Lighting trails - Visualising urban Wi-Fi

There are a lot of hidden treasures to be found in the city. Being this some historic relicts, a great view across to a place all of a sudden becoming a landmark or a lovely coffee place. One can also find inspiration, patience or pleasure in many ways and colours. The city is a truly amazing digging place.
The thing with finding is that there is more to the way of finding than the way of searching. Some things just don't want to be found, you run into them.


Image taken from Ti.Mo on flickr / Walking the pole at night in Oslo, tracing the Wi-Fi quality.

However, in this case the desired thing, if it is one, is invisible. It requires an invention to actually make it visible. The waves of the wireless network swirling the urban spaces are no where to be seen other than on the display of your gadget in the form of four stacked arches. This is sort of point information concerning just the immediate location. And if you have ever tried to catch a signal in an awkward spot, you must have experienced how much difference one side step can make, or half a pirouette, wonders.

The guys over at touch have invented the ultimate light painting rod to visualise exactly these waves. This is not coming out of the bue though. There is some history to this. In short, they where earlier experimenting with RFID working on the nearness project, together with berg. In a next step they used a similar approach, on much small scale, to visualise the transmitter field of the RFID reader. In this sense the visualisation of the Wi-Fi is some sort of large scale, real world implementation. They also experimented with the visualisation of Wi-Fi earlier. This new very much hands on approach works amazingly well in terms of the images it produces. I guess this is the nice thing with finding the treasure, you get to give it an image, you can brand it.


Image taken from Ti.Mo on flickr / Detail of the rod with LED lights and loads of wiring.

They explain "we built the WiFi measuring rod, a 4-metre tall probe containing 80 lights that respond to the Received Signal Strength (RSSI) of a particular WiFi network". As they take the rod for a walk the light indicate the signal strength vertically. Amazingly the fluctuations in signal quality are dramatic, making it possible to differentiate changes on a step by step basis. It would be quite cool to attempt a surface modeling. Maybe as a section by section path across could generate a leveled view? As a distant relative of this tool the pole land surveyors use comes to mind with the red and white markings. In reference to one point the profile of the topography is charted. Similarly this could be implemented here. As it looks on some of the photographs they are using a visualisation software on the laptop to record the measurements. Seems to be built with processing, maybe this can be reused if they simultaneously record the location via GPS for examples. Maybe it could even be developed into a mobile application using a mobile device as the flashing light, being this the iPhone or the iPad as for example shown in light paintings developed by berg as part of the making future magic project.

In a way the landscape the rod is making visible is not too disimilar from the New City Landscape (NCL) we developed from twitter messages. Both are providing an interface between real world and virtual world.

The photographs used here were shot in the Grünerløkka area in Oslo. The lighting works really nicely against the backdrop of dark buildings and white tones of the snow cover. As they point out in some of the write ups there is a fascinating relaionship to the architecture around in terms of scale. The super human size of four meter matches about one story of a building picking up the architectural line and stepping out of the human reference. This gives it a more objective relevance, looking very meaningful.


Image taken from Ti.Mo on flickr / Visualisation of a cross country cross section.

Barcode Girlfriend

Turning lifeless objects into tweeting, talking nodes of interaction is the new internet promis. A sweet thing to do, and probably not that far of. It is definitely not new and the importance of everyday object we surround us with has long been neglected.

It is definitely one of the ver important sources of identity and the creation of self. This is in how we can reflect upon these aids of persona, but also in the way this collection of things portraits us to the outside world. This creation of identity involves memories, conception, but also peer group and cultural values.

What you have and what you do represents your persona in the context and places one in the right spot on the picture, towards friends and family, neighbours and business partner, or strangers.


Image taken from leetneet / One of the Kanojos, Girlfriends at BarcodeKanojo.

So why not project some personality into these objects and treat them nicely. This is what Barcode KANOJO has institutionalised as a barcode hunting game, were every barcode turns into a sweet manga girl an could be your girlfriend.

This is unless she is already someone else's girlfriend. To snatch her requires quite a bit of stamina, you have got enough to start, but be advised to use it wisely. The Internet of Things is about as unforgiving a the rest of your social landscape, including any other networking media. But never mind you can always just make friends with the manga on your screen.

