Heads in the Cloud - Computing in the Digital Age

Yesterday Amazon launched its cloud storage service know as Cloud Drive.  Ever since seeing the announcement on their webpage users around the world have been scratching their heads and saying "what the heck is 'cloud storage'?  What is a cloud?  Where is it? How do I use it?  Is it safe?"  Today I'm going to do my best to answer a few of those questions.

Every morning around the globe people wake up, get out of bed, and flip on a light switch.  The vast majority of them have no idea how the electricity is generated or transported to their house; they just know it works.  So it is with cloud computing.  A user can pull up an application on the internet, use it, and never have to install or run it on their own home computer system.  That in a nutshell, is what cloud computing is.

Contrary to what you might think, the idea of cloud computing is not new.  It was first theorized in the 1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility by Douglas Parkhill.  Almost all of the aspects of cloud computing that we use today came from that book, including the electric utility metaphor used earlier in this post. Businesses today utilize cloud computing for its agility, cost effectiveness, reliability and scalability.  Individual users are becoming aware of cloud computing technology mostly as it relates to cloud storage.  With digital collections of movies, photos, and especially music growing at an extremely rapid rate, users are looking for ways to store their collections without taking up valuable hard drive resources.  Additionally, cloud storage has the added bonus of being able to be accessed from any computer - you don't have to be at home.

The biggest question involving cloud computing and storage is undeniably safety.  With access occurring virtually, how can you be sure that it is safe?  Simply put, the companies providing these services have the greatest incentive to provide the absolute best in information security out there, because if people don't believe the service is safe, they won't use it.  No more business.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.  Will you be using Amazon's new cloud drive?  What cloud storage do you already use (hint: have a flickr or photobucket account? Post videos on youtube? Share photos on Facebook?  That's cloud storage, even if you didn't know it)?  Did you realize that's what it was before reading this post?

 

Welcome to Augmented Reality

A lone person driving down the road at night slows when they see a deer by the side of the road, highlighted blue by the HUD in their windshield.

A pilot getting ready to land sees the flight paths of the aircraft around him laid out with clear precision.

A gamer walking through the streets of New York holds up his smartphone and fends off attacking aliens.

A sports fan, watching the big game at home can see every play drawn out in perfect clarity as the announcers analyze the game.

Welcome to the age of augmented reality, where almost any aspect of our lives can be enhanced with virtual information.  Science fiction writers dreamed our world for decades.  Now we're living to see it all come to fruition.  Yet, so few people are aware of it happening, or even know what "augmented reality" is.  You see it every Sunday during football season when the 1st and Ten line is displayed on your television sets.  You see it when the GPS app on your phone shows you where you are in real-time with directions for where to go next laid out in front of you.  You see it when you hold up the same phone's camera to look at a landmark in a foreign country and see information about the landmark displayed for them to read.

Yep.  All of that is augmented reality.  And, it's been around longer than you think.  The first AR simulator was invented in 1962 by a man who was not a scientist.  His name was Morton Heilig, and he was a cinematographer determined to create the "movie of the future".  His invention, the Sensorama used 3D technology and could give a viewer the sight, sound, feel, and even smell of riding a motorcycle through the streets of Brooklyn.  Pretty impressive.  Unfortunately it was also incredibly expensive to make films for the contraption, and so the idea was laid to rest.

Fast forward to 1992, when L.B Rosenburg developed Virtual Fixtures, a functioning AR system at the US Air Force Research Laboratory and demonstrates the benefits AR can have on human performance.  Of course the military saw the benefits of the technology right away.  They now use AR in a variety of ways, most recently ARMAR, a head-up display designed to help military mechanics in making repairs.

These days anyone with an iPhone has access to a myriad of AR apps right at their fingertips.  Even more notable is that we now may have the first true AR gaming system on our hands.  This year Nintendo's 3DS system shipped with 6 AR cards included that will allow users to interact with virtual objects that appear in reality as shown by the system's camera.

Still don't think that AR is a big deal?  Check out the most recent advertising campaign taking place in London's Victoria Station right now:

So, what's next for science fiction writers?  With their dreams becoming reality every day, how are they going to push the envelope even farther?  I don't know, but I personally can't wait to find out.

Game Review: Beyond Good And Evil HD

For fans of the original, the re-release of Beyond Good and Evil in HD format was an exciting announcement.  Once again we can play as fearless reporter Jade with her loveable "uncle" Pey'j and wacky sidekick "Double H".

