philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

4 Wearable Products That I Can’t Wait To Wear This Year

Tap

A small strap that fits on your hand, the Tap Strap is composed of several textile embedded sensors, each monitoring the mechanical movements of our hands and fingers. By enabling any surface to become a virtual keyboard, this little device is powered using bluetooth technology.

Woojer

Based on a patented haptic technology​​, ​Woo​jer is a​ wearable tactile device that reproduces the rich emotional sensation of sound. It can be worn with a belt clip or with a sport strap.

At present, one of the main problems with VR is that it lacks the real-life feeling of the surrounding environment. Woojer, however, is positioned to solve this – the tactile sensation generated by its polyphonic transducer delivers extremely high fidelity which is accurate up to third harmonics.

HoloLens

Hololens combines the vision of augmented reality and the experience of virtual reality to create mixed reality, allowing users to actively interact with holograms.

O.zen by Ubisoft

In February, Ubisoft — a French biometric gaming company whose technology is used by Jabra, LG, and Sony — released O.zen, a wearable heart-rate sensor and application that plugs into your iPhone or iPad. Essentially, the device measures your heart rate and uses the beat and rhythm to influence your game play. It was first designed as a wellness application, intending to help users control stress, sleep better, and manage their emotions; but its founders see extreme potential in the gaming sphere.

See the full story here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/yoavvilner/2016/05/29/4-wearable-products-that-i-cant-wait-to-wear-this-year/#346c41276a48

How a Boston-area marketing agency is using Microsoft HoloLens

Greg Jones, Cramer's senior associate of strategy, said the firm is experimenting with how HoloLens could be used at trade shows for different clients.

Norwood-based Cramer, whose clients have included IBM, UPS and Johnson & Johnson, could potentially use the technology to create a 3-D, interactive animation of a product as a way to demonstrate the features and benefits of a product when it's not possible for the product to physically be present.

"In an events environment, something like HoloLens can be very powerful for showing a product demo, especially when that product is too large or heavy to carry around," Jones said in an interview.

See the full story here: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2016/05/how-a-boston-area-marketing-agency-is-using.html

A Virtual Reality Manifesto: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly

We’re going to examine three specific axes on which VR creators will be forced to make a choice.

1. Do you want your content to create empathy and drive human connection, or will you build experiences that spread hate and fear?
2. Does your experience empower the user with useful information and unique experiences or exploit them for their cash and their data?
3. Does your game authentically create a fun and engaging experience, or are you slapping a coat of paint on some 3D models and using loopholes in human psychology to keep people sucked in.

See the full story here: http://philiplelyveld.com/wordpress/wp-admin/post-new.php

Digital Storytelling: A New Virtual Reality Might Not be Far Off

Notes from a panel:

The Panelists at the Digital Storytelling Event for Portland Design Week were:

Shelley Midthun, @shelleytune, Director @ Oregon Story Board

Kelsey Snook, @kelseysnook, Creative Director @ Second Story

Tim Williams, @timbwilliams, Executive Director @ Oregon Film

Peter Lund, @peterlund, COO @ SuperGenius, Chair of Oregon Games Organization

Ben Fischler, @arnoldrenderer, Director of Education + Outreach @ Solid Angle

Monica Morlo, @PortlandCC, Multimedia Ed-Tech @ Portland Community College (PCC)

See the full story here: https://www.act-on.com/blog/2016/05/digital-storytelling-a-new-virtual-reality-might-not-be-far-off/

The Slack generation

Instead of individual e-mails arriving in a central inbox and requiring attention, Slack structures textual conversations within threads (called “channels”) where groups within firms can update each other in real time. It is casual and reflects how people actually communicate, eschewing e-mail’s outdated formalities.

Its other selling-point is efficiency. A survey of users, admittedly conducted by the firm itself, suggests that team productivity increases by around a third when they start using the software, primarily by reducing internal e-mail and meetings. Slack has decided to open itself up to other apps, becoming a platform by which employees can log into and use other software tools.

Third, software firms are trying to automate functions that used to be done by people in order to make employees more productive. Slack has made a big push into “bots”, algorithms that can automate menial tasks which used to be done by humans. Slack offers bots that compile lunch orders and projects’ progress reports, or generate analytics on demand. In the future employees will be able to chat with software agents to get more done, working alongside bots as well as their peers.

See the full story here: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21698659-how-workplace-messaging-could-replace-other-missives-slack-generation

Artist Corrects Inaccuracies At The George W. Bush Library With Augmented Reality

AR lets fire fighters navigate burning buildings

Thermal cameras see thru smoke.  Heads-up AR display guides them.

See the full story with video here: http://www.blastr.com/2016-5-26/augmented-reality-tech-could-help-fire-fighters-navigate-smoky-flaming-buildings

5 incredible AR apps everyone must try

[Philip Lelyveld comment: these work on both android and iOS]

Aurasma

Ingress

Layar

FieldTrip

Wikitude

See the original post here: http://www.cbronline.com/news/mobility/apps/5-incredible-augmented-reality-apps-everyone-must-try-4904951

SMPTE Hollywood VR primer with resources presentation

May 25, 2016 VR Overview and update deck, including resources for learning more about VR, presented to SMPTE at the TV Academy's Linwood Dunn theatre.

Deck copy

Netflix is testing a virtual reality ‘rental store’

As part of Netflix's latest hack day, its designers have created a VR showroom that users can stroll around thanks to HTC Vive's room-scale VR. Called 'The Netflix Zone' - with a font that nods to a certain classic TV show - the hack was put together by just three developers; Joey Cato, Marco Caldeira, and Adnan Abbas.

In the zone, the familiar Netflix movie categories are reimagined as different shelf racks, including ones for personal recommendations. Titles such as Orange is the New Black and House of Cards sit on shelves in the form of VHS cassettes. In a nice bit of attention to detail, if they're picked up and rotated with the Vive's controllers, the familiar tape spools are built into the back of each object.

See the full story here: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-05/25/netflix-virtual-reality-showroom