Any barcode can be scanned and will be interpreted via the camera of our smart phone, the iPhone app can be downloaded HERE. How to play can be found HERE.

at the time of writing the scans today have been at 1,689, the total number of Kanojos generated was at 1,021,672 and the total number of scanned barcodes using this app was at 1,769,288. Its not such a small niche thing after all.

The developer describe the game as: "The Barcode KANOJO brings you a new encounter with virtual girlfriends called 'KANOJO' on your iPhone. To find her, you just need to scan the barcode attached to any kinds of goods using your iPhone.
Once you have your own KANOJO, you can take care of her to increase her love, find another KANOJO, or steal a new one from other users."


Image taken from digitalwellbeinglab / The original Barcode Battler to read barcodes in the local supermarket own the road.

Of course there are very close similarities to earlier 80is games such as Barcode Battler for example, but I guess back then guys were heros and monster killers, today they are softies and girlfriend snatchers.

The developer claim there are 7 trillion possible combinations of female to create. Not only that, but depending on where in the world you are, the girls appearance should be more 'traditional' to your area.

I guess its the Internet of Things going bonkers, but never mind people seem to like creating a mental projection of their objects they interact with frequently.




Image taken from japanator / Guess this would be a good barcode to start scanning for girlfriends. App is downloaded HERE. But then you might want to try and start with a more unusual barcode for a less stamina intensive start.

"While this barcode may be but a dry symbol, beyond it lies another world."

Book - Check In /Check Out the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IOT) is taking shape. Idea and practice, applications and concepts, as well as discussion and writings are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms, great. A term old enough for most of too old to be around, the vision seems finally to grow into an actual practice.

It is no only the line up presented earlier at the be2awards, the sort of pachube and TalesOfThings, but many more like ioBridge, the NabazTag or also IBM's 'Building a Smarter Planet' project largely builds on networked things.

NAi Publishers bring with 'Check In / Check Out, the Public Space as an Internet of Things' one of the first books on this topic in relation to the use of space. The authors Christian van 't Hof, Rinie van Est and Floortje Daemen clearly focus on the public real in urban areas in connection to this new technologies. This connection is quickly established with the authors describing the move from 'on the net' to 'in the net' via the gadgets increasingly used in public spaces and on public transport. On the other hand also the public space as such is wired up with CCTV cameras, RFID and NFC chips, pollution sensors, temperature sensors or weather stations. All linked to the net for remote sensing and data gathering for evaluation and decision making.

The book itself is using tag to extend the content into the virtual dimension and link external content such as sound and video files to particular paragraphs in the book. For this the Microsoft Tag is used. A self acclaimed next generation of QR code. MS also offers tag readers for mobile patforms such as the iPhone and Android. Use this LINK from your mobile to download the corresponding tag.


Image taken from single-blogs on flickr / Customised Microsoft Tag 15 from the book. To scan it you can download the reader at http://gettag.mobi


The first tag let you check in, to the book I presume, but for the content of the book you have to read on conventionally. In six chapters the publications discussed the most important fields IOT is increasingly active. Those are 'Gated Stations' on the rise of chip card in public transport, 'Networked Cars' on linking cars to establish intelligent traffic, 'Money Mobiles' on paying by phone, 'Street Imges' on CCTV and surveilance, 'Geoweb' on live mapping and 'Living Maps' on a scenario of total real time data streems.

A lot of these systems are already quite established in the western world and people have started to accept their presence. We are using the chip card, Oyster Card in the case of London or Octopus Card in the case of Hong-Kong, on a daily base, being tracked forexample for the game Chromaroma. Paying using alternative methods, not cash, is widely established with changing technologies and tools, networked cars is something researchers and developers are already talking for quite a while, so it seems familiar even though it has not been realised to a large extend. Automobile industry is again painfully slow integrating innovations. And of course the Geoweb and to some extend the Living Maps are both practices we are in the middle of at the moment.

