Sarah Hartley

This is the presentation I rather rushed through in the two minutes alloted at the News Rewired event in London yesterday. It really wasn’t long enough to go into any details about the Talk About Local project to experiment with public service content in the augmented reality environment so see below for some links for more info.

Slides 2 and 3: Ar selling sofas with CSL
Slides 4 and 5: Heinz prompts a recipe book using ingredient.
Slides 6 – 10: mainstream publishing using AR from News International.
Slides 11 – 15: What the Talk About Local project looks like in the AR layer.

After producing and testing the prototype to to feed hyperlocal content into the AR environment, the work with Talk About Local continues to expand this further to help people achieve an easy to use and low cost solution.

Progress and further information is available at the project blog here: www.talkaboutlocal.org/ar.
Journalism.co.uk is featuring AR at this week’s podcast which inlcudes an interview with me about Talk About Local’s work and also representatives from The Times, the LA Times and The Telegraph.

Manchester Digital’s new monthly events programme kicked off at Rain Bar in the city centre last night with a stimulating couple of presentations badged as “No, but really!” Oli Aro from Manchester based Second Places revisited 2006′s platform du jour, Second Life. Had it, he asked, developed as predicted back then? Certainly the exponential growth of Second Life as a platform had slowed down, but more interestingly, a whole range of Second Life clones had developed using OpenSim. For those concerned about building their island in a world without barriers, for instance for those working on education projects or on enterprise projects, OpenSim has provided the answer.

Dave Mee, from Tandot and Manchester Digital Laboratory, then took us through 10 years of Augmented Reality in 20 minutes. AR “markers” were new to me – and it was fascinating to see some of the attempts to find appropriate applications for augemented reality – from a web cam mounted above a pool table helping you make perfect shots every time, to an online packing service where you can check if your items fit in different sizes of boxes.

There were regulars from the Manchester Digital community in attendance alongside some companies and individuals new to these events. In an admittedly packed digital calendar, these third Thursdays aim to cover a variety of topics throughout the year. The next event will provide advice for those wanting to enter this year’s Big Chip Awards.