2011 Audi A8 adds handwriting recognition to in-car UI

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Audi’s flagship A8 luxury sedan is the company’s technological tour de force, and the company says its 2011 iteration will sport handwriting recognition among its many features.

The feature will be supported in the vehicle’s Multi Media Interface, or MMI — effectively the navigation/media unit in the car’s console. It allows the user to write the destination in freehand and then use the touchscreen to manipulate the directions as necessary.

The idea: why tap using a keyboard when handwriting is faster?

The feature also supports Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean character support, allowing for global reach.

Other features of the vehicle include all-LED headlights, “anticipatory” satellite navigation with night vision, and energy recuperation technology.

The A8 will also house a UMTS module which will enable Google Earth images to be beamed to the MMI monitor in three-dimensions for navigation purposes. The company says full Internet connectivity via UMTS will soon be possible — in other words, the entire car will be a mobile WLAN hotspot.

Antony Gormley blinds viewers with brilliance in new London show | Art and design | The Guardian

antony-gormley-breathing-room Breathing Room III is exhibited in the lower ground floor gallery of the White Cube, comprising 15 interconnecting photo-luminescent 'space frames'. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Antony Gormley cheerfully admits that he is trying to jolt people, frighten them even, by suddenly turning on blinding and disorientating white lights as visitors daintily make their way through his latest work, unveiled this morning.

"To scare people I think, yes," he said. "That's important." The artist was in London for a major new exhibition at the White Cube gallery of what has been three years in the making.

There are two rooms of new work. Downstairs is what looks like an enormous holographic matrix, in which visitors are invited to carefully walk through in darkness – until the timed lights are unexpectedly switched on, that is, bathing the entire room in ultra-bright light. The work – called Breathing Room III – is made up of 15 interconnecting photo-luminescent frames. The reaction from people today was not necessarily dignified – rather, it mostly entailed swearing.

Upstairs are the latest versions of the artist's own body: nine geometrically shaped rusting iron sculptures, weighing up to two and a half tonnes, tightly packed into the room. You walk through them as you might walk through a maze.

"I'm very excited about this show," said Gormley. "It's the first time that I've shown a body of work that has such a close and clear articulation of one with the other. I'm thrilled."

Gormley has been casting himself for 30 years in his exploration of the human condition. "We are minds enclosed in bodies and our bodies are enclosed in architecture," he says. "The reconciliation of mind with architecture, which I hope also involves empathic feeling, is exactly what this whole show is about."

Gormley is one of the UK's most popular artists, his works ranging from the enormous homecoming beacon for Geordies that is the Angel of the North to the One And Other project in Trafalgar Square last year in which more than 2,000 people stood on the fourth plinth for an hour at a time. There have been recast versions of the artist all over the world, such as Event Horizon in London, with figures dotted around the capital, and Another Place, 100 cast-iron Gormleys on Crosby beach.

He gives short shrift to comments that he produces versions of himself too often. "I don't think of my body as mine. It's a body. This identification of body with self is a total illusion.

"It's not my body, it's just a bunch of molecules that I happen to have temporary leasehold on. If I was some kind of megalomaniac narcissist that wanted to fill the world with images of himself, I think I could do a hell of a lot better job than this, frankly."

Postures in his new work range from his "body" lying down with his arms out to being upright, tightly clasping his thighs. He is clearly used to being cast. "When I'm inside the mould it's great. I don't have to do anything, nobody can get hold of me. I try and concentrate on what I'm doing, or not doing, or being."

All the work has been the result of digital research with Gormley's team using two software programmes – "framer" and "blocker" – that allow them to translate "physical body volumes in to architectural form. He says that interaction was an integral part of the show.

Downstairs, you can have fun with the flashing artwork – or you can try and see it as Gormley sees it, as "a kind of diagram of perspective in which perspective is destroyed by perspective". Viewers, he says, can treat it as "an object, or a place – virtual or real".

Antony Gormley Test Sites at White Cube Mason's Yard, 4 June-10 July

Augmented reality edges closer to mainstream | Gaming and Culture -

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SANTA CLARA, Calif.--To an unenlightened observer, Ron Haidenger's demonstration of playing a video game by tilting a piece of cardboard back and forth looks more than a little bit nutty.

But to anyone wearing his company's computer-enhanced glasses, which seamlessly delete the image of the cardboard and replace it with a metal ball spinning through a gleaming three-dimensional maze, it's a near-hypnotic experience.
"The response no matter where we show it is phenomenal," says Haidenger, manager of Vuzix's consumer division. "There's a huge hunger in the market for AR hardware."

AR is, of course, short for "augmented reality." The concept isn't entirely new: it's crept into public consciousness in the last few years in the form of those virtual yellow line markers in broadcasts of football games and heads-up displays in some cars.

But a new crop of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists has more ambitious plans. They gathered here this week in the Santa Clara Convention Center for a conference that's not called one--the official title is the first Augmented Reality Event--to come up with concepts that will convince all but the most technophobic that they should be looking at the world through a new set of spectacles.....

