Week 3 - Hardware

Just few years ago, when people talked about augmented reality it was common knowledge that people would have to wear some kind of weird eyewear in order for augmented reality ideas to work. Even better, some even suggested that implanting some kind of device to your body might be better option. However, after the smartphone revolution broke through and when hardware in these small devices become stronger and stronger, it became viable all-in-one device for many of the ideas and application, including 3D augmented reality concept. 

Smartphones and even tablets have enough raw power to run console games now. It matches the same raw power achieved by desktops just few years ago. Even better, graphics chip and rams are strong enough to run desktop-class application and other softwares that match the elegance and simplicity of laptop. With camera, GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, flash light, and all kinds of sensors built in to them, it's perfect solution and hardware that can make 3d augmented reality to everyone. 

Most importantly, it's something everyone always carry with them. It's small enough to fit in the pocket, it became part of everyones life. It already replaced most people's daily casual cameras, portable gaming device, newspapers, and many other tasks that was done by separate device. By utilizing these assets and strong advantages, it can help accelerate mass adoption on consumers to understand and realize the possibility behind 3d augmented reality. As screen gets crisper, cameras getting better, and more sensors built into them, hardware shouldn't be a problem anymore to bring 3d augmented application to these devices.

Week 2 - Privacy

Some people worry about their privacy on the internet and because of rapid advance in technology sector, it became norm for companies to collect your personal data and even give those data to other companies for advertising and statistics purposes. People checking in their current location on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare is common practice. However, with all these data about you and your family can be used against you. While ago, there was a article about analytics firm who was collecting data from their customers of their location data, user information, and what kind of devices they are using. This sounds pretty legitimate until you hear the line where it says, users were not asked to give out these data. In other words, users were unaware of their personal data being sent to this firm. This is pretty scary. 

Computer generation are more willing to accept that in order to use social services to it's full extent, you need to give up some of your privacy. However, people who came before computer and people who need to protect their personal data are worried about increasing threats to their personal data. My idea of augmented reality app is based on the whole concept of social media and private data people have. Most of it's features are based on GPS location, and users data that can be shared with others. This might raise some concerns. However, I believe it's necessary step to advance our technology. People will still have option to use this application or not. There are people who do not want to share their data with others but there are also people who's willing to share more data with others. To embrace both sides, users can choose what they want to share, when they want to share, and if they want to be asked every time augmented reality app wants to share your data with others. By asking users every time or how they want to share their data, their privacy is still safe and is up to the users to decide.  

The good example is Google+. Although it has same concepts and are direct competitor against Facebook, features like Circles and ability to post things and share updates with the certain group you assigned is welcome concept. Facebook just rolled out similar update to it's service so I think as companies realize the importance of private data more and more, we will gain more control over our privacy over time. Most of these privacy concerns can be solved if companies provide solid guideline for what kind of data are being shared and how they can manage their private data without hiding under confusing settings menu. It's understandable that companies like Facebook need users to open up their data more more but there is no excuse for them to push out new services without properly asking their customers if they are fine with personal data being exposed. 

Week 1 - Social Media

Most of us owns smartphone and use it daily. Almost every smartphone has a GPS built in. It can track our exact location with GPS chip inside, and this opens the door for many possibilities. My entrepreneurial idea is to apply this GPS location data to real-time social elements to create augmented reality application for smartphone. Application will feature elements ranging from social media to gaming and general information on surrounding environment. 

The concept of augmented reality is promising but it hasn't hit the mass population yet. Although there are already application that takes advantage of augmented reality with camera functionality and location data, they are not polished and still in beta stage with developers testing if their idea would work or not. With technology evolving rapidly and more people understanding the concept of augmented reality and it's value as well as exploding rate of people embracing smartphone era, it's not far from becoming reality. I would like to be involved.

In this week lecture, we learned about social media and how it's becoming part of our daily lives. It's almost no brainer most of us have Facebook accounts or Twitter and actively engaging in social media services in their own ways. It's the next big thing. It's still growing and have lots of room for improvements. For example, because people are now familiar with checking-in their location to social media services, they can check-in when they walk in to a bar or a club and see the ratio of female and male in that particular location. They can share more data about their interests and chat with people with similar interests using their smartphone and hang out. These are all possible through revolution of social media happening right now and technology that can make this happen, which is augmented reality. These kind of application isn't out yet and I would like to develop this idea further.