Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: AR

  • ABC Nightlife: Pokemon Go and the end of the ideas boom

    ABC Nightlife: Pokemon Go and the end of the ideas boom

    This Thursday night join Tony Delroy and myself on ABC Nightlife to discuss Pokemon Go, how tech is changing the workforce and the future of Australia’s technology industry following the Federal election.

    It’s taken a while but we finally have a video game that gets people off the couch and onto the streets. For the last two weeks we’ve been hearing stories of how hundreds of people are dodging cars, invading police stations and stampeding across parks as they try to catch virtual reality animals in the Pokemon Go game.

    What is Pokemon Go and is this the future of augmented reality are two of the questions Tony and I will be discussing. We’re also looking at what the Federal election means for the government’s much lauded Innovation Statement along with the Moonhack record of the greatest number of kids programming at one time.

    Some of the questions we cover include;

    • What is Pokemon Go?
    • Isn’t Pokemon somewhat old school?
    • Why did it take off?
    • So we’ve heard a bit about augmented reality. Is this what it’s really about?
    • Beyond games, are there any useful purposes for AR?
    • Are we all going to have strange headsets strapped to our heads?
    • Can we expected Australia to provide many of these AR applications?
    • What sort of support is the government giving these developers?
    • Apart from what was already announced what did the Federal election mean to the Aussie tech sector?
    • After all the noise late last year, tech and innovation wasn’t really much of an issue during the election?
    • Does all this talk of tech really matter to the average Australian worker?

    Join us

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Everyone’s a winner with Pokemon Go

    Everyone’s a winner with Pokemon Go

    It’s remarkable how the reworking of a 1990s video game is proving to be the first big augmented reality success.

    As I’m writing this in the Sydney Airport departures lounge, thousands of people are getting ready to trawl the city’s streets for Pokemon as the company’s servers struggle with the load.

    For Nintendo, a company that’s struggled to remain relevant in recent years, Pokemon Go’s success revitalises them while for Niantic, the augmented reality and mapping service spun off from Google, this validates their business.

    Niantic’s success after being spun off from Google probably indicates the future for many of Alphabet’s many companies. Freed from the constraints of Google’s sprawling bureaucracy, companies like Niantic are far more likely to be able to execute on their technologies.

    We can expect to see plenty of companies looking at replicating Pokemon Go’s success with their products and many millions of bits will created as the marketing industry ponders how it can make money from augmented reality games and applications. Most will fail.

    The big winner though from Pokemon Go’s success are those in the artificial and virtual reality communities, the great success of the product will have caught the imagination of many executives and entrepreneurs – particularly in the tech sector where the search for the next big is becoming a little frantic as investors and consumers become jaded with smartphones and social media.

    Pokemon Go marks the start of the augmented reality gold rush, who profits from it remains to be seen. It also gives Alphabet a strong indicator of how to monetize the companies under the Google umbrella.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Augmented reality ideas accelerate

    Augmented reality ideas accelerate

    As video technology accelerates, the push for augmented and virtual reality applications accelerates. Of the two different technologies, it looks like augmented reality is beginning to get traction in the marketplace.

    One example of an augmented reality application is Skulley Systems, a motorbike helmet with a head up display similar to those in fighter jets.

    The idea was the result of the company’s founder having a motorbike accident in Barcelona as he was reading a street sign. Dr Marcus Weller wanted to buy a bike helmet that displayed driving information and found there was nothing on the market.

    Dr Weller is not alone in his idea of augmented reality devices, Sony have reportedly patented a contact lens that will record the details of your life and play it back to you. It’s just one of many different augmented reality ideas that inventors are proposing although Sony’s appears to be more of defensive patent ploy rather than a real product.

    Skulley though doesn’t have the smart motorbike market to itself, last year Intel demonstrated their own motor bike helmet that integrates with the bike’s internal management systems.

    The main difference between Sony’s patent and Skulley Systems is the motorcycle helmet is close to reality having been through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, then seed and venture capital investment.

    What Skulley are showing is the augmented reality applications are close to fruition, partly because ideas like visor displays are clear solutions for today’s problems. We are though only at the beginning of the roll out of both artificial and virtual reality technologies.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • ABC Nightlife – Virtual Reality and Apple encryption

    ABC Nightlife – Virtual Reality and Apple encryption

    Pundits are saying 2016 will be the year Virtual Reality comes to the home, with Silicon Valley investors pouring money into the technology, the long awaited Oculus Rift due to be released this year and the heavily hyped Meta launching soon.

    If you missed the show, you can hear it podcast through the Nightlife website.

    Tonight on ABC Nightlife we’ll look at what VR, and its cousin Augmented Reality, are and what they mean to us ordinary people.  Some of the questions we’ll be looking at include;
    • Exactly what are Augmented and Virtual Reality?
    • Why all the hype now?
    • Why are investors putting so much money into the space?
    • Apart from games what can this tech be used for?
    • Do you always have to wear the funny glasses?
    • Does the headsets always need to be connected to a computer?
    • What are the devices and brands we should be watching out for?
    • Is it likely consumers will be able to afford this technology in the near future?
    • Will 2016 really be the year of virtual or augmented reality?

    If we get time, we’ll also look at Apple’s fight with the FBI over encryption (security researcher Troy Hunt has an excellent run down of the issues at stake) and what happens if you change the date on your iPhone to 1970.

    Join us

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts