Microsoft Courier Booklet

The Microsoft Courier is a two screen folding tablet device that allows for user interaction via gestures and/or stylus. The user interface looks to be the Courier's strongest point, but I'm curious to see if the stylus-heavy interaction will provide for any major advantage over a typical laptop and the already existent tablet pc market for anything other than art programs. In an educational setting, this could potentially be used as a library reference device and/or collaborative art device, but just as has been the case with many educational products in the past, may not be novel enough to sway education (or any other market) into preventing the Courier into becoming vaporware. However, this still poses as an excellent example of new devices coming onto the market that focus on new or perfected methods of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

A very interesting way to engage individuals on a personal level via video. It startled me the first time around (see :56). I wonder how quickly the novelty of providing subtle dynamic elements to video would wear off, but if done properly, might have a place in a nonformal educational setting for children ... a new type of personalized learning experience. Ah, and I may have altered the web link a bit to make it a bit more appropriate for our class :)

During our augmented reality online discussion, I had mentioned the usefulness of creating an augmented reality application for those wishing to do mechanical work on their vehicles. The marines are nowing making use of an augmented reality application that does just that.

A great visual way for generating word clouds; the phsyical size of the word in the word cloud indicates the number of times a word appears in the document provided to Wordle.

A 360-degree display, engineered by Sony, with potential applications in marketing and the medical industry

The following is a rounded, 360 degree display that can be viewed at any angle. Sony sees potential use of this technology in the medical imaging industry, as well as marketing/signage.

Layar, the first phone-based AR web browser on the market, has come to the iPhone 3GS.

Layar, the first phone-based AR web browser on the market, has come to the iPhone 3GS ... expect me to be wandering the Harvard campus seeing what this app can do ...

Uruguay is about to achieve the 1:1 child/laptop ratio for every primary school student in the country via OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). Only 5% of the country's education budget was needed to achieve this.

For those of you interested in trying out a bit of augmented reality at home, try out this green energy augmented reality application available from the GE web site. You will need a printout of the glyph (the black square design provided on the web site) and a webcam in order to get this to work. Audio volume adjust according to the distance of the glyph away from the webcam. This little AR app was designed using ARToolKit originally created by Dr. Hirokazu Kato.

Augmented Reality Sample created for General Electric using ARToolKit. You will need a webcam and a printout of the glyph (the black box design that the AR object will need to anchor to).\n\nI can't directly anchor to the augmented reality sample, so please bring your mouse pointer down to the bottom of the browser window to where it says, "Navigate the Smart Grid," and click the augmented reality icon on the far right of the navigation bar that appears.

An example of an AR application for Google Android phones that takes advantage of the phone's video camera and GPS capabilities.