Category Archives: Location Based Services

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Man and Machine merging …
I have continued to read about Kevin Warwick and his work with Cybernetics. He is becoming one of the earths first true Cyborgs. Along with Steve Mann (who I’ll post about in the next few days) they are leading the world with this type of research.

In this latest article called “No more talk … Just think” he is exploring an area that I have discussed with friends for quite some time. If the proper sensors were inserted into the brain, a simple application could be used to learn certain neural firing patterns as you thought, or thought of moving a muscle, etc. Once these patterns were learned, we could assign new ways to communicate the presence of these patterns. So now simply thinking about something could be detected by software, and then that software could trigger any type of action. This puts a very different type of spin on “my ears were burning” … I might think about my wife, which would trigger the software to send an instant message to my wife. Even further, it might send a message to her cyborg-implant, which would then activate a small heater implanted in her ear. 😉

With cyborg implants that have visible or non-visible (wireless) communciations you will have whole new ways of communicating … between humans, and between humans and machines.

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More mapping software …
I have to admit that I am caught up with maps and GPS. This is yet another mapping application that I found, and I’m really impressed at how it combines the various maps – and even Terraserver satellite images – to create a powerful display of where you are, and your routes and waypoints. I’m going to experiment with this one on my wearable computer!

Viking 0.0.5. A GPS data editor and topo viewer. [freshmeat.net]

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International Symposium on Wearable Computers
After wanting to attend this conference for several years now, the planets aligned. The conference was in Seattle, and I was able to break away and go! I have to admit that ISWC 2002 was smaller than I would have anticipated in size and attendance, but well worth the price and time in the content and what I was able to learn.

The conference started with some tutorials and I chose to attend one on power issues with wearables, and the state of power solutions. It was a good talk, and I was able to get some insight into where research is going. One thing that I started to realize is that, IMHO, battery technology evolution is being underestimated.

The next three days consisted of papers that were presented. Each paper was given 30 minutes, and they had breaks every hour and a half. It was great … hearing everything from work on the International Space Station (Yes, they are using 802.11b wireless on ther space station!), to location-based services and map rendering, to the various software that is being developed to create augmented and mediated reality. I’ll talk more about this in future posts.

Overall, it was a blast. I can’t wait for next year … I’ll be there in a very different capacity … 😉

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Personal, peer to peer devices …
I really like this article … it starts to really look at the next-generation applications that we are going to be seeing soon. I have a different opinion on the platform that this will occur with, but the concepts at the same. The power of the systems that we are carrying with us is extreme … and with low-cost wireless appearing all over the place it is only a matter of time before the various applications begin to appear. One of my core interests is the “Mobile Ad-hoc Networks” that are coming …

Inter-Personal Awareness Devices [Nooface: In Search of the Post-PC Interface]

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Location based information … information on how to get … information!
I really think this is a great idea for a cool web service! These guys have written a really cool application that consumes a FCC database and let’s you know what radio and TV stations are in your area. Very cool! If converted to a web service then anywhere in the United States that you might find your self, you would be able to detect what stations are around. This would be great coupled with a GPS and a wearable computer … and if the wearable had a radio/TV tuner peripheral …

Station Location and Information 1.0. Search and display AM, FM, and TV station information. [freshmeat.net]

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WarBlading II … going on III …
So a couple weeks back – before my two week long set of business trips, I headed out WarBlading again. This time I had a couple of objectives:

  1. wear the unit outside of the pack to see if the unit would run cooler.
  2. use the Olympus/Xybernaut Head-Mounted Display (HMD) that I have.

The unit ran cooler … actually all night on the single ElectroVaya battery … however I had to use the tablet display since I couldn’t get a pointing device working! It sucked!

The issue with the pointing device is that Windows 2000 would keep freaking out with the GPS and Mouse connected at the same time. I wanted to skate and had to bail.

So this Thursday will be it … I bought a new USB “miniature hand trackball” that you use with your thumb. I’m going to install it and see if that works better … we’ll see.

I also got my 2.4Ghz radios working with Win2k … so that I can see if we can do some “peer to peer” wireless exchange of GPS location information. While I was on the business trip last week, I was able to spend a lot of time, while we were driving up and down the northeast coast, working on my “waypointer” application. I am adding the “target” tab so that I can store a set of “waypoints” that I want to keep track of. While writing this I just realized that I want to have a “track on/off” capability to keep entries in this table whether I am tracking them or not … duh!

The last area of interest is the new pack. I found a great pack at REI that is made by North Face. It has a completely ventilated rear pocket that is perfect for the wearable … good cooling.

More later … and I’m making great progress with the HX2002 … I’m hoping to have some info on the web site soon …

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WarBlading …
It was a very cool experience last night … I went WarBlading for the first time … and it worked! Although the temperatures were very hot, and the machine croaked a couple of times, I was able to rollerblade around Salt Lake City last night with my Xybernaut wearable computer, with a GPS connected, running NetStumbler, searching for 802.11b access points …

What really hit me is that this is going to be big … very big … and goes far beyond mapping 802.11b access points … just wait. 😉

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Tim writes about the “undercurrents” of innovation …
We all hear about Open Source and it’s implications, however Tim is really doing something about it. It is great that he and his organization are taking on the role of assisting in the communication of new and innovative ideas coming from the “trenches” … these are the ideas that are the real “undercurrents” that will emerge as the next big thing.

In this article, he does a great job of outline many of the new innovations are are coming …

O’Reilly Network: Inventing the Future. Tim O’Reilly. But the most interesting part of the story is still untold, in the work of hundreds or thousands of independent projects that, like a progressively rendered image, will suddenly snap into focus. That’s why I like to use the word “emergent.” There’s a story here that is emerging with increasing clarity. [Tomalak’s Realm]

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Human forms of real-time telemetry …
This is an excellent article with a prime example of the future implications of mobile/wireless networking and various applications. Esther is writing about what occurred at one of her conferences when some of the attendees were blogging in real time during the conference … providing real-time “telemetry” about the conference proceedings.

We started to do this type of things years ago at Novell when we would use Instant Messaging and Chat during internal road-map review meetings. A large group of us were able to multiplex between the presentations and our group anaylsis without generating verbal side conversations. This also allowed us to ask questions and opinions between the members of our team to minimize the need to interupt the speaker.

All of this culminated with an application that I wrote called LiVote … for Live-Vote … that was an experiment in allowing a group of people to see a group of questions about a presenter or their presentation. Under each issue is a slider that allows each person to “vote” on that issue and rate it between 0 and 10. Below each slider is a bar graph that shows the “average” rating of all of the voters. So I can now be giving real-time feedback on my opinions … to my team … and potentially to the speaker!

I have thought about completing this application in a way that could be utilized at future conferences. Maybe I’ll have to bring it back to life and touch base with Dan Gilmore about it … 😉

Esther Dyson on the connection between blogging and face to face conferences.  [Scripting News]

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More GPS and mapping software in Open Source …
There is more Open Source software appearing continuously that is experimenting with mapping and geographic visualization. This looks like one that has some nice features and capabilities. It is addressing 3D displays, and also the capabilites to access map data from sources that are being constantly updated. This last feature is one that I have been looking at for a while with some friends. It seems to me that I would want to be downloading and caching map data all the time as I travel and always be fetching the most up to date data … maybe even data that was created by friends or family!

gps3d 1.18. A GPS 3D visualization utility. [freshmeat.net]