The View From Above: In Hard Focus Round-up (August 29, 2011)
Monday, August 29, 2011 at 5:03PM “Scan the World” with Junaio’s enhanced AR search: Metaio, a company we’ve mentioned before on InHardFocus, recently updated its Janaio Augmented Reality browser with capabilities that better translate real world images (and barcodes) into useful searches for information. In an interview with Fast Company, Mataio’s CEO, Peter Meier, explained the purpose behind Janaio, which will now incorporate both location-based AR sensors as well as barcode scanning capabilities in order to “make a more natural way to browse – a more natural way to receive information about surrounding objects and places.” While certainly there are a lot of current and upcoming applications (see video above), I think this type of recognition technology has a lot to prove before stepping up as an alternative to traditional search engines and tools.
Spying from your smartphone: Stem’s new iZON camera provides quite a sophisticated way of monitoring (or spying) on your loved ones. The simple, wireless camera allows one to view streaming video, record for later viewing or even send alerts for changes in motion or sound via one’s smartphone. While Engadget mentions Stem’s concern for privacy with its encryption policy, my concern would be around how this video is being stored, not to mention finding decent 3G or wireless in order to check up on the babysitter on date night.
An eye for a...webcam?: TechCrunch reported on Friday about a cool new technology that, once developed, could provide some astonishing results for the visually challenged. The Eyeborg project is essentially developing a wireless video camera for the eye socket, which now transmits video to a LCD viewer but could down the road connect to the visual cortex, and thus provide a viable replacement for a normal eye. Very cool.
