direction.

Indoor mapping uses a variety of techniques to define the location of walls. The simplest idea is to track cell phone usage and determine that where cell phone users don’t go, there must be a wall in that location. Apple’s iBeacon technology uses Bluetooth technology to broadcast information, so placing iBeacon around a large building such as a stadium is another way to help an indoor map accurately depict its surroundings.

Apple has been pursuing indoor mapping for years, yet it’s still a relative unknown to most people. Yet wait for it to grow and one day people will accept indoor mapping as common technology the same way they accept mobile phones as common technology. Indoor mapping is already here, but still needs to gain wider acceptance and availability. Indoor mapping is just one more example of innovation that’s right before our eyes but tucked slightly out of sight from our everyday consciousness. Given a few more years, indoor mapping will become commonplace and most people won’t be able to pinpoint the exact time indoor mapping went from an obscure idea to a practical, everyday technology.

Yet that’s exactly how all forms of innovation work from fax machines and mobile phones to personal computers and electric cars. The technology has always been there with people working behind the scenes. Then suddenly it reaches a collective tipping point where everyone suddenly realizes its existence, even though it’s been around for years (or even decades).

Indoor mapping will be such a technology. Whether Apple can become the indoor mapping leader remains to be seen, but it’s an area that Apple and other companies are certainly going to compete over in the near future.

Apple’s Augmented Reality Vision

Posted on June 3, 2016 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: Apple has quietly been buying up companies that support their augmented reality goals including Flyby Media and Metaio.

While Oculus, Google, and Microosft have been making huge press announcements concerning their virtual reality projects, Apple has quietly been sitting on the sidelines. That either means Apple doesn’t have a virtual reality project at all (not likely) or that Apple is quietly developing their virtual reality projects until it’s ready.

While everyone else seems focused on virtual reality and advancing the technology behind virtual reality, few companies seem to be thinking about the practical applications of virtual reality. Beyond immersive gaming and virtual training, what will the average person use virtual reality for?

When PCs first appeared, most people asked a similar question on what good were PCs. That was until people started seeing how PCs could be used for word processing, spreadsheets, database management, playing games, printing greeting cards, surfing the Internet, and sending e-mail. Today, few people question the need for a PC.

Likewise when smartphones first arrived, not everyone embraced them. That was until people discovered the advantages of getting real-time driving directions, surfing the Internet, sending text messages, and checking appointments. Today, most people agree that smartphones are a crucial part of their everyday lives.

The main advantage of PCs and smartphones wasn’t just their technical capabilities but their ease of use. PCs initially sat on a desk and never moved, but laptops quickly became popular because you could take them to school, a coffee house, or an airplane and use the computer. Smartphones are even easier because you can pull them out of your pocket and use them, then put it away.

PCs would never have become as popular if they took up entire rooms like supercomputers do. Smartphones would never have come popular if you had to lug around a device the size and weight of a brick like early mobile phones looked and felt like.

So while virtual reality technology continues to get better all the time, the huge drawback is the need to strap a virtual reality headset to your face and connect the headset to a PC to power it. That immediately limits the use of the technology to a room, much like early computers limited their use to a fixed location. Virtual reality will find a niche market, but until products like Google Glass eliminate the inconvenience of strapping an entire virtual reality headset to your face and you no longer need to physically connect the headset to a PC, virtual reality will remain grounded in a fixed location.

The future for virtual reality lies with a device as convenient to use as Google Glass that doesn’t need a clumsy and heavy PC to power it. If you can slip a virtual reality headset on and off as conveniently as you can pull out a smartphone, that’s when virtual reality can take off. Google Glass is ahead of its time but simply isn’t powerful or fashionable enough to use consistently.

The bridge to virtual reality is augmented reality, and that’s the reason why Apple hasn’t revealed their virtual reality plans yet. That’s because the days of virtual reality becoming popular is too far off. In the meantime, augmented reality is far more likely.

The difference between the two is simply convenience. To use virtual reality, you need to strap a headset to your face (making you look weird to everyone around you) and you need a PC to power the headset. That limits you to an electrical outlet although companies such as Hewlett-Packard and MSI have developed backpack PCs that you can wear. However, that means strapping a headset to your face and carrying around a laptop on your back just to use virtual reality. That combination insures that few people will use virtual reality frequently for everyday use regardless of the technological advantages it might offer.

