Two years ago a conceptual video came out of our research on the different input / output channels of a smartphone. It received some fuzz on the web and many people wondered if - and or how fast - it would be possible to achieve these kind of concepts on a mobile phone.

 

 

Today there is an Android Market, an App Store and big community of developers.
Funny how fast things change.

 

A few weeks ago I got in touch with Joachim Gelhaus. In one of his youtube videos he shows a working prototype with the following hardware setup:

While this isn't a mobile setup, it's interesting to see how Joachim technically solved the problem of augmenting a live feed of images easy and cheap.
For the geeks: his vector data which he uses to augment the maps are being fed through .osm files in XML format. Being a complete one-man project, this is quite an impressive achievement and pretty close to what is visualized in the AUGNAV concept:



On the other hand, there are also some noteworthy mobile achievements. Wikitude Drive is one of them. Based on the Wikitude software this application is able to provide a live feed of heading directions on the image. It was developed by Mobilizy Research & Development group in Salzburg, Austria to see if it was feasible to combine real time navigation with mobile augmented reality. A sound yes is what the app told us:




Finally there is Phyroa, a small startup focussing on development for Android. A few months ago they released a video showing their new app "AugSatNav". An almost one to one implementation of the conceptual AUGNAV video:

 

The visualizations and UX might not be too convincing, but these guys made the point by putting a working app out there. Big thumbs up.

 

It all shows never to worry about technology. It evolves very fast.

My nine months at Vodafone have been extremely exciting. This week my German story ends as my USI project finished, which qualifies for successfully completing the second part of my curriculum at the TU/e. Long story short: I can finally graduate.



Still things are quite hectic around here. Today the new Vodafone 360 services have been officially announced. Personally I think it’s is a massive achievement since most of the User Experience team wasn’t in place yet 1,5 year ago. Much work has been put into making this idea market-ready and it’s great to see it actually happened.


The proposal of converging all your social graffiti and contact options into one interface on your mobile is just too powerful to not exploit, and I honestly believe Vodafone just claimed it with 360. Compared to iPhone or Android systems with a more in / out like operation this offers quite a differentiated experience. Read more here.

I’m left with nothing but respect for this company due to its will to innovate and become more user centered in everything they do. Cheers to that and see you later today on the launch party!
 

Poken < E < Augmented ID.

I'm a fan of the work TAT delivers in mobile UX, and this is again an outstanding concept.

 

We'll just skip the v-cards 2.0 part.

Upgrading to the 3GS not an option? Recording video still is. It’s sad that the soon-to-be outdated 3G’s are not eligible for this feature in OS3.0. I say that's poop. It’s all software right?

 

 

No Jailbreak: There's an app for that. At least there was an app for that, because I can’t find it anymore. It seems like it got removed from the app store - or maybe it’s just not available my region.

 

Jailbreak: Use Cycorder from Cydia for recording. It’s free.
Jailbreaking can be done with QuickPWN. (At your own risk.)

 

 

Step 2: get DiskAid

 

Having the video clip just sit on your iPhone is quite useless. We want them on our pc or mac to edit it and upload to youtube. Tricky, since they don’t show up in iTunes. This little tool allows you to access your iPhone filesystem. Available for both Mac and PC .

 

 

Step 3: locate the video files on your iPhone

This screenshot shows where your video clips are. Don’t forget to change the folder first.

 

From here on you should know the drill: copy, paste, edit, upload.

Below a quality check of an unedited raw .mov clip shot with the 3G.

Happy taping.