unrated - mumblings of a mobile entrepreneur

Augmented reality is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data (according to wikipedia). You could also call it “digital graffiti” which is a term that I like a lot better.

For about a year now I’ve been mucking around with the creation of a device that does the following:

Imagine a smartphone like device with a see-through screen in it. Look through the screen and you’ll see the world around you with a digital graffiti twist.

The device has built in GPS & UMTS chips that pinpoint your location. On the see-through screen you can write messages, when you save these messages they are tied (using the GPS coordinates) to the location where you’ve written them. Now if someone else looks through their device they’ll see the message you’ve written floating in mid air.

In other words: Without the device you see the world as it is, look through the device and you’ll see messages from other people, internet addresses, drawings, etc. floating all around you.

Nokia has obviously been testing this technology and from the looks of things they’ve come quite far. I do believe however that their approach is completely wrong. In the first generation of this device the accuracy is only of secondary concern, the primary concern is that you can read & write messages in mid-air.

At the moment Nokia’s research team is trying to add directional and compass functionality into the device, this in order to very accurately place messages on locations. The directional sensors tell the device where the user is looking (up,down,etc) and the compass sets the direction. Yet these functions are unnecessary and will only slow the time-to-market drastically. The accuracy should be seen as sexyness, something extra. It’s the messages that make people want to use an application like this.

What I would like Nokia to do (as I’m just a one-man-show and I’m way to busy with my actual company) is to write a simple server side script which pulls messages in (e.g.) a five meter radius to the screen. This way it doesn’t matter where the device is pointed, you’ll always see the messages relevant for that location and within a five meter radius you’ll be able to figure out which message goes where (if that is at all relevant).

For these kinds of products I use the DOS-3.11-XP-Leopard comparison. Consumers are fine to start with DOS (look at SMS, it’s a DOS-like interface in it’s purest form) as long as DOS fulfils a purpose. As soon as DOS is a fact then you move on to graphics and sexyness.

All in all I’m positive that digital graffiti will become a hype in five years and a standard in about eight, for now Nokia is at the fore-front and all I can say is: go guys go!