So so cool: Data Viz Installation of Your Connections on Facebook on Vimeo

From the site:

"Obscura Digital created a physical, social, augmented reality experience dubbed "Connections" at F8, Facebook's developer's conference. Attendees swipe in to the experience using their RFID enabled event badge. Multiple overhead projectors map visuals to the floor and an array of 3D cameras are used to reliably track any number of people within the space.

Once “logged in” to Connections, a radial visualization, constructed from the user’s social graph data, surrounds them creating a unique “fingerprint”. Colored lines extend from the circles connecting people who share one or more of the observed metrics (mutual friends, interests, workplaces, schools, locations, birth sign, or non-English languages). When two or more people, who have mutual connections, stand within close proximity, a slideshow of mutual friends and interests appear between them.

Positioned behind the Connections space, a large screen shares aggregate data about the collective group- surfacing common interests and profiling the most connected of the group."

Insanely Good Archive! Coen Brothers Suite of Scripts And Movies | Grazie! Raindance

About the Coen Brothers

The children of two college professors growing up in the suburbs of Minneapolis during the revolutionary 1960s, Joel and Ethan Coen had their first flings with film when Joel used his lawn mowing money to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Along with a neighborhood pal they remade movies that they saw on television, and the effects film had on their young lives is apparent in their professional work.

  The Coen Brothers continue to enthrall moviegoers because they know how to tell engaging stories that do not fit the traditional Hollywood mould. They use the conventions to their advantage instead of to their inhibition. They are unique auteurs, and according to Ethan “the movie people let us play in the corner of the sandbox and leave us alone. We're happy here.”

Long may they thrive in unmitigated inventiveness that we may study and learn from their work.

by Joel Coen (Ethan uncredited)

Augmented Reality and NFC. The wave of the future? | Augmented Planet (Excerpt)

Submitted by lester on Thursday, 8 September 20112 Comments

This morning a colleague of mine attended a talk about NFC (near field communications). The talk was aimed at how NFC is set to become the technology of the decade and the impact it will have on mobile phones. I got thinking that while NFC is certainly going to be big, it’s perhaps a stepping stone for augmented reality.

OEMs are climbing over themselves to put NFC into the latest and greatest mobile phones and within just few years we are expected to pay for items just by pressing our smartphone against the special receivers. It’s surprising how many people (especially here the UK) think that NFC is a new technology. That Oyster card you use everyday to pay for your ticket to work is a good example of NFC payments in action. In the very near future handset manufactures will be vying for you to ditch the Oyster card, and your credit card and make payments using your phone instead.

Before I get to the AR part, the talk this morning was around pushing NFC into mobile. Of course credit card companies will be pushing NFC enabled cards too (there are some available already) so which system becomes the most popular is anyone’s guess. Phones are pretty much ubiquitous and an item that is always with you, but becoming my digital wallet at the same time is a little to much of ‘too many eggs in the one basket’ for my liking. The other an answered question is what kinds of phones will we be using in the future. Will our mobile devices continue to be smartphones or will we see AR enabled glasses with calling capabilities?