Episode 270 — Virtual Bricks

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brick wall
Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels

Augmented vision is once again in focus, as the team discusses the new infrared camera equipped glasses to help identify people with elevated temperatures who might be suffering from the coronavirus.  And making a splash with a round of investment funding, the AR swim goggle maker Form becomes the object of attention.  Michael R continues to enjoy his pair, although wishes that there was an interface to the Apple Health app — maybe something for the future!  

The Boston Dynamics robot Spot becomes a telemedicine platform, sporting an iPad to bring the remote doctor to the patient.  This kind of telepresence is not quite new, but the Spot platform is.  The team was reminded of a platform much like the Double Robotics – have a look at the show notes for more.  

In other virtual news, the University of Arizona is welcoming people for admitted students day using a Minecraft representation of the campus, and the Kids Creative Agency in Berlin has created an office noise simulator to help people recreate the soundscape of an office, including the ability to turn on and off the noises that are annoying.

Dance your cares away!  What a great time for Apple to bring back the Fraggles!  Michael, Michael and Andy are all excited about the miniseries starting to stream now on Apple TV+.  As the show wraps up for this week, and Andy treats the listener to a rendition of the Fraggle theme song, it is great to note that Pink Floyd is streaming a concert every Friday.  All in all, it’s just another (virtual) brick in the wall.

We continue to hope that everyone is staying safe, healthy and well.  The team is looking forward to reassembling again for another episode next week! 

Selected Links

Boy Genius Report article: Crazy new glasses might be able to spot people with coronavirus — https://bgr.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-symptoms-screening-rokid-glasses-perform-fever-readings/ 

TechCrunch article: AR swim goggles-maker Form raises $8.5 million Series A — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/ar-swim-goggles-maker-form-raises-8-5-million-series-a/ 

TechCrunch article: Boston Dynamics’ Spot finds a new career in telemedicine amid COVID-19 pandemic — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/23/boston-dynamics-spot-finds-a-new-career-in-telemedicine-amid-covid-19-pandemic/ 

Double Robotics — https://www.doublerobotics.com 

Shock Treatment — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_Treatment 

Planet Minecraft: University of Arizona rendered in Minecraft — https://www.planetminecraft.com/project/the-university-of-arizona/ 

The Verge article: Campus is closed, so college students are rebuilding their schools in Minecraft — https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21200972/college-students-graduation-minecraft-coronavirus-school-closures 

I Miss The Office — https://imisstheoffice.eu 

Kids Creative Agency — https://www.thekids.eu/en/contact#about

Engadget article: ‘Fraggle Rock’ mini-series makes a surprise debut on Apple TV+ —  https://www.engadget.com/fraggle-rock-apple-tv-plus-173925198.html 

slash film article: ‘Fraggle Rock: Rock On!’ Trailer: Apple Brings Back The Fraggles: https://www.slashfilm.com/fraggle-rock-rock-on-trailer/ 

Musicradar article: Pink Floyd to stream a concert for free every Friday – starting today — https://www.musicradar.com/news/pink-floyd-to-stream-a-concert-for-free-every-friday-starting-today 

Bonus Links

TechCrunch article: What happens if Magic Leap shuts down? — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/22/what-happens-if-magic-leap-shuts-down/ 

Schneier on Security blog post: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/vulnerability_f.html 

Jalopnik article: Let’s Chat About How Weird This Research Boat Is — https://jalopnik.com/lets-chat-about-how-weird-this-research-boat-is-1842968317 

The Gamer article: Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players Are Using Turnip Bouncers To Keep Order — https://www.thegamer.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-turnip-bouners/ 

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Episode 269 — COVID Data

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representation of interconnectiveness of data
Photo by Pixabay, 2017

There were just too many COVID links for Michael, Michael and Andy to cover in this week’s episode, so they decided to major on the major, and include the rest in the show notes below.  Data looms large in how life will be, and the first story the team covers relates directly to the APIs that Apple and Google are enabling to provide a way to track and trace where a confirmed infection takes place, and those around that person who will need to be tested.  Other podcasts, such as Security Now go into depth on this story, and the transcript from the April 14th episode of Security Now provides greater insight into the challenges of dealing with this data in a secure way that also respects privacy.