The book offers a very clear structured approach to discussing these topics both overall and within each chapter. At times it is a facts book, at time an experience report and then a outsider perspective. However the structure is always clear and informative if at times with a few too little references. But hey, its early times and things are completely flowing.

What is extremely appreciated, is the critical distance and the book establishes through out and within each chapter it self. It is not a selling text for the IOT, but a critical discussion raising concernes equally to praising benefit and potential.

"Big Brother, once a warning against totalitarianism, now has become a symbol of the importance of being known" (P.112)

In this sense the final chapter the 'Conclusion', on identity management, makes these points once more very clear in a summary and outlines avenues for future practice whilst employing these emerging technologies. A must read for network-developers, and urban-computer-programmers, digital-interaction-designers, virtual-data-architects and sensorist-planners to keep up with the discussions.


Image taken from the Mobile City / Check In / Check Out Book cover by NAi Publishers 2011.

Hof, C.V.'., Daemen, F. & Est, R.V., 2011. Check in / Check out - Public Space as an Internet of Things, Nai Uitgevers/Publishers.

Street View Indoors - Google Art Projet Brings Museums and Artworks Online

Google Street view is now continuing inside, at least for some of the words most important museums. Using the same technology Google has started the Google Art Project, making museums virtually accessible. Together with the indoor navigation a selection of paintings can also be seen and navigated in a Google Maps style in great detail. You can get up very close to Chris Ofilli's 'No Woman No Cry' at the Tate Britain. Close enough to see the individual dots of paint. In this case you can even switch to night view mode to see the fluorescent second layer of the painting. This of course applies also for all the other paintings marked with a pus sign, were you can study the details of Van Gogh's brush stroke for example.


Image taken from the Google Art Project / Chris Ofilli's No Woman No Cry at the Tate Britain in London, United Kingdom.

Earlier, back in 2008 the Kremer Collection was one of the first to offer such a detailed look at paintings using the Google Maps style navigation and zoom function. The software used back then was the ImgeCutter software developed at CASA.

There is currently quite a lot of development going on with these digital visualisation and visiing technologies. From video street view to panoramic street view with street slides of bing maps, featured last week on digital urban.


Image taken from the Google Art Project / Detail of Chris Ofilli's No Woman No Cry at the Tate Britain in London, United Kingdom. See the night view HERE.

After the Street View Project and earlier the Slope View for the Winter Games in Vancouver this is now a further step applying the technology in large public buildings.
It does require a bit of patience and an effort for not losing the orientation, since the museums network of possible routes is a lot more complicated than the roads. This is mainly down to distance and size. almost wich each click new route choices apply, this will keep you on your toes. In comparison the street view is relaxed with sometimes many clicks between crossroads.

However, the new project lets you browse 385 rooms in 17 galleries, and see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists. This includes galeries such as the National Gallery in London, the Tate Britain, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.


Image taken from the Google Art Project / A visit to the Palace of Versailles, France on the Google Art Project.

Google seems very interested in getting many different aspects of 'knowledge' represented through their technologies and after the Book Project this is now the art project. Of course the paintings remain property of their owners and remain copyright projected but are virtually accessible through this Google Service.

These copyright issues seem still very constraining. Some of the museums have surprisingly little rooms accesible on the database so far. It is unclear whether this project will extend and in what time frame. If you peak through doorways into rooms that are not accessible on this virtual tour the buildings are blurred as known from the Street View. This looks rather disturbing, probably more so than in the street scenes.



Ultimately notable is the change in design stile. It is a great relief to see that Google has adopted different style for this project and not using the comic, round edge, many colour approach that has become iconic for their brand. It would have been ridiculous to show these works in such a context. The only thing they coud not get to follow this new style is the page icon displayed in the browser tab.

On the navigation side, Google has decided to drop the view lines used in Street view. For this indoor version the user only has arrows to click on. There are usually is or eight arrows used for one point to allow for more detailed navigation. However, it is still difficult to just move slightly to one side and look beyond this annoying pillar, as for example in the State Hermitage main gallery. In general the navigation is much more free than experienced before and also works by just clicking on a doorway to get into the next room. The session will also remember the previous location in each museum. If you decide to look at some other paintings you can always jump back were you have left off, quite helpful.