Augmented reality is different. It uses the camera in your existing smartphone or tablet so you can point and aim it to see something that isn’t really there. You could aim your smartphone at a street intersection and immediately see street names (retrieved through your smartphone’s GPS) along with a cartoon arrow showing you which direction to walk to reach a certain destination. Apple’s acquisition, a German company called Metaio, was working on exactly that type of augmented reality technology before Apple bought them up.

Just hold a smartphone or tablet at an object such as a car, and augmented reality can show you the internal machinery that makes up that car or show you different colors of that car. Augmented reality may not be as technologically exciting as virtual reality, but it’s far more practical. Remember, Alexander Bain invented the fax machine in 1843 so back then, fax machines were technical marvels. However, fax machines never become popular until over a century later when telephone lines became more reliable and less expensive to make long distance calls. Technology only gets accepted when it’s easy to use it regardless of how advanced it might be.

Virtual reality is far more advanced from a technical point of view than augmented reality, but which is easier to use? Most people already own a smartphone or tablet, so adding augmented reality to their lives is simple compared to forcing everyone to buy a virtual reality headset and walk around with it strapped to their face every time they want to use it.

In addition to Metaio, Apple also acquitted a second company called Flyby Media. The goal of Flyby Media was to create links to real-world objects. For example, you could assign a statue in a museum a text message so whenever someone got near that statue, they would receive a text message from that statue.

Combine Flyby Media’s technology with Metaio’s technology and you can see how to link augmented reality with real world objects. Suppose you use Flyby Media’s technology to link an augmented reality alert to a car in a showroom? You walk by that car and get a notice asking if you’d like to view that car through augmented reality. Aiming your smartphone at the car, you now get an augmented reality view of that car showing its internal parts and its different color schemes.

In a museum, Flyby Media’s technology could notify you of a statue that has augmented reality attached to it. Aim your smartphone at this statue and you can see text explaining the history behind that statue and the original appearance of that statue.

Augmented reality alone is kind of pointless because it won’t work on every object in the real world, so Flyby Media’s technology can notify you when you can use augmented reality. Although augmented reality isn’t as immersive as virtual reality, guess which technology is easier for people to use? People don’t adopt the most advanced technology; they adopt the most convenient technology that solves real problems.

Take Flyby Media’s technology to link signals to objects in the real world even further and you can see how public places like stadiums or museums could use iBeacon to broadcast information continuously for anyone with a smartphone to pick up. That would allow blind people to comfortably walk around in public using an iPhone to constantly alert them to the location of rest rooms, walls, stairs, and concession stands. Flyby Media’s technology could also be used by self-driving cars to recognize pedestrian walkways and intersections along with curbs and speed bumps.

The possibilities of using existing technology (smartphones) to introduce new technology (augmented reality) is far more likely to occur than introducing brand new technology (virtual reality headsets) into the world. If people could use their smartphones to add augmented reality features that offer clear advantages to their everyday lives, they’ll adopt that technology quickly. If people need to buy new technology to add features to their lives that don’t offer clear advantages to their everyday lives (virtual reality), they won’t adopt that technology quickly if at all.

By studying Apple’s acquisitions, you can piece together how it fits into their long-term plans. Virtual reality is a long-term goal. Augmented reality is a short-term, more immediately achievable goal that will eventually lead to virtual reality. Watch for Metaio and Flyby Media’s technology to show up in Apple products this year or the next.

Augmented reality may not be here yet, but it’s going to be more common than virtual reality ever will. It all boils down to convenience and practicality. Just ask Alexander Bain how well his fax machine invention fared back in 1843 despite being 100 years ahead of its time.

Indoor Mapping

Posted on November 2, 2015 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Maps Indoor is Apple’s indoor mapping app that provides directions inside public venues.

Back in the old days, people used to stop at gas stations to get maps so they could find their way around. Nowadays, most people just use smartphones that not only give them directions, but can also pinpoint locations of gas stations, restaurants, or retail shops. After using maps on a smartphone, most people wonder how they ever got along without a smartphone map.

