New Year Wishes for reference

I came across this today in housenews.com, and like it quite a lot, just wanna share it here with anyone interested.

IP in China

It reminds me of Agenda Smith in Matrix Revolution! Intellectual Property right in China is still in wild wild west!

Story Paintings

Augmented Reality

I was watching a broadcast of CNET’s BOL this moment on my way to work and one piece of news with a video clip of a new iPhone app just caught my eyes. It is called ‘Word Len’. It is an app that provides ‘instant’ visual translation of image of foreign language to English. Basically, user holds the iPhone/iPod Touch with the app on and points that to any image with foreign language (Spanish in the video clip that I saw), and you will see the Spanish words on the sign to become English almost instantly, with matching fonts and size. It is just a fascinating app. Based on what I read in news; it is supporting Spanish to English so far. I’m pretty sure it will be expanded to other languages soon.

This app simply brings the technology of Augmented Reality into a practical usage. Unlike the previous trivial or more entertaining arena, this app offers users a glimpse of what this technology can do. After seeing this, few light bulbs just pop up in my head…

Based on what I’ve seen in recent months, I can see that augmented reality with few other technologies are gonna merged or crossed with each other in near future, and they will produce some amazing user experience and business opportunities in the coming years down the road. What I’m saying are:

1. Visual search – Google lets users to take pictures of certain image and offer search results that way. E.g. you take a picture of the Statue of Liberty instead of typing ‘Statue of Liberty’, Google can search all information related to Statue of Liberty.
2. Audio text input and Audio search – We can speak words in various languages into the Google search on our mobile phone, words will be put into text for search. While another app (I forget the name) let users to hymn few verses of a song to search the name of the song. I don’t see any stoppage from some people building a comprehensive audio library of all sorts of sound (besides music) which can be used to tie in with visual image as well.

3. Facebook Voice – we can chat with our friends on Facebook.

Just with all these 3 technology plus the augmented reality technology, guess what can be come up? These are my thoughts so far:

Facebook can record our voice to build up our audio profiles, and use our voice as part of our identity. Imagine we spoke to our friends about planning a trip to France, do you think Facebook with its tie-in vendors would be able to come up with target ads to us?

On the one hand, Google has a vast image and text library of search results. On the other hand, Google already has the biggest video clip library in the world of YouTube. On top of them, Google has Google Earth and GPS access. Imagine if they somehow also has access to the audio library that I mentioned above as well, and tie all these together with augmented reality technology. Google search will become omnipotent for sure! For examples…

When you type ‘dolphin’ or point your phone to a dolphin in Sea World, Google search in future may produce images, sounds, and clips of YouTube that feature the type of dolphin your are pointing at.

If you are pointing your phone to a stranger on the street at random, you may get instant information about that person. What school he went to, what music he likes to listen to, who are his friends, what clips he has posted on Google or Facebook. What he bought for his girlfriend’s last birthday, etc. On top of that, if we are not talking about a phone, instead that technology is put on a pair of sunglass. You know what I see? We will become ‘Terminators’! Remember the movie, when Arnold looks at any image through his robotic eyes? Instant data of the image is popping on the left and right in his vision. We may someday be able to do that as well!

Commercially, the opportunity is endless. We saw a woman wearing a purple blouse on the street, we will know what fabric it was made of, where we can buy that in the closest proximity, what would their prices in various stores, who is the designer of the blouse, would that blouse require dry clean or machine wash, etc. Furthermore, I can see that RFID and NFC can be tied in as well in product placement and advertising.

Also, when we are reading a magazine on iPad, the ads that will show to us will be personalized as it will know who is reading the magazine and what we are interested in, then show ads accordingly. I’m not saying it is based on who login a certain account on iPad. I’m saying who is ‘holding’ the damn template! The cameras can read the face of the reader, at the same time what are in front of the reader. It can detect the voice of the reader if he/she speaks, and the sound/noise of the surrounding. It will know where the reader is and what stores are closed by based on GPS. All these are ‘Ads’ opportunities!

Are all of these both amazing and scary? I can further imagine along this line that our world will become bipolar from the standpoint of technology. We will become those who are either fully connected to the information world or opt out completely.

For the former, our privacy will be compromised. Namely, our personal profile will be built, maintained, and exploited. But, we can enjoy all the convenience that technology would be able to offer.