Google has also added additional navigation features such as foor plans. As well as contextual information to the museum and the art work in a side frame. It is also possible to create a personal art collection by adding paintings to the collection. And Google has also embedded a sort of a social tool, where people can start a discussion about paintings by leaving comment.

However, with the navigation and the representation there is a very big remaining question regarding the architecture. All the museums are set in a very grand building and the experience of space, sequence, material and light , to name a few is in most cases very grand and worth the visit in itself. This is not the case in street view. On the contrary Google has managed to kill any such experience and completely flatten it out, architecture is dead.

Possible though, it would require rather little to take this in to account and the contextual setting of the individual art works could be part of the experience. On of these options would be to introduce a proper starting point or entrance to each museum. Currently the virtual visitor is simply dumped in one of the rooms in front of a painting at selecting the museum. Since many of the rooms at first glance look very similar it is very difficult to orientate or even know which museum one is visiting. If it is as in the case of the MoMa, where the starting point is in the entrance hall one is lost all together. The introduction of a stronger spatial narrative would definitely make a difference.

The quality of the images is possibly another issue. The different museum or rooms in the museums are not all being translated well into the digital format. Some seem to fit better than other. Especially the lighting quality seems to be very tricky to capture on camera. Appears the MoMa in New York very poor quality is on the other hand the Palace of Versailles is a lot more lively. Generally it can be said that the museums using colour tains on their walls come across a lot better than the white boxes. In a side note, this might change architecture trends if this technology becomes more trendy.


Image taken from the Google Art Project / A visit to the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin, Germany on the Google Art Project. The blue colour makes for a better quality image than most of the white rooms used in the other museums.

In terms of art and culture communication it will be very interesting to see how this influences the way the institutions are communicating about their works and collection. Potentially one can think of many applications including works discussions and art education. We will see how this develops.

Of course it would be great if this technology could move away form this simple panning style of navigation towards a more spatial representation of navigation. Also the respect for the architecture or een more important the spatial and sequential quality of the building would greatly enhance the experience. But for now we have to live with this, which good for a quick ok around the galeries and see some exciting art work one would maybe never or not for a long time see in its context.

Strelka VVSR Workshop Day One (two)

After having missed the official start of the workshop yesterday I joined the workshop team. Today was not only very hot but also very productive. Moscow is some 39C, maybe more depending on the source. So the water spender machines are in constan use and the cartridges have to be changed frequently.

Topics for today were processing, processing and processing. In between we had some short exercises concerning the interactions between virtual and real spaces. With this we want the students to start investigating in many directions and from the beginning to mix both worlds. YOu can follow the progress either on the workshop facebook page anOtherWorkshop, or on twitter @anOtherWorkshop with the #vvsr tag.

In a simple string of actions parameters for twitter mining were extracted from virtual user generated online information that was recreated and reinterpreted and put back online. The resulting stories of object and place produced a list of key search terms. Surprisingly there were many very successful search terms found in this way maybe no one would have thought of otherwise. It turned out that cleaning and smoke and pipe are actually very popular words in the world of Russian twitter users.

In a simple processing query, the terms were requested through the twitter api and visualised according to the day of the week, in columns and time of the day, in rows.


Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Yulia and Masha / This is using the Russian search term "труба" ("pipe"). Basically through out the week people are talking about pipe.

The tool that offers the most direct interface between the real world and the virtual literally is the Tales of Things. The platform to link memories, stories and thought via virtual content to any real world object. Obviously the students liked this hands on and easy accessible tool and started to log their stories.

There is the wonder full tale of the ghost of the house, who lives on in one of the buildings on the island and sort of leads it in to a positive future (from his seat in the rain pipes). Or there is the sad-sweet description of the girl/young lady who's face is printed on the chocolate bar that used to be produced on site on the island, or the confusion created by words if they are used in the same sense in a different context.


Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Zvezdnii and his colleague / The "object" - chocolate bar, sportig the girl on the cover. It is actually a rather disturbing facial expression if you think about it for a moment.

