We live in the age of data collection and content creation. We create 1.5 billion pieces of content on Facebook, 140 million Tweets and 2 million YouTubes in just one day. And we love infographics (dataporn) that combine ideas, stories and insights into our behaviors.
Today, we think in a completely new way, or as one startup likes to say, we think “Visual.ly”. Visual.ly is a new platform for exploring, sharing and promoting great visualizations. It’s also a service that connects datavis pros with advertisers and publishers looking for compelling content.
“Because in the future we imagine an immersive world of interactive visualization everywhere,” says Visual.ly.
Watch this video explaining the concept:
Visual.ly is using the LaunchRock beta access product to incentivize sign-ups. It’s one part exclusivity and one part widespread sharing, and it works. Sign up for beta access here.
Musical duo Bluebrain has taken the guesswork out of listening to music — their latest album dictates where you can listen to it, what songs it plays, and when it plays them. Take that, playlists! The album, titled The National Mall, will be available only as an iPhone app and the band is calling it the first location-aware album. The app… er, album, uses your phone’s GPS to track one’s proximity to hundreds of tagged zones spread throughout the landmarks of the Washington DC National Mall, dynamically tweaking the rhythm, melody, instrumentation, and pace of the music as you go.
Despite this fancy smartphone integration, Bluebrain stresses that this is still an album, not a toy or augmented reality application. The experience is strictly location specific, no user input necessary, or available. Want to hear a new melody or arrangement? Walk to a different monument. The project’s location-specific nature means that fans outside of the DC area are out of luck for now. The band says two more GPS-powered albums are on the way — one designed for Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and another spanning the entire length of California’s Highway 1. Music, measured in miles — neat, but Hwy. 1 manages just fine on its own, wouldn’t you say?
Judging by the amount of money invested in the GoPano Micro project on Kickstarter, a load of people have been biding their time, just WAITING for an opportunity to film panoramic videos using their iPhone 4s. As the video above shows, the viewpoint can be controlled just by swiping the screen—but that doesn't mean the other perspective is lost for good.More »
If we asked you to show us augmented reality, you’d likely fire up apps like Layar or Junaio, both leaders within the augmented reality space. But, what if we asked you to create some AR elements? Where would you start?
As this space grows, to remain relevant, it will be critical for business owners to be visible in the AR world and a new service called Poistr aims to simplify the entire process.
Poistr enables non-developers to create elements and points of interests that will be viewable using the Layar app, one of the world’s most popular AR browsers.
It works like this: Users begin by creating a “Layer” of information which can display a variety of elements in augmented reality including images, links to a website or a telephone number. To start creating the layer an address or specific location must be provided. If you were creating this layer for your business, you’d be able to input the venue’s address to trigger your elements within the Layar browser.
Users can create various objects within the layers coupled with a way to set the range of each action (the active range in meters your objects can be triggered). The intuitive interface for developing layers makes it easy to add videos, images and audio by simply giving Poistr the URL to the media file. Additionally, details about the location such as the telephone number, SMS, website URL and email address can be added.
Another cool feature of Poistr allows users to easily import multiple POIs or locations via KMZ files and GeoRSS (Coordinates from Google Maps). Alternatively as we’d mentioned, the address can be manually input as well.
Poistr is still in beta and it’s currently free. As it stands today, the layers are only viewable within the Layar browser (within Poistr’s demo layer) but it’s planning on extending the service to Junaio soon.
When the final version comes out, users will have the ability to publish their points of interest to Layar and Junaio and it will be viewable by anyone using the apps. Poistr appears to have a section for pricing however it hasn’t released any details as of yet.Image: Featured
The Village Voice has just put out a clever iPhone app called Best Of. The app basically uses your location to help you find every place that was voted the "best of" something—be it restaurant or hot dog.More »