Now Apple is developing an indoor mapping app geared for large public venues that see over a million visitors a year. The goal is to map these indoor locations so now when you’re in there, you can find locations such as restrooms, exits, and food vendors. Imagine being in a shopping mall and wanting to know where a certain retailer might be. You could try to find a directory, but it would be so much easier just to let your smartphone give you directions instead.

Sports stadiums, museums, mass transit stations, and shopping malls could all benefit by helping people find the most efficient path to their desired goal. Just as we used to wonder how people got along without smartphone driving maps, now we’ll soon wonder how people got along without indoor mapping services as well.

To help map indoor locations, a venue needs WiFi and iBeacon. This can be especially useful for shopping malls to provide ads or notifications as people walk past a given restaurant or store. Much of this indoor mapping technology came from Apple’s acquisition of the “indoor GPS” company WiFiSLAM for $20 million in 2013. The company holds numerous indoor navigation-related patents.

If you’re a consumer, expect to get bargain offers in shopping malls and ads while in public areas such as train stations or stadiums. If you’re a business inside a shopping mall or stadium, think of how you could attract people strolling by your business. How can you entice more passerby to come in and spend money?

Indoor mapping may not be as sexy and futuristic as self-driving cars, but it still represents a revolutionary technology that will change the way we live. Expect indoor mapping to become so commonplace that one day people will wonder how they ever got along without it.

IBM’s Enterprise Apps

Posted on May 31, 2015 by admin Posted in Business, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: IBM has created apps for the enterprise that cover a wide range of industries and fields. By studying IBM’s apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, you can truly see the strengths and weaknesses of each device.

The smartphone, tablet, and wearable computer all have different purposes and uses. You can’t take a smartphone app and cram it in a wearable computer and expect it to work the same because the form factor of each device is different. This is a major failing with Microsoft’s Windows 10 plan of allowing you to write code once and run it on multiple devices. Technically that may be possible, but it will create a poor user experience on devices not optimized for its use.

For example, Microsoft Word lets you do mail merge where you can write a form letter and merge it with a database of names and addresses. For a desktop application, that’s fine, but if you port Microsoft Word to a smartphone or a wearable computer, will anyone really want or need to perform mail merge on a smartphone or wearable computer? The program may still run, but it’s no longer as useful because mail merge is a specific task for performing on a desktop or laptop PC, not on a smartphone or wearable computer.

That’s why IBM’s family of enterprise apps is so interesting to study because it shows you how different devices can work together and offer their own strengths. Rather than write one program and port that code to run on multiple devices, IBM likely customized their apps to run on each device. What will give a better user experience? A program optimized for the device it’s running on or a program designed for a different device but ported to another one?

One of IBM’s enterprise apps is called Hospital RN, which uses Apple’s iBeacon technology. Now a nurse can use an iPhone or Apple Watch to receive patient requests, changes in lab status, safety alerts, and prioritised task lists for immediate action disposition. By using technology to display patient information when they’re in that patient’s room, IBM’s Hospital RN app gives nurses relevant information they need right away so they can spend less time looking for information and more time caring for patients.

Another IBM enterprise app is called Incident Aware and lets first responders to a scene view the location of other first responders. For example, suppose there’s a shooting at a shopping mall. By looking at a smartphone or tablet, police can use GPS to track the location of other police officers so they can coordinate their movements towards the emergency. By viewing notifications on their Apple Watch, police can get the latest information without having to constantly pull out and look at their iPhone or iPad.

A wearable computer like the Apple Watch is best for interaction that requires only seconds, such as notifying the police that a target has moved or is no longer a threat. A smartphone can use its GPS to help track other first responder positions. A tablet can provide a bigger screen allowing police to coordinate their efforts and see a map of their environment so they can navigate to the problem right away.

Each device offers advantages that the other device lacks. That’s why customized apps, like IBM’s family of enterprise apps, can be so interesting to study. That’s also why Microsoft’s Windows 10 initiative to make it easy for programs to run on multiple devices isn’t the entire solution since each device needs software that takes advantage of its unique features, not ignores them.

IBM will likely continue developing unique and interesting apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. If you’re an app developer, study how IBM’s apps work. By learning how apps need to work for solving enterprise problems, there’s no better example than IBM’s family of enterprise apps.

About IBM’s Enterprise apps.