New phone apps seek to 'augment' reality

I think this stands on its own.

*EDIT: OK, link works now*

What's steampunk about that?

Our level of technology compared to 2070's molycircs, optical storage, facial recognition and mesh wireless capabilities?

Steampunk isn't just shorthand for obsolete technology. That misses the point of the genre rather badly. Above all else, steampunk is not the cutting edge of modern technology, which is what that article showcases.

Hmmm, but SiliconPunk doesn't have quite the same ring, now does it?

Wirepunk, maybe.

So are you acknowledging the validity of my point - that this has nothing to do with steampunk? I'm not really looking to go exploring hypothetical genre label possibilities here.

Its amazing. Dumpshockers seem to be 'specially talented at making an argument about hardly anything at all.

Very cool, but I wonder how long it'll be before some apps like that can hit the market (and work reliably). Plus, I wonder how useful they'll actually be.

That was essentially my thought and what I was trying to point out. But we're really starting to dip our toes in the waters of SciFi at this point.

I take pride in what I do. What I'm doing right now is drinking at my neighbourhood pub and arguing on the Internet.

*chokes on a laugh and decides not to touch that one*

The Future!

Cool. When they finally integrate this with a totally functional cyber-eye, I'll be signing up for surgery.

To the future!

OK, now I have that theme song stuck in my head... somebody has to die.

Could have been "fifth world style" 

Oooooh... I hadn't considered that. That's not bad. That's not bad at all.

I there with you. Until then I would like it integrated into my glasses or an IOL.

Ain't that the Truth...

Reminds me of when I coded my first AR phone app. That was two years ago.
There are already a few applications out: a few AR games or advertisting apps for Nokia Symbian S60 phones and a few AR apps on Android. iPhone apps might be coming soon, but right now the public development kit doesn't allow the developers to access the camera in real-time.

The thing is that the S60 apps use 2D tags to know where to display their ARO and the Android (and iPhone) apps use the GPS and compass to know where to display data. None use real-time image analysis (well, the tag-based solutions do use image analysis but they 'cheat' by using 2D tags).

I chance a guess that you haven't met very many geeks. You must be one of those normies.

Quite the opposite. I am surrounded by them every day (Studying Physics and Computer Game Development at Uni. Yeah. ). Its just that the lads (And lass') here seem especially capable at completly going off tangent at the slightest thing.

i would say thats the internet for you. Hell, check your average slashdot new comment tree, if you think dumpshock is bad...

Studying physics and game development doesn't make you a geek, because a geek is far more than just knowledge and profession.

No, but they do tend to draw the geekier type of people.

Why do you say you think we're capable of going off on a tan- Squirrel!! Sorry, what was that?

Down boy, I don't want you goin' off chasin' dem squirrels ya hear? You're a pheasant dog!

Hey, I don't think that the state-of-the-art phone processors today are capable of handling non-tagged real time image analysis. (Although they could use RFIDS instead of 2D tags to "cheat" even more)

That's not entirely true. The N95 I was programming on back then was able to do some pretty good stuff in real time so I'm pretty sure that with clever programming you could get interesting results. An interesting way would be to have the phone be able to tell distinct objects and track them but leave the object analysis to a server since you'll need one for the object database anyway.

Still it isn' the phone who is doing the analysis, it is a server.
But yeah, I wrote poorly, the problem isn't so much the phone processors, but their RAM. What is the largest RAM around for cell phones these days? 32MB?
I'm just guessing here, but I don't think it is that much.

Closer to 256MB actually.
You can roughly do as much with today's SOTA smartphone as you could do with a Pentium 3.

Really??? Wow, I guess I did fall behind on cell phone technology
I never really cared thoug. As long as I could call someone and keep a calendar on it, I never saw much use for them. (Until I saw what commlinks can do I just wait for the day when they become ubiquitous (the most favorite word these days)).

American SOTA smartphone. The drek in Japan is just plan frightening... and I'm not talking about the most popular faceplate among male buyers, either. *shudders*

Kay, I'll bite, what is the most popular faceplate?

THIS year? I'm not really certain. But a couple years ago I seem to remember something Hello Kittyish in bright pastells, but I can hope it was a joke.

heh, so japanese men are a bit odd, not surprised. That whole nation seems to be fueled by distilled odd...

Probably not.
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