Augmented Reality Augmented

Hi! I am quite happy to have been invited to contribute a few entries to the CAT blog. I hope they are useful, interesting and generally accurate. I am a tech veteran who has gone through enough fads and transformations of the digital medium that I can grumble with authority—everything's been changing and nothing's really changed very much—we're finally able to build for the internet what we could with CD-ROMs in the middle ages, and we're still begging for an accelerated 3D render pipeline for everyone on the browser when this was default stuff running on the SGI Onyx Circa '93 (OK, it cost 300k).

I've dedicated quite a bit of time to unit9 since we co-founded it; it's still a weird creature with many minds of its own but surprising outcomes. In my job at unit9 I deal with technology, and try to push things forward where it looks like we can gain some special edge on expression. As a digital production company the ongoing struggle has been to keep perspective: Is this stuff any good? Do people care? Keep questioning to try to see if we can't find a better way. Hope you enjoy!

Augmented Reality Augmented

Some technical work immediately stands out; a moment's look and you can visualise future interfaces and novel interactive opportunities. So... I am not an AR fan—and instead find it a pretty boring use of a Webcam. However, the work they are doing at Oxford University on Parallel Tracking and Mapping is special, quite beautiful and frees up the integration of space with data in a way that makes a significant design difference. The special character of this technology is to activate any space that surrounds you into a potential interface and I can't think of anything more natural than this. Still a way to go but very exciting!