There are some intriguing ways that map data are being used to help people during the pandemic, and while the team did not talk through these articles, you may find the links to what Waze and Apple Maps are doing in the show notes below.

Turning to the world of virtual meetings and a sense of place, Online Town is held high as an example for combining place with a virtual space — something that Michael, Michael and Andy all know very well from their experiences in the 3D Internet days.  The reference point of a virtual city serves as a place anchor so that people know “where” to meet, not just having a numeric ID to dial into.  And while one is in a VR space, the company Holoswitch provides an example of how notifications from the physical world could be represented in virtual spaces.  Joining (and augmenting) the visible world, the example use case given by WorldGaze provides contextual information to the voice assistant, filling in the subject based on where the user is looking, derived from a phone’s front and rear facing cameras.  Check out the YouTube link below – this is fascinating! 

This episode winds down on a pizza oven you can have in your own kitchen — just the thing for stepping up your #StayAtHome meals.

Other links of interest deal with the new iPad Pro trackpad keyboard, as well as other trackpad enabled keyboards for earlier editions of the iPad, and an article on what you can do to make your home based workspace better from Marie Kondo.  Here’s hoping that you too can spark joy while remaining physically distant and simultaneously socially connected.

We continue to hope that everyone is staying safe, healthy and well.  The team is looking forward to reassembling again for another episode next week! 

Selected Links

appleinsider article: EU to pressure Tim Cook about privacy in Apple & Google’s COVID-19 contact tracing — https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/16/eu-to-pressure-tim-cook-about-privacy-in-apple-googles-covid-19-contact-tracing 

Security Now podcast transcript from April 14, 2020 — https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-762.txt 

Boy Genius Report article: Waze has new features to help you navigate the coronavirus crisis — https://bgr.com/2020/04/15/waze-vs-google-maps-new-coronavirus-related-features-coming-to-waze-5817860/ 

MacRumors article: Apple Releases Maps Mobility Data Trends Tool to Help Mitigate COVID-19 Spread — https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/14/apple-maps-mobility-data-trends/ 

Mashable article: Online Town solves the most annoying thing about Zoom parties — https://mashable.com/article/online-town-video-chat-for-groups/ 

Online Town — https://town.siempre.io 

Jitsi Videobridge — https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/ 

VR Fitness Insider article: How ProxiMat Evolved to Meet the Needs of VR Gamers and Esports Athletes — https://www.vrfitnessinsider.com/how-proximat-evolved-to-meet-the-needs-of-vr-gamers-and-esports-athletes/ 

VentureBeat article: Holoswitch sends your smartphone notifications to you while in VR — https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/12/holoswitch-sends-your-smartphone-notifications-to-you-while-in-vr/ 

Holoswitch — https://holoswitch.com 

TechCrunch article: WorldGaze uses smartphone cameras to help voice AIs cut to the chase — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/15/worldgaze-uses-smartphone-cameras-to-help-voice-assistants-cut-to-the-chase/ 

Enhancing Mobile Voice Assistants with WorldGaze — https://chrisharrison.net/projects/worldgaze/WorldGaze.pdf 

TechCrunch article: Ooni’s Koda 16 pizza over is the rare kitchen gadget that delivers on its promise — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/14/oonis-koda-16-pizza-oven-is-the-rare-kitchen-gadget-that-delivers-on-its-promise/ 

iMore article: The iPad Pro is so great that you can run MacOS X 10.5 Leopard on it. But only if you hate yourself.  — https://www.imore.com/ipad-pro-so-great-you-can-run-mac-os-x-105-leopard-it-only-if-you-hate-yourself 

TechCrunch article: Apple’s iPad Pro Magic Keyboard arrives next week, ahead of schedule — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/15/apples-ipad-pro-magic-keyboard-arrives-next-week-ahead-of-schedule/ 

MacRumors article: Logitech Keyboard Cases With Trackpad for 7th-Generation iPad and iPad Air Now Available — https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/15/logitech-ipad-keyboard-cases-trackpad-available/ 

Washington Post article:  Marie Kondo has advice for living and working at home in a pandemic — https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/marie-kondo-has-advice-for-living-and-working-at-home-in-a-pandemic/2020/04/13/c6315184-75bc-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html

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Episode 268 — Seeing Reality

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rain speckled glasses
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash

Michael, Michael and Andy return for an episode spanning face shields to additive & subtractive AR, physical and virtual location based life blogging, old and new games to play and pets jumping into the scene.