The day was rounded off with a late night lecture at Strelka by Hans Ulrich Obrist starting only after 10 pm local time. The talk is covered by single-blogs on twitter.

Just for the records the input presentation given today.

single-blogs at Strelka - Virtual vs Real

The single-blogs blog will be written from Moscow for the coming week. I will be involved in a workshop at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.
The workshop goes under the title 'AG: Virtual Versus Real' and we will be investigating the interface between the virtual social networking activity and the real world location. The workshop will integrate mapping, programming and visualising.

From the website 'Virtual reality is becoming a part of the factual everyday life. In the video game Second Life one can build an ideal house, watch an on-line lecture by Zaha Hadid, and even visit offices of established architectural bureaus. Facebook allows us to follow schedules of designers and architects, and Twitter even makes them as close as your friends.
What is the influence of virtual spaces on real ones? How are design and architecture of the virtual space different from those of the real space? In this session we will discuss how Internet influences our society and the city environment, what happens in on-line gaming and social networks, and what practical benefits they can bring?'


Image taken from New Scientist / The mood of the nation at midday and 11 pm EST (Image: Alan Mislove/Sune Lehmann/Yong-Yeol Ahn/Jukka-Pekka Onnela/J. Niels Rosenquist, 2010).

This is a very hot topic currently and a lot of great visualisations have been produced and a couple of research projects are using it already as a data source. The Tweet-O-Meter and the New Landscape Maps developed here at CASA are only one of them. Another research project is the 'Puls of the Nation: U.S. Mood Throughout the Day inferred from Twitter' currently discussed in the New Scientist.



In the context of Moscow this will be very interesting since the underground network actually has coverage for the mobile phone network. So it is possible to tweet from underground. This will definitely change the landscape. Influenced by this contextless black tube space and the monotony of commuting are the best breeding ground for virtual interaction and remote social networking.


Image taken from bonCherry / Moscow Metro Map.

With the workshop we want to look closely at these phenomenon and work out in detail the conditions in the urban fabric that allow for this virtual-real interface and the implications for architecture. For a long time the virtual worlds have fascinated architects and it is established practice in the conception of architecture. However, in the use of architecture this has only been discovered.
The workshop will cover mapping of the urban context according to virtual activity and involve programming and practical real world exercise. The strategy is explorative based, since we don't know yet about the finding but it will go beyond a merely virtual assemblage of information.
The New Landscape maps are a starting point but we really want to learn something aout the tactility of the physical location and investigate the conditions and changes this practice brings for architecture. The workshop is run by Daniel Dendra together with Imannuel Koh and myself.

So if you happen to be around in Moscow just pop in and see what we are doing, Strelka is located directly in the centre of Moscow on the island Balchug just opposite the Kremlin.

Since Strelka is a new school, headed by Rem Koolhas and his OMA/AMO team, they put in a lot of effort an have managed to put together a very impressive line up of big names for lectures. There is Peter Cook, tonight actually, Odile Decq, Colin Fournier, Bjarke Ingels, Michael Schindhelm, and many more.


Image taken from Wikipedia / River Moskva, downtown Moscow, 1852 map.

Recently with the New City Landscape maps there was a lot of taking around this topic on this blog. This will continue with two additional sets of maps coming up. First set with the cities of Moscow, Barcelona, San Francisco and Sydney. This will be followed by a set with Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Toronto.

Indiemapper - Mapping to Go

Mapping has become a big thing in our everyday lives. This goes hand in hand with stepped up efforts to collect but also release data. It has become a data war with big web players such as Google, but also traditional produces such as OS or the sensus data.
The bottleneck currently is more the traditional software tools to actually work with the data and produce meaningful output.
So it is great to get news about a new effort to open this up and make it more accessible and intuitive. Here we go INDIEMAPPER!
It is an online flash based mapping tool developed over the past two years by Axis Maps.


Image taken from Indiemapper / A map of Hurricane Gustav showing its path and wind speed, 25 August to 2 September 2008. The reference map data, including bathymetry, is from Natural Earth. The hurricane data is from Geocommons Finder.

