Virtual Fancy Dress…

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So, Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming pretty big, there are many applications in the realms of mobile apps. Layar has done a pretty good job with their AR browser for example and there are many other apps out there that use AR to good effect too. The Mozilla team have put together a neat set of demos in preparation for Firefox4 and one of those is an AR video showcase. It’s pretty neat but you will need one of the latest HTML 5 capable browsers to check it out (IE9, FireFox 4, or Chrome will do)

Apparently something like this is used by some companies to allow easy product placement in TV / Film.   So you have a blank box with a marker on it and using some fancy post production software you stick whatever you like to fill in the space, cornflakes for the UK and cheerio’s for the states maybe?

This got me wondering, how long before we have augmented reality fancy dress parties where we all wear AR glasses and a full body suit with the marker of choice imprinted on it. That marker becomes your costume in that wonderful AR party-space. You might even take it further and have a selection of ‘costumes’ printed up from your own design, allowing you to create your own alien or superhero. no more hunting round at the last minute trying to figure out if you are going as the flash or as a pirate because you’ve forgotten to rent a costume and all you have lying around is a scarf and a pair of shorts. Just pop to the cupboard and pull your AR suit off the hangar… presto! Of course if you turn up at the party and no-one has an AR suit or glasses you might be screwed, or you might be going as AR man/woman ;0)

 

Instapaper has improved Kindle options

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I’ve just been over to tweak the settings on my Instapaper account and found that the Kindle options are much improved since my last visit.  I tend to use the iPhone app mostly so I hadn’t noticed the changes before now.

If you’ve never used Instapaper and have no idea what it is you should check out Instapaper.com for all the details.  In short it is a service which you can sign up to free of charge and whenever you come across an article on the web that you’d like to read but don’t have time to do it now, you can use one of the various methods available to send the article to your Instapaper account to read later.

There is another service that does the same thing called ReadItLater and you can check that out at readitlaterlist.com.

The new Instapaper Kindle options allow you to set it to automagically email a digest of the articles you’ve saved straight to your Kindle.  The options are flexible enough to set the interval between mailings and the minimum number of new articles to wait for.  Importantly you can also choose between the free.kindle.com address or the default kindle.com address which may incur charges.

This puts Instapaper a step ahead of Read It Later which only has an export to HTML option and frankly makes the service far more functional.  It is especially useful if you commute to work and want to catch up on all those web articles you never read.

 

1954 Leica, 2011 Fujifilm – Boing Boing

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BoingBoing have a great shot of a 1954 Leica and the 2011 Fuji X100 side by side.  The styling of the x100 stands up very well, but given a choice (and the money with which to make it) I’d have the Leica every day.  There’s just something magical about removing yourself from your comfort zone and working with some classical, timeless gear.

1954 Leica, 2011 Fujifilm – Boing Boing.