The storyline of Beyond Good and Evil remains unchanged from the original.  You play as Jade - a reporter on the planet Hillys, which is currently at war with and constantly under attack from the aliens known as the Domz.  As the game unfolds, it is your job to uncover a conspiracy between the Domz and Hillys' supposed protectors - the Alpha Sections.  In spite of the main story's seriousness, there is a lightheartedness to the characters that makes the game fun and easy to play.

There is one main side-quest to the game that involves photographing all of the different animal species on the planet Hillys.  While it sounds easy, this can be a difficult task, as you are sometimes photographing animals that are shy, small, and hard to catch on camera.  It adds an interesting element to the game, however, when you're stopping in the middle of a boss fight to snap a picture of the creature you're facing.

While the graphics have been revamped up to HD quality, sad to say the camera angles are still as frustrating and awkward at times as they were back in 2004 when the game was originally released.  There also isn't much replay value to the game - once you've played it you've played it.  However, it is a fun break from some of the longer, more in-depth RPGs out there.  I will personally replay it trying to get all those photos, looter races, and other tidbits that are included throughout the world of Hillys.

As a girl gamer I have to say that my favorite part of the game is Jade herself.  At last we have a smart, innovate, funny character to play whose wardrobe does not make her look like a wanna-be porn star.  Even her proportions are appropriate!

The game was originally designed as a trilogy and therefore ends with a twist.  While the sequel hasn't been produced online, it's been hinted at by the game's creator, Ubisoft that if enough people download the HD release, the sequels will be given the go-ahead.  So get out there and get downloading folks, for 800 Microsoft Points, you really can't go wrong with this one.

The Real-Life Data?

Meet Geminoid DK, a Geminoid-F series android, and the first humanoid robot of its kind to leave Japan.  It is also the most human-looking android I have ever seen (sorry Star Trek fans - Data doesn't count).

 

That's right folks - that's an android in the picture above.

The Geminoid series of androids was created by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory in the the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University.  The original version, Repliee Q1Expo was created in 2005.  Though older, Repliee Q1Expo is actually a much more complicated version of Geminoid-K, as it can respond to human interactions such as touch.

The Geminoid-F is controlled through a computer system designed to mimic the movements of the android's human counterpart.  It does not have an artificial intelligence of it's own, and does not have voice interaction yet.  However, it is the simplicity of the Geminoid-F model that made it affordable for purchase by Aalborg University's Henrik Sharfe.  Once shipped back to Denmark, the robot will be used to study questions about identity, humanity, and presence, as well as the cultural differences in perception of robots and robotic technology.

If you head on over to this site  you can see a video of this thing opening and closing it's mouth, moving it's head, and even breathing.  That's right - breathing.  Pretty amazing stuff, and I look forward to seeing the future uses and possibilities for this technology in the future.  Imagine teaching children on the autism spectrum to better interact socially using androids like these.  I see a world of possibilities here.

Unwell

Hey guys - just a note to let you know that regular posting will resume in a few days.  I'm sick with the flu and will be back when I'm better.  In the meantime, happy gaming!

Move Over Motion-Control

Forget motion controlled systems that still use a controller like the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move.  Heck, you can even forget about motion controlled systems that require you to wave your hand or other parts of your body, like Microsoft's Kinect.  The next generation of motion control is already on it's way.

Picture this: you're playing an FPS (or other first-person view game) and instead of pushing a control stick or keyboard button to move down the next path all you do is *look* in the direction you want to go.  Imagine reading a webpage that automatically scrolls as you read - no mouse or keyboard action required.  Sound interesting?  Then check this out:

The folks at Tobii teamed up with Lenovo to create 20 prototypes of this Windows 7 laptop that they unveiled yesterday at the CeBIT conference in Hanover, Germany.  That strip just below the screen is the current eye-control sensor, and there's also a large hump on the back.  Neither is attractive or practical, but it is just a prototype.  Future plans entail the sensor becoming much more narrow - about the size of the small space below the laptop screen today.  If you'd like a review of how it it performed (I'll give you a hit: excellently) head on over to Endgadget and check out their video of the laptop in action.


Between the new BCI technology and this new eye-control system, we are two steps closer to synchronicity.  The future is coming!  Are you ready?