and how they will help make our streets a little safer

What’s going on here?

When a tram/light rail is approaching, an augmented reality holographic barrier materialises along the path of the tram, making it more visible for pedestrians and cars, giving us more time to notice and react.

What does this mean?

This happened to me the other day while walking down one of the main streets in Jerusalem, where both pedestrians and trams share the street.

I’ve walked this street plenty of times before and I know the trams are there. But this particular day was a Friday when trams finish running early out of respect for the Sabbath. They weren’t meant to be on the street. So there I was, with my earphones in my ears listening to a podcast, walking on the tracks, when I notice someone gesturing at me from the corner of my eyes. They were telling me to look behind me. I take my earphones off, turn around, and come face to face with a tram inches away, beeping like mad. …

while keeping our eyes on the road

What’s going on here?

When driving down the highway we now see our directions, our personal navigations augmented, and overlaid on top of the current road signs.

PSA: The bushfire in the background has nothing to do with the concept. I put it in there because I liked the footage. I only realised later that it distracts more than it adds. The video is about the personalised road signs — not the fire.

What does this mean?

Road signs on our streets and highways give us vital information. They provide us with our directions, tell us how far away the nearest city is, when to prepare for an exit, the speed limit, lane size and more. They tell us a lot of important information. …

I’m just going to come out and say it.

Apple has been frustrating me lately.

Back in Steves Day there was always “One more thing”

And we were always excited to hear what it was, and they rarely disappointed.

Lately I feel every Apple Keynote ends with a “But…”

But, is never a good thing.

You watch the Keynote, it’s nice and all.

You can rely on them to release something you want to buy.

But it always ends with a But.

But.

This past Keynote was okay, I liked the camera features on the new iPhones.

I especially liked the direction I could see Apple was going with AR. …

can music become more exciting and personal?

I want to show everyday use-cases of Augmented Reality. Too often people either associate AR with a gimmicky game (Pokemon Go) or a fantastical SciFi world (Iron Man) that has nothing to do with them or the real world. With ‘2025’ I want to change that perception.

What’s going on here?

The speaker that usually just plays your music now has its interface augmented over it. We can see the album artwork, and which music application it’s playing from. We can also easily control the music with simple gestures. Micro-gestures.

What does this mean?

Micro-gestures. You may have seen some concept ideas from Googles Project Soli. …

I want to show everyday use-cases of Augmented Reality. Too often people either associate AR with a gimmicky game (Pokemon Go) or a fantastical SciFi world (Iron Man) that has nothing to do with them or the real world. With ‘2025’ I want to change that perception.

What’s going on here?

Every speaker can become a smart speaker. You can now interact with any random speaker in the room and they become your music interface. You can see the album artwork and swipe to the next song.

What does this mean?

We use computer vision to now recognise what is a speaker. All of the sudden, the plain speaker, that used to be a one trick pony, which would just output whatever song was streamed to it, has also become an input device. Instead of only listening through it, it can now be used to control your sound. …

I want to show everyday use-cases of Augmented Reality. Too often people either associate AR with a gimmicky game (Pokemon Go) or a fantastical SciFi world (Iron Man) that has nothing to do with them or the real world. With ‘2025’ I want to change that perception.

What’s going on here?

With Augmented Reality (AR), instead of getting out of your chair to turn on the lights, you could just look at the light you want, point at it, and it turns on.

What does this mean?

Today we interface with our lights using a proxy. We don’t directly interact with the light itself, but with the ‘light switch’. This can make things confusing as our lights are usually mounted in 3D space on a horizontal plane, while our light switches are usually mounted flat on a vertical plane. …

Why are we happy wasting $$ when we could fix stuff ourselves?

I want to show everyday usecases of Augmented Reality. Too often people either associate AR with a gimmicky game (Pokemon Go) or a fantastical SciFi world (Iron Man) that has nothing to do with them or the real world. With ‘2025’ I want to change that perception.

What’s going on here?

Siri, or any of our other Digital Assistants can fix problems that used to require an expert and lots of money.

What does this mean?

Using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Augmented Reality we can now diagnose and easily repair fixes that in the past required experts and tons of money.

We have repair manuals on the internet for most, if not all, appliances that we would find in our house. Very rarely do we actually search for them and use them, and when we do, they are usually difficult to follow. Instead, we quickly reach for the phone number of the closest repairman. …

Siri. Google Assistant. Cortana. Alexa. Viv. Jarvis. Vi.

Notice the odd one out?

All of these digital assistants are called by a very specific name.

Except one.

Google Assistant.

Now, why is that?

Why has Google decided to go against the grain and not pick a name for their AI. Why the very unspecific and not so relatable ‘Google Assistant’?

If we think about it, today it’s still a little weird speaking to your AI in public. Calling out ‘Cortana, please read out my schedule’ on the train is quite nerdy.

Everyone knows you’re speaking to a program.

And this is why I think Google has not named their AI yet. …