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Life, augmented

February 24, 2013February 24, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

Google Glass will be available to regular people starting this year for less than $1,500 or P61,000, various technology news websites reported the past few days.

Google Glass is an eyeglass computer that can take photos or videos or display information like weather data or your calendar items on a head-mounted display or take photos and videos. The device is controlled by voice – triggered by the phrase, “ok glass.”

When you say, “take a photo,” it takes a photo of whatever it is that you’re looking at. When you say “take a video,” it does that too. You can even livestream whatever you are seeing through the device and share it with friends.

You can also ask Glass to translate words and phrases for you. Its promotional video had one scene of a person eating on a boat in Thailand and then complementing a local in Thai that the food was delicious after asking Glass to translate it for him.

Google Glass is a research project by Google X Lab, a facility run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The lab also produced the Google driverless car.

What’s really exciting about Google Glass isn’t just that it can be used to record your life, what’s more exciting is its ability to augment it.

Data layer on real life

Think about the possibilities: what if upon leaving your house, the system could show you the things that you needed to do for the day and the hour’s top stories while also plotting your best route to the office, taking into account traffic conditions?

What if it shows you the Facebook or Twitter statuses or profiles of the people that you are looking at? Single, married, it’s complicated – what if Google Glass can put a social layer on real life?

What if while buying, the system could also assist you by providing price comparisons or even recipe suggestions?

What if it could alert you to take your medicine or scan what you eat to remind you of your diet?

What if the system could alert you of news stories based on what you see or where you are?

The scenarios above are close to being possible. It’s already being done on mobile, it’s just a matter of porting it to Glass.

NEW WAY TO DELIVER NEWS. Wearable computing like Google Glass will allow us to have a data layer on real life. One of these layers can be news updates.

NEW WAY TO DELIVER NEWS. Wearable computing like Google Glass will allow us to have a data layer on real life. One of these layers can be news. It can detect that you’re in Lapu-Lapu City, looking at a massive traffic gridlock caused by a vehicular accident a few kilometers away in Mandaue City. The system, upon detecting that you’re near the 1st Mactan-Mandaue bridge, also warns you that the bridge will be closed for repairs soon.

Disruptive transition

I think Google Glass is a really exciting peek into the future of computing. We are in the midst of a disruptive transition to mobile but the move to wearable, as epitomized by the Google Glass, would even be more disruptive.
For content providers like the news media, wearable computing will present a new challenge and offer fresh opportunities to deliver information.

The Google Glass can be a device to navigate the so-called “Internet of things.”

I’ve long been experimenting with ways to put a layer of data on real life. My wife and I are using quick response (QR) codes to deliver tourism and heritage information in some spots here in Cebu and, soon, in Iloilo and Bohol.

Connecting digital to physical

Right now, QR codes are the best way to connect digital content to a physical trigger. The system does not consume bandwidth in finding the location of a digital resource because what it does is just decode a string of characters from the QR code, which is a type of barcode, and use it as input. It could either lead you to a website or trigger the download of bits of data. The next phase to this type of connectivity can be NFC or near field communication.

If you were to do that purely via augmented reality systems (AR) like Google Glass, you would need constant connection to a server to compare what you see with a database of images or GPS locations in order to find a matching content. GPS locations might be easier to implement via a system called “geo-fencing.” That’s what we are looking at next.

But with Google Glass and the next generation of connectivity like LTE, augmented reality will, I think, finally live up to its name and become reality.

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Bisaya poetry e-book “Skina Balak” launched today

January 11, 2013January 11, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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InnoPub Media, the journalism start-up I co-founded with Marlen, and literary group Bathalad, Inc. have published an e-book anthology of Bisaya poetry written by its members.

The anthology, “Skina Balak,” will be launched tonight in Persimmon in Mabolo, Cebu City in time with the opening of Tahas art exhibit.

Skina Balak is an anthology of Bisaya poetry that you can download to your smartphone, tablet or e-reader.

Skina Balak can be downloaded to your smartphone, tabler or e-reader from sites like MyCebu.ph. I also included the download link below.

The e-book can also be downloaded via phone scanning of QR or quick response codes printed on posters, desktop standees and other materials.

The anthology includes poetry by Adonis Durado, Anthony Kintanar, Cindy Velasquez, Delora Sales-Simbajon, Ernesto Lariosa, Gerard Pareja, Greg Fernandez, Ioannes Arong, Januar Yap, Jeremiah Bondoc, John Biton, Jona Bering, Josua Cabrera, Karla Quimsing, Michael Obenieta, Nancy Noel-Nacua, Noel Rama, Noel Villaflor, Pantaleon Auman, Radel Paredes, Rolando Morallo, Romeo Nicolas Bonsocan, Temistokles Adlawan, Vicente Bandillo and Vince Cinches.

The e-book also contains tuba on paper art paintings by Josua Cabrera.