It offers all you you can think of: Unlimited online storage, Secure data handling and storage, No software to install, Mac, PC or Linux ,Constant secure backups, Built-in collaboration tools, Premium customer support. A mapping tool to go really, work from were ever you have access, don't worry about the data. All for $30 a month, you can get a 30 day free trial to test it. For academic use there is a reduced pricing.

Indiemapper also integrates with independent cartographic tools on the web like ColorBrewer, TypeBrewer and Natural Earth.

"Indiemapper is a Web-based app that loads geo-data, allows custom control over mapmaking, and exports static maps in vector and raster formats.
We've balanced indiemapper so you have the tools you need to make beautiful thematic maps without overwhelming you with hundreds of obscure GIS functions. Nothing is more than 2 clicks away. This keeps mapmaking simple, fast, and fun." (Indimapper)
Find a detailed introduction on the Cartogrammer Blog or of course infos directly on the Indimapper page, this also features a blog with updates, also see the review on FlowingData.

Augmented (Hyper) Reality - You've Got an Interactive Table?

A rather disturbing clip of a possible near future. Might be unlikely, but talking about it is going on rather for a while now. It has become possible to actually do exactly what is visualised in this imaginary representation. By using available free digital tools such as layar everyone with access to the internet and consumer hardware in the form of a smart phone and a computer could put this together. probably not as visually impressive as Keiichi Matsuda manages in this clip produced for is master of architecture. This is a truly astonishing visual with a lot of love for good graphics and good design. I love it.

New City Clip

As an update on the new city presentation here is the MoMa clip documenting the project.

Are we Losing our Sense of Direction?

Are we losing our Sense of Direction? What a rhetoric question. Without the context this does not really make sense, or does it?
Usually as things are starting to be fun, some one comes over to tell you how bad this is and that you should not do it because of this or this or even this reason. At least it was like this when you were a teen, battling for independence with beloved ones.
However this is long gone and things have changed since. And still the same situation. But now we are wiser and think twice, maybe it is true, or at least partially, there might be something about this other opinion I have not thought of in this way.
Here we re with the news, finally, GPS is BAD!
Yes, you are right, your SatNav is doing harm to you as you drive. At least this is what the headlines of the news on the New York Times blog and the walrus magazine suggest Actually it is all based on an article by Alex Hutchinson.
We actually have an other SatNav article her on single-blogs, that addresses the problem of arriving at the desired location but in this case it was about spelling the destination name correctly.
In general Alex Hutchinson points out in hi article that navigating is a learning process that is a dual relationship between brain and action. The more we use it the better we are at it, but it needs to be maintained.
Scientists have identified an area in the brain, the hippocampus, to be responsible or this sort of navigation task. “The brains of London cabbies have outsized rear hippocampuses, because they are required to painstakingly learn the byzantine lanes and byways of the Old World city. (NYblog)” Most of us will not attempt to learn the apparently 25’000 street names and thousands of landmarks required for becoming a cabby. However navigating and orientating do not necessarily require you to know all the names of the streets. Other elements are important in day-to-day navigation. Hutchinson refers to Veronique Bohbot a researcher at McConnell Brain Imaging Center: “Bohbot demonstrated in a widely cited 2003 study that our mapping strategies fall into two basic categories. One is a spatial strategy that involves learning the relationships between various landmarks — creating a cognitive map in your head. The other is a stimulus-response approach that encodes specific routes by memorizing a series of cues, as in: get off the bus when you see the glass skyscraper, then walk toward the big park. For their study, Bohbot created a virtual maze that tested both methods; they found that about half of us prefer spatial strategies, while the other half prefer stimulus-response” (walrus magazine). We probably use both of these techniques depending on the situation, but most likely we prefer one over the other. What navigation type are you?