Many corporations and other groups are moving quickly to apply their capabilities to the COVID-19 virus pandemic, and there are several examples in the news from the past week from Apple, the UNC system & Duke designing and producing face shields, Tesla manufacturing ventilators from car parts and others combining wearable LED technology with cloth face masks.  

While augmented reality is usually an additive concept, where visual or other data is layered upon the reality that a person perceives, in this episode, we have an intriguing subtractive version of AR, where data that hinders the view of the user may be removed.  Examples from a recent IEEE conference presentation on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition provide examples how machine learning can subtract the glare from a picture taken through a glass, remove raindrops from a window pane or even make a chain link fence disappear.  One can imagine that this capability could be further extended to reduce the ‘noise’ of irrelevant data in a photo or video, and provide the underlying system more clarity on what is really there.

In the games department, we take a bit of a stroll down the UK memory (computer) lane and visit with Andy the fun of the BBC Micro, along with an archive of the games on that platform.  The discussion on Google making Stadia free to anyone with a gmail address sparks an interesting conversation that started with the Foursquare – Factual merger, namely that life blogging not only has a location-based element to it (Swarm), but also can have a game angle to it.  Games are, after all, an important part of life, and during this time of social and physical distancing, and provide a space for community.

Wrapping up this week’s episode are stories on the recent success by researchers in France and the United states factoring two prime numbers, each with 125 decimal digits in the RSA-250 cryptographic challenge, the market success of jigsaw puzzles during this time higge, and how pets (in this case a cat) are becoming the unexpected star of remote videos.

We hope that everyone is staying safe, healthy and well.  Looking forward to coming back again for another show next week!  

Selected Links

TechCrunch article: Apple has sources one 20 million protective masks, now building and shipping face shields — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/05/apple-has-sourced-over-20-million-protective-masks-now-building-and-shipping-face-shields/ 

The Verge article: Apple publishes instructions and fitting guide for its new face shields — https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21212245/apple-instructions-face-shields-ppe-fitting 

Innovate Carolina article: Face Shield PPE: Makerspace Volunteers — https://innovate.unc.edu/fire-up-the-engine/ 

Laughing Squid article: Protective Face Mask That Displays Custom Animated Messages Using Wearable LED Technology — https://laughingsquid.com/face-mask-that-displays-led-animated-messages/ 

TechCrunch article: Tesla shows how it’s building ventilators with car parts — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/05/tesla-shows-how-its-building-ventilators-with-car-parts/

VFX Voice article: Real-Time CG Humans Hit the Big-Time — https://www.vfxvoice.com/real-time-cg-humans-hit-the-big-time/ 

Learning to See Through Obstructions — https://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~yulunliu/ObstructionRemoval 

TechCrunch article: Foursquare mergers with Factual — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/06/foursquare-merges-with-factual/ 

Complete BBC Micro Games Archive — http://bbcmicro.co.uk//about.php 

Polygon article:  Google Stadia now are to anyone with a Gmail address — https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/8/21213551/google-stadia-free-pro-subscription 

phys.org article: New record set for cryptographic challenge — https://phys.org/news/2020-03-cryptographic.html 

New York Times article: Here’s How Those Hot Jigsaw Puzzles Are Made — https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-jigsaw-puzzles.html 

Kotaku article: Cat Calmly Ruins Twitch Stream — https://kotaku.com/cat-calmly-ruins-twitch-stream-1842780452 

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Episode 267 — Breathe

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Michael and Michael welcome back Andy Piper to make this week’s episode an intercontinental extravaganza of insight.  Everyone had so much fun, we plan do do it again next week.