Note: Depending on your connection, downloading may take some time. You can check the address bar of your phone to monitor the progress of the download.

To download th e-book, choose the appropriate file format for your device below.

1.) .epub format for iBooks for the iPhone and iPad and Aldiko, Stanza and other e-book readers for Android and other devices.

2.).mobi format for the Kindle.

If you’re having a hard time downloading the files, you can leave your e-mail address by using this form (click here) and we will send you the e-book. It may take some time, however, for us to e-mail you the file.

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Innovation, disruption in media

October 21, 2012October 21, 2012 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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Last Thursday, Newsweek announced it was ending its print publication on Dec. 31 and going all-digital starting next year.

The digital publication, which will be named Newsweek Global, “will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context,” Newsweek and The Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown said in the announcement posted at The Daily Beast.

“There’s no demand for a digital Newsweek,” Reuters blogging editor Felix Salmon wrote shortly after the announcement. “Newsweek is hitching its fortunes to a motley group of e-readers (Zinio!), all of which are based on pretty clunky old publishing technology, and none of which have any ability to take advantage of the social web.”

I haven’t tried the Newsweek app because all my news reading are on aggregators like Flipboard, Pulse and Zite, where Newsweek seems to be largely absent (there’s relevance for you.) But I think Salmon is spot-on in pointing out digital solutions based on “pretty clunky old publishing technology.” Many publications still rely on “e-paper” solutions based on the printed page’s layout. These are not gadget-native and do not translate well mobile.

In contrast, news start-ups have started websites and applications more attuned to the needs of today’s audience. They also tap the latest advances in technology.

One such application is Circa, which is rethinking the news article and breaking it up into what its founding editor Dave Cohn calls “the atomic units of news: a fact, a quote, a statistic, an event, etc.” By breaking the article up, the app can then update Circa users on what’s new, without having to repeat information that has already been reported.

Circa answers the needs of people who want keep track of developing news stories. I’ve been using it since it was made available last week and found it useful. Circa does its job well.

By rethinking the media businesses through the “jobs-to-be-done” theory, journalists can spot opportunities in today’s disruptive media landscape. That’s what the Nieman Reports did in its latest issue. The cover story is an examination of the news industry through the innovation framework of Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, the author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”

The series of articles is very enlightening. Canadian journalist David Skok, a Nieman fellow, said mainstream media “failed to foster a newsroom culture that rewards innovation and empowers the younger generation, that can readily adapt to the new media world around us, and that is willing to experiment with the diversified revenue streams right in front of us.”

In their “Breaking News” essay, Skok, Christensen and James Allworth cited The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed as “classic disruptors.”

“Disruption theory argues that a consistent pattern repeats itself from industry to industry. New entrants to a field establish a foothold at the low end and move up the value network—eating away at the customer base of incumbents—by using a scalable advantage and typically entering the market with a lower-margin profit formula,” they said.

That’s how Huffington Post and BuzzFeed built its business – starting as news aggregators and moving up the value chain. Huffington Post now has a Pulitzer and BuzzFeed is going into longform original reporting.

The authors looked into how digital point-and-shoot cameras lost the market to smartphones on one end and cheaper digital SLR cameras on the other end. They said there is a similar “eroding ‘middle ground’ for news.” Products and services like Metro (a free paper distributed in subways) and Twitter “are serving consumers whose need is simply ‘help me fill these 10 minutes right now.’”

“At the other end of the spectrum, for the job of ‘I will be in an airplane or on a train for four hours, and I want to be intellectually stimulated,’ sites like Longreads and tools like Instapaper and Pocket…are enabling users to find and save longer-form storytelling for offline viewing,” they said.

In thinking about charging for content, the authors cautioned that “it’s critical to avoid falling into the trap of believing that you can charge for content just because it costs money to produce.”

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Going mobile

August 19, 2012August 19, 2012 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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In the recent Olympics, smartphones and tablets took a more central role in providing people more information about the games, Google said in a report.

Google said there were times when more searches were “performed on tablets and smartphones than on computers.”

The search giant said they’ve been seeing “large spikes in global mobile search volume” in major sporting events and the trend continued with Olympics.

And one key usage of smartphones and tablets spotted by Google is to serve as second screen to get information on what they were seeing on another screen – the television.

“We’ve crunched some data from the past week, and the opening ceremony is a great illustration of how mobile devices have taken center stage. Fans turned to their smartphones and tablets to find more information about the incredible feats and celebrities that they saw on screen,” Google said.

The company cited how searches, many on smartphones and tablets, for Paul McCartney surged when he performed “Hey Jude” during the opening ceremonies.

And the surge was a global phenomenon with the US recording 47 percent as combined mobile search share; Japan, 55 percent; Australia, 45 percent; United Kingdom, 46 percent; and South Korea, 36 percent.