Mouse in Matrix - How Mental Maps are Made

How do we create mental maps? In a story the New Scientist reports new development in the area of brain studies. The research was presented in nature in September 2009.
Over this question scientist have long speculated. The involved brain areas have long been identified, but the how was still subject for debate. Apparently the region in the brain is called hippocampus. The problem so far was that recording the activity required the subject’s head/brain needed to remain fairly stable and this is not possible for normal navigation. The New Scientist reported earlier initial findings related to the brains spatial navigation activities.
Reportedly after paying Quake II researchers came up with the idea of using a virtual reality surrounding for the experiment to record brain activity while navigating.
Researchers at Princeton University developed a Quake based VR environment for rodents as well as a special navigation ball on which the rodents could run (in a stabilizing harness to keep them relatively still) and navigate the VR maze. Basically they created a mini IMAX for the mouse, reports wired.com.
They were the able to scan the mouse’s brain activity as it learned to navigate the maze. Some treats along the way helped I guess.
However, there is little information on what they have actually found. At the moment the main interest seems to be the technique how they used to record the brain activity, so mainly the VR for mice set-up. It looks fancy though.



In these experiments scientists are not really interested in how and what the brain records and how participants (in this case mice) actually understand the maze or the environment they have navigated. Here they simply assume that this is taking place. They are talking about a mental map but are just looking at activity as ‘space’ is navigated. To some extend this is only implicit looking at how the memory and sense of place is building up. History is always biased by the fact that it is in the past and it is remembered back from a present state that might be rather different from the past and this influences the way the memory is recalled. Some sort of processing is taking place and the result is a weighted remembering. Through this the history has a present relevance, but is not ‘true’. In this respect the mental map as a review of the maze experience is probably a rather different case than the activity of navigating it. Let’s wait and see how scientist interpret the rodent’s sketch of the maze...

Layar - AR at Large for the iPhone

It is here, finally for the iPhone. Layar is available and with it a whole series of information packages. There is nothing new on it, but the way it is visualised is new. You get familiar stuff like Wikipedia, Open Street Map, ArchINFORM, Twitter, Panoramio, flickr, Brightkite plus a lot more. There is a high chance that the library will grow dramatically in the next few months. Currently there are a lot of services from Japan as layers available, as well as from the Netherlands. An up to date list of Layar layers can be found HERE.
Layar is basically the browser that visualises the data provided by individual companies offering a specific service. Download the app for your iPhone here.
So lets have a look at how it looks and feels, by testing some services around CASA.


Image by single-blogs - Screenshots, Depending on the angel, Layar adjusts the horizon line of the overlaid plane that serves as a reference for the displayed data.

The reference information is drawn from the GPS / Wi-Fi / Network to establish the current location. The compass built in to the iPhone give the direction of the phone. Layar provides a grid plane to locate the information and presumably give a better sense of depth. The icons used to represent the information are rather simple, a circle, a square, ... The interaction with these objects is limited to select them. It turns out that this is a difficult task at times. One because it is a rather small area of the screen that is available for the actual AR display (the rest is cluttered with backup information) and two because the icons are overlapping one another and are obviously displayed even smaller if they are further away from the present location. However there is a automatic selection that works fine if there are only one or two items on the screen and by moving the iPhone you can alter between them, but as soon as you get more items the sensitivity of the compass can not keep up with the millimeter differences between the items.


Image by single-blogs - Screenshots, Brightkite layer on Layar

The top bar holds a setting button that contains a number of options related to the service. For example the range/distance within results are displayed can be adjusted. The second bar on the top allows to switch between a map, a list and the AR mode, here called reality, WOW! Additional information for each selected item is displayed in the box below. It also provides a link to the displayed contend at its original location on the web. Meaning, Layar is really just a window to search for stuff. In this respect it could increasingly compete with Google and this raises the question why Google has not yet developed their own service or when they will buy Layar?
Well at this point is still a very crude application with a rather cluttered and ugly interface, crappy icons and not very intuitive handling. But you know it is a first stab at a commercial platform to display location based information projected onto reality though the lens of a camera and this is exciting enough.
How beautiful and simple this could look like was shown by acrossair, it was reviewed in an earlier post HERE.


Image by single-blogs - Screenshots, London Tube, not as nice as Nearest Tube, but with additional information that it links to.


Image by single-blogs - Screenshots, Panoramio as the Layar layer, link page and panorama on the web.