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Coca-Cola and the ARG campaign "The Secret Is Out There" | RT @nomimesmedia

June 1, 2010 | Advertising | ,

Somewhat intriguing new integrated campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy Portland for Coca-Cola brought back their big mystery: what is the secret formula of the most famous drink in the world?

The campaign revolves around a viral video that takes us back to the 19th century, and to know the Doc Pemberton , responsible for creating the formula for Coca-Cola, and ask questions like "Who has the ingredients of that formula?" or "Who would want to steal it?" and yet complete "You would not want to know?"

Style ARG to be the campaign unfolds with the video "The Secret Is Out There," which is full of clickable areas, and that lead Internet users to different places, like a file folder restricted with images dating from 1886, the Twitter account @ DocPemberton , a Facebook application , a site called Smileizer and a supposed video livestream from where it would be safe to guard the secrecy of its formula, complete with ghosts, knights, ninjas, dogs, robots and everything. Bizarro. And still other areas that lead Internet users to old viral Coca-Cola in the channel SecretFormula of YT.

The brand campaign promises with actions both online and offline, with rewards for participants who found the answers to many questions. Limited editions of their bottles will also be released that will lead consumers to interact with social networking sites and the campaign. What is most intriguing is that some sites - like Smileizer and the application of Facebook - still seem not to have any connection with the campaign and the concept of the secret formula. Let's wait.


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Apocalypsis - chillingly beautiful photos by Alvaro Ybarra Zavala

A journey through the darker reaches of humankind, Apocalypsis is a record of loss, grief, injustice, violence and death through war in Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Photographer Alvaro Ybarra Zavala aims to bring the realities of these regions into our daily lives, and to confront us with what he describes as “the orgy of desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of inflicting upon their fellows”; he undertakes to record these darker episodes in our recent history to show that they are omnipresent realities. “People are moved by what they see,” writes Zavala. “They respond emotionally, intellectually and morally. All we have is each other. We create our own problems, and it is up to us to solve them. I want this project to become a part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great leaders who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury.”

Mobile Social Networking Grows Dramatically- great charts Gary Hayes!

The number of US mobile phone users performing social networking grew dramatically between April 2009 and April 2010, according to comScore MobiLens data.

Social Networking Fastest Growing Mobile App
While the total number of mobile phone users who accessed an application increased 28%, from 54.4 million to 69.6 million, between April 2009 and April 2010, the number of mobile phone users who accessed a social networking application more than tripled. Social networking led all mobile application categories with 240% growth, as the number of users increased from 4.3 million to 14.5 million.

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Several other application categories experienced triple-digit growth in the past year, emphasizing the increasing popularity of this method as a form of mobile content access. News apps followed, growing 124% from 4.1 million to 9.3 million users, while sports information apps experienced a 113% surge from 3.6 million to 7.7 million users. Bank accounts apps also grew 113%, from 2.3 million to 4.9 million, and weather apps grew 111% from 8.5 million to 18.1 million users.

The total number of mobile application users increased 28%, from 54.4 million to 69.6 million, between April 2009 and April 2010.

Social Networking Browser Access Doubles
Nearly 73 million mobile users accessed their browser in April 2010, an increase of 31% from 55.5 million the previous year. Mirroring application category growth, social networking ranked as the fastest-growing category accessed via browser, growing 90% from 15.7 million the previous year to reach almost 30 million users, followed by bank accounts (up 69% from 7.8 million to 13.2 million users).

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Online retail sites also experienced a significant increase in audience usage via browser, increasing 47% from about 5 million to 7.3 million users, as Americans continued to show adoption of the mobile retail channel.

In total, 72.9 million mobile users accessed their browser in April 2010, up 31% from 55.5 million in April 2009.

Smartphone Users Post Triple-Digit Growth in App and Browser Access
In terms of penetration, 78% of smartphone users accessed their browser in April 2010, while 80% of smartphone users accessed applications. In comparison, just 19% of feature phone users accessed their browser, with 17% accessing applications.

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Smartphone users are driving growth in browser (up 111%, from 17.8 million to 37.6 million in the past year) and application (up 112%, from 18.1 million to 38.4 million) access. Meanwhile, fewer feature phone users are accessing their mobile browser (down 6%, from 3.7 million to 35.3 million) or applications (down 14%, from 36.3 million to 31.2 million). However, feature phone users still make up nearly half of all users accessing mobile browsers and apps.

The total mobile phone audience grew 1%, from 232 million to 234 million users, between April 2009 and April 2010.

28% of Mobile Phone Users Go Online Daily
Twenty-eight percent of US mobile phone users access the mobile internet at least once a day, according to a recent consumer survey conducted by ABI Research. The percentage mobile phone users who access mobile internet sites from their phones dramatically increased from 16% to 28% between December 2008 and February 2010.

In addition, the percentages of mobile phone users who perform mobile internet access more than once a week but less than once a day, about once a week, and more than once a month but less than once a week all rose. The percentages who perform mobile internet access about once a month and less than once a month both fell.

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