Tagging onto the ventilator stories from last week, the team begins with an MIT project plan to build emergency ventilators from readily available parts, such as an Ambu bag for $100. 

Friend of the podcast Ian Hughes shared a new report on the use of AR and VR, which is of course ultra timely as so many people have been thrust into working remotely.  Simulating the serendipitous connections people make with one another at conferences provides a tremendous opportunity to leverage VR capabilities.  Video conferencing has taken off, of course, and with the rapid growth, there have been some growing pains — with security and griefing issues noted in the referenced articles.  Zoom and other video conferencing platforms are useful to bring people together, to play games and to connect.  

Some enterprising pubs have gotten creative in the social and physical distancing world we live in.  London’s Signature Brew has crafted a “Pub in a Box” to deliver the pub experience to your home, replete with crisps, a curated Spotify playlist and even a pub quiz.  In Chapel Hill, Pittsboro and Durham, local brewers Carolina Brewery and Fullsteam are two that are also finding ways to bring their wares to their clients.  Michael M spent an hour Saturday night on a virtual wine tasting over Facebook.

Moving from crisps to Krisp, the team discusses the benefits of audio noise cancellation technology to make all those virtual conferences better (or at least a little less distracting), and then touches on several interesting pieces — Apple’s acquisition of the weather app Dark Sky, ideas for Apple Watch activities, a man who ran a virtual marathon on his balcony, and with these three, it wouldn’t be a full show without at least one LEGO mention.

Hope that you enjoy listening to the episode as much as we did making it.  Be safe and be well!

Selected Links

SciTechDaily article: MIT Will Post Free Plans Online for an Emergency Ventilator That Can Be Built for $100 — https://scitechdaily.com/mit-posts-free-plans-online-for-an-emergency-ventilator-that-can-be-built-for-100/ 

Six Colors article:  Zoom’s misleading encryption claims are just the latest problem for the popular service — https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/zooms-misleading-encryption-claims-are-just-the-latest-problem-for-the-popular-service/ 

NPR article:  A Must For Millions, Zoom Has A Dark Side — And An FBI Warning — https://www.npr.org/2020/04/03/826129520/a-must-for-millions-zoom-has-a-dark-side-and-an-fbi-warning 

Signature Brew, Pub In A Box — https://www.signaturebrew.co.uk/products/pub-in-a-box-24x-cans-2x-glasses-nuts-pretzel-pieces-music-quiz-playlists 

Carolina Brewery — https://www.carolinabrewery.com 

Fullstem Brewery — https://www.fullsteam.ag/event/curbside-beer-food/2020-04-03 

Krisp — https://krisp.ai/blog/ 

Distractify article: Zoom Calls Getting Boring?  Introduce Your Friends and Coworkers to These Games — https://www.distractify.com/p/games-to-play-on-zoom 

TechCrunch article: Consumers spent record $23.4 billion on apps in Q1 2020, thanks to being stuck indoors — https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/consumers-spent-record-23-4-billion-on-apps-in-q1-2020-thanks-to-being-stuck-indoors/ 

TechCrunch article:  Niantic is updating Pokemon GO and other titles to support indoor gaming — https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/30/niantic-is-updating-pokemon-go-and-other-titles-to-support-indoor-gaming/ 

MacRumors article: Apple Acquires Weather App Dark Sky — https://www.macrumors.com/2020/03/31/apple-acquires-weather-app-dark-sky/ 

CNBC article: This man ran a marathon on his 23-foot balcony during COVID-19 lockdown — here are the mental tricks he used to finish — https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/elisha-nochomovitz-ran-marathon-on-his-balcony-amid-covid-19-pandemic.html 

IT Crowd — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487831/ 

SlashFilm article: Cool Stuff: New ‘Fast and Furious’ LEGO Technic Set Builds Dom’s Doge Charger a Quarter-Brick at a Time — https://www.slashfilm.com/fast-and-furious-lego-set-doms-dodge-charger/ 

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