A more industry-specific study by Google provides a peek into smartphone and tablet use in travel. The Google study “2012 Traveler” projected a 15 percent to 25 percent growth in searches related to travel. Of the growth projection, desktops are expected to contribute 0 percent; smartphones, 68 percent; and tablets, 180 percent.

The study also found increasing use of mobile for travel information at 38 percent for leisure travelers, which is up from 31 percent in 2011, and 57 percent for business travelers, up from 56 percent in 2011.

The shift to mobile is truly underway. And that shift will have ramifications across industries.

In the Philippines, that shift is speeding up. We are, after all, known as a country enamored with mobile phones that once took pride in being the text messaging capital of the world. Another Google report, the “Global Business Map,” shows a 1,211 percent growth in mobile search queries in the Philippines. That number is more than double the growth in desktop queries, which stood at 546 percent.

The shift to mobile will bring with it new ways to consume information. Already, there have been major changes in consumption of news because of tablets, smartphones and reading apps such as Pulse, Flipboard, Google Currents and Zite and services like Readability and Pocket (formerly Read It Later).

I think the shift to mobile, along with availability of next generation high-speed networks like LTE or long term evolution, will make possible the availability of a layer of information on real life through such technologies as QR or quick response codes, augmented reality and near-field communication or NFC.

That is for the future. But even now, the phone is becoming our main personal computer that will increasingly allow us to access data whenever and wherever we need it.

A personal example: When story broke last Saturday on the crash of the plane carrying Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, I kept up with the story just on my phone, mostly through Twitter and at times through mobile browsing of news sites. Previously, I’d have opened the TV set or booted up my laptop. Not last Saturday. I found that the mobile phone had sufficed for my breaking news needs.

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Nexus and disruption

July 22, 2012July 22, 2012 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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A Filipino company launched in Cebu last week two dual-SIM phones with one that can, arguably, be called a smartphone, in a non-snobbish sense that it is a touchscreen phone that can connect to the Internet.

Starmobile’s FeatureSmart T601i costs just P3,290. Starmobile president Michael Chen said that although their phones are priced low, these have “top of the line craftsmanship.”

The company is also scheduled to launch an Android tablet in four weeks with a target price of P5,999. The tablet will come with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, said Starmobile president Michael Chen. I tried the device during the launch and found it very responsive.

Chen said that although it is a consumer product, their tablet can be used as an educational tool and deployed in schools. Android, after all, has a lot of educational apps and can display e-books.

The device, however, will be launched at a time when Nexus 7 has already been unveiled, to very positive reviews. The Nexus 7 is priced at $199, which makes it an attractive tablet alternative. I don’t know how much the Nexus 7 will be sold in the Philippines but I’d hold off buying a tablet if I were you until it is available here.

The availability of low-priced gadgets will speed up the already increasing adoption of tablets and smartphones. Earlier this year, analytics firm GfK estimated the smartphone share of the Philippine market at 29.4 percent. The growth in smartphone volume in the first quarter was pegged at an astonishing 203 percent compared with the previous quarter.

Phone replacement

This year’s Christmas season will likely mark for many Filipinos the shift from feature phones to smartphones.

Coupled with the increased adoption of new gadgets, is the accelerating use of mobile Internet.

Smart, for example, recorded a sharp increase of 71 percent in mobile Internet usage in the first quarter compared to last year.

That nexus of accelerating modern gadget adoption and increasing mobile Internet usage will have profound implications on business.

PLDT and Smart Communications president and chief executive officer Napoleon Nazareno offered an insightful peek into changes that are underway and those that are still coming in a guest column in this section last week.

“Already, the proliferation of digital technologies and services are turning entire industries inside out, making traditional businesses obsolete and replacing them with digital, Internet-based services. Take the case of retail. For example, music stores have all of a sudden become passé. Why? Because people are buying music online. Did you know that Smart is not only the country’s largest mobile phone company – it is also one of the largest online retailer of full-track music?” he wrote.

The changes will be disruptive but it will offer opportunities to those who know how to harness technology and navigate that nexus.

New radio

As a news junkie, I’ve gotten a peek into one transformation sparked by that nexus — that of the mobile phone becoming our generation’s “radio.”

When I was still a field reporter, I used to be always plugged into AM radio, listening to newscasts or public affairs programs. Several years back, however I stopped listening altogether when I was reassigned to this section and because I no longer carried a portable radio with me.

But now, I listen to “radio” of a different kind — podcasts. When I wake up, I get a global news round-up via the BBC and tech updates from TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio (NPR). At night, I listen to several NPR podcasts when I go for a brisk walk. When doing the dishes, it’s Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips. And depending the day of the week, I’d listen to one of several tech, news, business and general information podcasts that I follow. I am able to follow all these excellent shows via a free application called Stitcher Radio, which has Android, iOS and Web versions.

Apple’s decision to separate podcasts from iTunes into a stand-alone app indicates that people are listening to them.

While there aren’t many local shows yet, I’m sure that in the next few months we’ll see more becoming available.

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