Hololens augmented reality to foil hack attacks in factories
Airbus’s system works by scanning for anomalies in the networks that control its production lines, as well as behavioural changes in its machinery. If it finds any, it alerts the security team. That team quickly finds a fix for the problem, and instructs local engineers. In a plant where there may be hundreds of controllers or servers stacked to the ceiling – Airbus thinks augmented reality headsets like HoloLens will make it easier to find a fast solution.
Welcome to the augmented-reality “IT help desk”. AR lets workers channel specialist skills right into their field of view, helping them solve problems they couldn’t handle alone. A team led by Jones, who is head of cybersecurity research at the Airbus research centre in Newport, UK, designed the system to protect their aircraft production lines from attack. But they’re planning to put it on the open market to help workers at power stations, hospitals, water treatment plants and fuel refineries, for example.
Airbus envisions the system, which uses Microsoft’s HoloLens, as a fast way for factory workers to pull in expertise to deal with attacks like Stuxnet – the joint American and Israeli worm that wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2010.
See the full story here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2097641-hololens-augmented-reality-to-foil-hack-attacks-in-factories/
AES Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality Announces Program Details
The inaugural International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality has unveiled an expansive program of technical papers, workshops and tutorials for the two-day event to be held on September 30 and October 1, 2016, co-located with the 141st AES Convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center’s West Hall. The conference and manufacturer’s Expo will spotlight research institutions, developers and vendors that are providing immersive spatial audio for virtual-reality and augmented-reality media, demonstrably one the fastest-growing segments of the entertainment-audio industry. Registration for this must-attend event is now open at www.aes.org/conferences/2016/avar/registration/.
See the full press release here: http://www.aes.org/press/?ID=364
It’s Now Even Harder to Get Into Disney’s Accelerator
... the companies that Disney selected are bigger--the list includes startups that have already raised tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, such as LittleBits, VR startup Jaunt, and open-network publishing platform Playbuzz. Additionally, Disney is no longer capping the amount of money it invests in each startup at $120,000, which it had done for the past two years, reports TechCrunch. Disney also declined to renew its contract with Techstars, which had helped run the accelerator for the past two years.
But as startups like Oculus and SpaceX continue to dominate headlines for their breakthroughs in virtual reality and space transportation, the company responsible for the first animated feature-length film and the first multiplane camera can no longer rely on in-house creations to stay innovative. And as this week's newest viral sensation, Pokémon Go, proved, using popular corporate-created characters to introduce innovative new technology can be fruitful.
Disney remains tightlipped about what the accelerator entails for this year's cohort. But it seems that the program is primarily focused on building relationships with Disney's executive team, and teaching startups how to reach more markets in the media and entertainment fields.
See the full story here: http://www.inc.com/anna-hensel/disney-ramping-up-its-involvement-with-startups.html
VR Companies Learn the Ropes in Broadcasting Live Sports
For live streaming, NextVR adds an additional camera on the sidelines parallel to the three-point line but, says NextVR executive chairman Brad Allen, they haven’t done that for the NBA, which has more restrictions on camera placement. “They’re very concerned about safety, as they should be,” he says. “Since cutting back and forth between camera angles can be jarring for VR viewers, editing of an image stream is typically minimal or nonexistent.”
As a result, the typical VR production instead gives the viewer “a selection of angles to switch back and forth from on their mobile device or their VR headset.” The audio, very important in VR, “is typically captured by ambisonic microphones, both standalone and built into the camera rig, with four directional sound sensors.”
see the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/vr-companies-learn-the-ropes-in-broadcasting-live-sports/
Retailers will soon be able to sponsor Pokemon Go locations
Retailers can participate in the game by purchasing a Lure Module through the app that brings monsters to a Pokestop for 30 minutes—and presumably customers after those monsters. According to the New York Post, a New York pizzeria saw business rise 75% after it dropped a lure in the game for $10. Other restaurants are advertising that their locations happen to be Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms.
see the full story here: http://www.marketingdive.com/news/report-retailers-will-soon-be-able-to-sponsor-pokemon-go-locations/422636/
Pokemon Go Is Driving Insane Amounts of Sales at Small Local Businesses. Here’s How It Works
As Pokemon Go users traverse their towns in search of Pokemon, local stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and other businesses are capitalizing on this massive opportunity, driving huge amounts of foot traffic and conversions both with simple in-app purchases and creative marketing campaigns.
To start turning the ambulating gamers around you into your new best customers, all you need is to know how to play the game. Here's how:
1. Find Out if Your Business Is a Gym or PokeStop
2. Sit Back, Throw Down a Lure, and Enjoy the Show
3. Go Where the Pokemon Roam
See the full story here: http://www.inc.com/walter-chen/pok-mon-go-is-driving-insane-amounts-of-sales-at-small-local-businesses-here-s-h.html
NBC Universal Patents a Way to Detect BitTorrent Pirates in Real-Time
NBC Universal, an American media conglomerate, has been granted a new patent that can help track files being shared by groups via peer-to-peer networks in real-time. The patent titled "Early detection of high volume peer-to-peer swarms", seems to be way forward for NBC Universal in its ongoing attempts to restrict piracy of its copyrighted content.
The new patent will essentially help the company identify the swarm's popularity and take anti-piracy measures before is "too late to do much good."
See the full story here: http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/nbc-universal-patents-a-way-to-detect-bittorrent-pirates-in-real-time-859531
When Virtual Reality Meets Data Journalism
What We Learned
VR brings its own challenges. Here is what we noticed in particular:
- There’s no room for lots of text, so you’re trying to do something simpler in a more complicated environment. The visual actually includes less data than the original. In fact, the more text you have, the more likely it is that you will make your viewers sick. And not making people feel sick is a key obsession of developers working with VR: you’re putting users in an alternate reality and if that reality doesn’t behave in predictable ways, then it can make people want to vomit, literally. It’s the equivalent of motion sickness.
- The viewer no longer needs to “click” or “tap” to demonstrate intent. But it also raised the question: how long should the viewer have to look at something to “activate” it? Also, our early prototype was giving us headaches (literally) until we realized that our virtual “eyes” were too far apart in the virtual world — as though the left eye were 10’ away from the right eye.
- It’s all about location. Movement in the virtual world can be disorienting, so we found it more effective to spread the information around the viewer. The Pitch team sketched Inception-like ways of bending maps, exploring laying out information in space as one would on a print page. Secondary “sidebar” information could be the area behind you, for example.
- Looking down is much more comfortable than looking up. So, look down in this and you see the European flag, to help ground the viewer (and provide a nice visual trick).
- Instructions can be helpful. Pitch’s Adam Florin describes the technology as “still a bit of a moving target, especially on mobile”. An incoming call produces a pretty disorienting experience, for example. This is such a new area, we felt it needed instructions. A screen tells you what to do and there are pointers to help you look in the right direction.