If you’re a Firefox user and live on the web like I do, neck deep in trying out new features and beta services, then you should give Mozilla Lab’s Ubiquity a try. It’s an experimental plugin for FF that reminds me a lot of the desktop application Quicksilver.
By a key combination you bring up a command-line interface that let’s you write natural language instructions. For example, selecting text on page, bringing up the window and then typing “email this to xyz@something.com“. A similar example is translation; i.e. translate this to French. I’ve recently been migrating many of my desktop activities to web applications, including moving entirely from desktop email to Gmail, and a big plus for me is that Ubiquity works with Gmail right out of the box.
Here’s a recap of the initial features, as stated in the Ubiquity prototype announcement:
Ubiquity 0.1
Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity “command list” to see them all.
Find and install new commands to extend your browser’s vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism
And then there’s the introductory video for your enjoyment.
Head over to the Ubiquity page and try it out for yourself. It’s a bit buggy (it’s a prototype, after all)—but it looks like it has great potential.
Sony’s planning on making a splash in the augmented reality world. At the Games Conference in Liepzig, Germany they showcased the EyePet, a game set to hit the stores in late 2009, which uses the PlayStation Eye camera to allow users to interact with a small monkey-like-thing onscreen (set to explode from cuteness). The system also enables you to draw items on real paper which then pop out of it and turn into 3D objects for the monkey to interact with. In the promotional video, embedded below, they show a sketch of a car turning into a 3D vehicle controllable with a PS joystick.
Robust artificial creativity systems are an important step towards the ultimate commodity: a mass-producable product that in turn produces solutions and ideas on demand. Think how this could add to our capacity for problem solving. The idea is as exciting as the challenges involved in realizing it. Many questions remain unanswered:
Not only do we lack understanding of our own creative mechanisms, but the basics of computer programs seem to oppose the idea of achieving unbound originality. Here’s a look at that important, fundamental problem when implementing creativity. In easy digest format, no less.
With the the oncoming flood of powerful devices such as the iPhone, it’s almost certain that we’re about to make the leap into an augmented reality. I’ve predicted we’ll have common-place AR apps in early 2009. My guess is that Google will introduce a Maps-based application; possibly one that displays landmark-labels.
Here’s a video giving us a taste of what’s possible—an iPhone app capable of displaying 10 frames per second in live-video realtime tracking. It was made using version 4.4 of the ARToolkit, created by ARToolworks.
[Subscribers—visit the post if you can't see the video]
Gizmodo mentions that this won’t be found in the Appstore anytime soon, and quotes the creators:
It’s running slowly, but once Apple releases a video [API for the iPhone] SDK, performance should get to 20-30 frames/second. We’ve all seen the awesome 3D games that can run on the iPhone, so fast AR applications will also be possible in the future, with all that multi-touch goodness thrown in as well.
I’m thinking there must be someone already brewing AR apps of some sort. Evernote is close, letting you take a picture of text (e.g. a poster or DVD cover, etc.) and making the text searchable. Location-based social applications are also on a roll, displaying people in your area and what they’re up to.
With the iPhone’s 3G version there’s nothing that stands in the way; there’s bandwidth, GPS location and then the phone’s accelerometer. These combined could be used to make a label-application like I mentioned above: The accelerometer could track which way you’re facing and when you turn, the GPS where you are and the 3G could provide a fast and live connection to something like Google’s maps.
I doubt AR is an area that Apple hasn’t considered conquering. Even though it currently seems they’d rather want to use the phone’s accelerometer to make lightsaber sounds.
We’ll now be able to maintain better visual and personalized presence around Think Artificial. After some CSS struggling due to discrepancies between Firefox and Safari page rendering, I’ve finished implementing Gravatars on the site! (I’m sorry IE6 users, I don’t have time to test and accommodate a broken browser — please get Firefox).
If your comment shows up with a gray person like the third comment above, it means you’ll have to get yourself a Gravatar. If you haven’t heard of Gravatars, or Globally Recognized Avatars, they’re a service that allows you to upload and associate an avatar with your e-mail address. Since they’re in use by many popular websites, it’ll spare you some time when commenting or creating accounts there—all you’ll have to do is enter your email address and they’ll pop up automatically (email encrypted via the MD5 algorithm). For the record, the people on the pic with me above are Gnorb and Esther — both of which run great blogs.
A subscriber of Think Artificial wrote to ask me about games and AI. In short, DF asked what my thougths are on AI in games and which ones I think are the most intelligent.
To answer this bluntly: Game AI is very different from it’s non-game counterpart, and it’s not my field of study. I’ve only compared modern games through a window. However, Alex of AIGameDev has superb coverage of AI in games and the top AI games of 2007, by community vote. The top of the line are Half-Life-2.ep.2 and BioShock.
But regarding Game AI in general: modern games are horribly void of intelligence. It depends on where you set the bar, certainly. There’s tons of AI in modern games compared to 5 years ago. But the first thing to note is that Game AI is not the same as AI. It’s a subset of it. Just like discrete mathematics are a subset of mathematics. And moreover, Game AI is a very specialized subset—it has well defined goals, models for construction and limitations.
On May 27th 2007 I launched ThinkArtificial.org, a symbolic step up from my earlier blog that I’d been running for some months.
Following that step I was faced with whether I should flag the number of subscribers on the site. To set myself a goal I decided I wouldn’t reveal the number until it reached 300. And now it has happened.
Subscribers to TA have been holding at around 300 for about a month now—subscribers being people that are either subscribed to the site’s RSS feed or via email. Not counting those that visit the site regularly.
My thanks to everyone who’s been reading. You’re the reason I’m still at it.
Check out this really amazing animation artwork done through a web interface to the ContextFree.js library created by Aza Raskin, a port of the open source application by Chris Coyn. It provides means of creating beautiful generative art with minuscule amounts of code. Make sure you watch it to the end where the Sierpiński triangle is generated with 3 lines of code.
The site’s feed has been having some trouble since June 13th which may coincide with a software update I did around that time. The bug caused the site to stop generating an RSS feed.
And now for a look at science fiction: I watched Shyamalan’s The Happening last night and, you know, this may have just been the most interesting movie this year. No really: simply because I can’t wrap my head around it. What the hell was that? Why the bad acting, why the goofy protagonist? Is there a puzzle in there somewhere? Read on for a brief rant.
UPDATE-1: The issue has been resolved.
