The Pixel Farm

It was only a matter of time.  My poor iPhone was mortally wounded back in January at the Lambertville Beer and Chili Festival.  While it continued to function like a trooper, I figured it was about time to let it move on to greener pastures.  Plus I didn’t want to have to continue to deal with all the pitiful (disgusted?) looks that I was getting from people on the subway whenever I had my phone out.

cracked screen = no fun

I decided to switch it up a bit and see what life is like in Android land, and I’ve got to say I’m really enjoying it so far.  I ended up getting the new HTC Incredible which sports a 1ghz Snapdragon processor, 512mb of ram and an amazingly crisp 8 megapixel camera.  The difference between browsing speed on AT&T versus Verizon is unbelievable, especially in NYC.  Pages that would chug on my iPhone load quickly on the Incredible.  In addition, I found an amazingly helpful application (’The Missing Sync‘) that lets me wirelessly sync all of my desktop content – including my music – to my phone whenever the two devices are on the same wireless network.  No more USB syncing with iTunes – yay

The built in camera takes great photos and sports a software based digital zoom as well as a “tap to focus” feature that lets you isolate subjects in your shot easily.  Here’s a scaled down image of my pup, Prue, that I took using the built-in cam the other night.

my pup, prue

One of my favorite features of the phone is that it runs Flash Lite.  ZooBurst even loads on the phone, which really surprised me since I use a ton of external 3D libraries that I thought wouldn’t be compatible.  With that said, let me say that I’m as excited as everyone else to see what HTML 5 will eventually bring to the table, but right now there are things that Flash can do on the web easily that just aren’t possible with other languages (including all of my augmented reality experiments).  I’m really psyched about the full version of Flash mobile that is supposedly coming out this summer.  I wonder how easy it will be to port some of my AR demos to run on Android … I’ll keep you all posted!

This is a mockup of a small iPhone app called “geoblogging.”  The application lets users do two things:

1. Post public comments that are linked to the current location of the user
2. View comments that have been posted in the current vicinity of the user

Additional features that could be added to the system include:

1. Support for photos and/or audio notes
2. Allowing the creation of non-public comment streams (i.e. to create a walking history tour of NYC)

Here is my first attempt at creating an augmented reality visualization using Flash in which I simulate the motion of the moon going around the earth.  The system works by attempting to detect a special tile graphic (see below) – once this tile has been found the system will overlay the 3D planetary system on top of it.  The coolest part about the simulation is the fact that you can rotate the printed symbol and inspect the model from almost any angle!

Galileo eat your heart out!

To try this yourself you can do the following:

1. Click on this symbol and print out a copy

   

2. Click here to access the Flash video
3. Click the ‘Start’ button
4. When prompted, let Flash access your webcam.  Note that if you are on a Mac you may need to tell the Flash player to use the correct webcam.  You can do this by right-clicking on the movie and selecting ‘Settings’ – then click on the camera icon and select ‘USB Camera’
5. Hold up the symbol to your webcam to view the simulation