For the latter, we will be out of the loop, becoming some kind of tech nomad, outcast of the tech world, being left out of the information world.

Certainly, there will be some people who will try to maneuver between those two worlds – the hackers!

Am I thinking too much? I guess my imagination is running on high gear a little too much. Anyway, just wanna share some thoughts of mine. That’s all.

Apple Universe

Just came across this picture in BusinessWeek today, talking about how savvy Apple's current business is after their recent profit announcement. I think this pic really nicely present how powerful Apple in tech business today:
Source from: http://images.businessweek.com/mz/10/18/thumb_1018_92apple.jpg

The 'Magnet' of movie lovers' eyeballs in 2H 2009

This is it!....

Wallpaper

I changed my wallpaper to the above today. Well, I got this pic from Google image. Come to think of it, what kind of wallpaper a person is using could somehow tell what kind of person he/she is...at that point. Cos, wallpaper can change and many people do have different taste at different time. But, I do think that wallpaper is good subconscious way to tell what a person is thinking

Of course, I'm no expert in psychology nor art, but the above picture does tell a story.

There are many wallpaper I can choose. I don't pick showbiz idols, musicians, or altheltes, but I think I've kinda passed the stage of idolize anyone, at least not that types of people.

I could post a hot chick, but it is not appropriate for work, also it is kinda distraction and invite unwanted questions from others. The key is that I'm married, I just don't look at other women the way I used to look at them before.

I don't post cartoon, anime figures, sport cars, fighter jets, etc. They are just not my types of hobbies anymore. I do like some of them, but not something I wanna see 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

People thinks that I should post my family or my son's pic. Well, it is natural for parents to do that. But...it is just not me. I do think about my wife and my son from time to time. I already has his pic on my mobile. The thing is I don't want to think about them when I'm busy with other stuff or at the wrong time. Also, the most important thing is that when I think about my family, they always appear to be in 'motion' mode. Like a movie clip, not a still picture. So, it doesn't work for me.

Actually, I only use 2 types of wallpaper nowadays. I could be considered to boring, but hey, I don't care what others are saying about that.

The first type is 'a piece of art' or 'picture', like a famous painting or sculpture. Cos, they are not very intrusive to my mind. Cos, it reminds me the scenary in some museums that I'd been before. Very quiet, relaxing, I could sit or lean on a chair in the middle of the room, and just look at a painting or scultpure for minutes quietly by myself. No rush on anything. Very sureal I would say.

The second type is like I'm using now, a scenic picture. I like to see scenic view of nature. Not the man-made stuff like buildings. For nature things, I prefer to see water, not rough sea but ponds or lakes. Relatively quiet or even still water. I like trees, leaves, as well in the picture. Sky is ok. Just something to get me relax. That's why animals are no no. That's what I like.

與但丁討論神曲

How many famous people can you recognize?

中国古代姓氏图腾

One of my favorite Artists of all times - M.C. Escher

I always like M.C. Escher. The pictures that I select here are 'inspired' by his scretches and drawing. Folks just somehow 'try' to make them into more 'modern' day 3D real life stuff. Lego is an obvious choice, but my favorite one got to be the car!

How American sees the world...

Yes, today the great country of the United States will elect a new president. Yes, it is claimed to be the most important election in many people's lifetime, cos it will not only affect regular Americans, but whoever the president will be will also affect the world. Everybody (almost) thinks Obama, the champaign of 'Change' will win. Will he also change how American see the world?

The pics in the blog is extracted from Google Image. Thx!

Illusions 2

Just wanna share with everyone second batch of funky pictures that I got! Enjoy and have a nice weekend!

Funny Decision Diagram

Saw this diagram here: http://pmreload.blogspot.com/ on July 23. Just wanna share with readers.

Happy Chinese New Year of Rat

A 3-day earlier wishes! [Got this pic from SWIFT]

Interesting maps of Europe

Come across this link from Littleoslo.com , just wanna FYI:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_of_europe.shtml

Interesting Painting

See how many of them do you know?

I saw this pic on 'www.littleoslo.com'

6 degrees in Auto-industry

Find this interesting graph illustrating the relationships of major automobile companies in the world.

A Map to Infinity!

Illusions

These are my favorite pictures of captioned title.