The mobile future

Last week I went to another seminar, or rather a presentation about the future of the mobile web in 2010. A few interesting products (hardware and software), some of which I have never heard of, were shown. Altough mobile learning per se was not mentioned, one or two of those products certainly will have an impact on the mobile learning scene of this year.

The presenters, Markus Schärer ( Web2com AG, Germany & Switzerland) and Florian Wieser (Co & Co AG, Switzerland) both are leading consultants for online and multimedia projects and have been involved in the industry since the 90s.

As far as hardware goes, not surprisingly, the iPad was called the hottest item on their list of many. Other products which seemed promising to the presenters were the Lenovo U1, the Google Tablet, the Google Nexus One and of course the iPhone 4G. Some of these, obviously aren’t even on the market. The Amazon Kindle was also mentioned, but the presenters weren’t sure about its success. In Europe that is. I disagree with them, but time will tell what’s going to happen.

Another interesting point these gentlemen made was that the web in general is moving from presenting information the old-fashioned way to more of a storytelling approach. In other words, information should be prepared in a more interesting way. As someone involved in E-Learning, I could not agree more.

According to Schärer and Wieser, some of the mega trends of 2010 are the more increased use of social networks on mobile phones, location-based services and augmented reality. Nothing surprising, but I couldn’t agree more.

So what does all of this mean for mobile learning? Honestly, it is hard to tell. I believe that location-based learning especially in combination with games and augmented reality might be something extremely popular for the next coming years. Especially when augmented reality finally performs fast enough so we don’t get bored waiting for stuff to pop up on our mobile screen.

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

A brief update on Augmented Reality

Mobile Monday at Zurich was interesting from a mobile learning perspective. Augmented Reality has been on the map for quite a while now, but at the ETH (Zurichs renowned University) we were allowed to have an upclose look at what some companies are doing.

Here is a short overview:

GBanga – GBanga is a small company which specializes in creating AR games. One of the games was a scavenger hunt where each player could collect certain items or had to go from spot A to spot B. Unfortunately, this is not yet available for the iPhone..  However, it is free and anyone can sign up. This might be a great mobile learning tool for young kids and teenagers.

http://gbanga.com/

Kooaba is a Swiss-based company, which specializes in picture recognition, be it CD-covers, movie posters or the like. They are now starting to do this for buildings and landmarks as well and have scanned over 20 million freely available pictures. On site at the Switzerlands renowned ETH University it worked great. Throughout the demonstration I was able to see several tagged locations through the cell phone display. Unfortunately, public tagging is not yet allowed and although the software is working fine, it is quite slow.

http://www.kooaba.com/

Junaio was an impressive software as well, which enables users to see tagged information on their display. The software seems more advanced than other products and I will be sure to keep myself updated. I especially enjoyed the fact, that social- and or public tagging is already availablee.
http://www.junaio.com/

Wikitude is probably the most interesting of all applications since it combines Wikipedia with AR. The app seems to work well, but speed is also an issue here.  There are several possiblities for mobile learning use though.
http://www.wikitude.org/

Summary: All in all it was very interesting and there are many applications which could be used to enhance mobile learning. Nevertheless, the speed of most applications still bothers me. One technology expert also stated another important point: mobile displays. Anyone who has tried to read something on their mobile display when the sun is shining right onto their screen, should know what I mean. There are some new technologies coming which should solve that once and for all. Once these issues are solved, there is no way that mobile learning enthusiasts will get around AR. How long will it take? Be my guest to comment on that one…

New Mobile Augmented Reality browser

I stumbled upon an interesting article about the Dutch company SPRXmobile. Together with layar.eu, they have created the “Worlds first” AR-Browser for smartphones. I don’t know whether their claim about being first is really appropriate (see my earlier post http://mlearningblog.com/?p=289), but nevertheless it looks really interesting. The way it works is simple enough: open the browser and look at your surroundings with the camera lens and the smart phone display. In addition to the “real” environment, the user also sees additional information such as apartments available for sale, the location of friends or events via a social network and other locations of interest. Needless to say that this is extremely interesting for mobile learning. Check out the short video on it. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately only a demo for its use with real estate ads.

As of now, the Layar browser needs a camera, GPS and a compass. iPhone 3G s anyone? Yes, according to a recent press release the browser will become available for the new iPhone. As of now it is available for the very few Google Android phones.

Links:

http://www.sprxmobile.com/

http://layar.eu/

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.

Austrian University studies Augmented Reality on mobile devices

This Monday I attended an extremely interesting presentation by Daniel Wagner of the Graz University of Technology. Daniel holds a Master in computer science and has been working on mobile augmented reality projects. He showed a few stunning demonstrations on what a combination between reality and a digital camera can create. One example was a tour through a campus in which users of a mobile phone could look through their mobile’s camera and actually see the buildings or rooms with certain tags on them.

Another application was a museum tour in which a virtual cartoon guide would explain them certain items whenever they looked through their mobile. (See image)

Interactive gaming with this kind of augmented reality was also shown in a short movie where a PDA camera was used as an interface together with a real life map. On the camera display the games virtual characters were shown as they moved and behaved in certain ways with the real map as the playing board. The player could also shoot the “bad guys” on his PDA and interact with this mixed reality environment .

There are several very promising ways in which these projects could help mobile learning professionals to create an entire new level of mobile learning. If you have the time and haven’t visited it yet, I really recommend to check out the demo page of the Graz University of Technology.

Link demo page of Graz University of Technology: http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/media_press.php

Disclaimer: mLearningblog.com does not endorse any products or services on request. The views in this blog are the authors personal opinion.