Lenovo To Build Google's First Project Tango Phone (pcworld.com) 48
Press2ToContinue writes: Google and Lenovo announced plans Thursday night in Las Vegas for the first Project Tango phone to be released this summer for less than $500. Project Tango is Google's vision to bring augmented reality to phones by enabling devices to be able to sense where they are and what is around them. During the announcement, Google's Johnny Lee demonstrated measuring a room using a prototype Project Tango tablet and then shopping at Lowes for furniture that would fit it. Google also announced an app incubator for Project Tango, which they hope will encourage developers to start building apps that make use of the AR technology.
Lenovo? (Score:1)
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Why would a person with crutches be jumping around in front of a Kinect?
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sending millions of crutch shots to Billy Gates
What's his preference? Metal or wood?
Lenovo Malware (Score:2)
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What does this exactly have to do with AR rather than just general "cameras and GPS devices on phones"?
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people too lazy to enter a zip code or a map program
I'm with you on this. I don't need or want a weather app on my mobile phone as long as the bookmark for Weather.com's page for my zip code continues to load in my web browser. This approach has been working just fine for along time and isn't wasting system resources while the page isn't loaded. And I only had to type the zipcode once. Hard work, I know.
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All of this comes across to me as knee-jerk. Your phone isn't going to sit around and scan without you telling it to. And since the processing is done in-phone, there's no need to store everything on the cloud.
That said, the things that people want stored could build Google up a pretty impressive database. Picture, say, the AR equivalent of a car repair manual (ignore what I wrote below about AR not really interesting me, there are some subsets that I find neat ;) ). Everything in your car, you can pul
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Apparently you're under the impression that every bit of data collected by an android phone gets transmitted straight to Google.
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More Big Data for Big Government (Score:1)
Many people will probably scan their whole home and store it on Google servers which will be accessible by governments that can force Google to stay silent
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Many people will probably scan their whole home
Well, I won't be scanning my rooms. When there is a need, I will take some measurements with one of those fancy, hand-held retractable tape thingies, use a pen and paper to take note of these, and then proceed with the project I have in mind. I can even use a pen and paper or spreadsheet application on my computer to whip up some mock drawings to play around with placement ideas. I know, so advanced! A bonus is that I still can do this when my do-everything-under-the-damn-sun phone is bitching about a l
I don't really care about fancy apps... (Score:2)
Augmented reality doesn't really interest me. Just let me do quality 3d scans with my phone and download the models, and I'm sold ;)
If they want "apps" that would interest me, they'd be apps to auto-process the scanned 3d data and try to make sense of it - tracking how individual objects move/transform between time steps, autoconstruction of deformable armatures on moving objects, separation objects from the surface that they rest upon (which requires identifying where an object ends and the "ground" begins
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I'd like a wearable that allows me to pull up information about anything in visual range and extend out from there. I realized this when I was on the Skyway in Buffalo, NY. I wanted to know when the Skyway was built, what the max throughput was, what the averages where, elevation, duration of construction, how it was constructed, if there were accidents, and then I wanted to be able to look at the buildings and get even more information like that - including floor plans and whatnot.
I also realized it would
for shopping? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a new tech idea that wasn't used to enhance my shopping or ad-consuming experience...
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Well, then don't go to an ad company for your technology names.
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*Needs* Stupid phone dictation.
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Don't go to a shiny-trendy-overpriced-gadget company for your phone dictation needs. ;)
Or an ad company.
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Indeed, I think they're marketing the whole concept wrong.
I like the above example - a person fixing a car. That'd be pretty darned nifty if you could pull out your phone and get a model of your engine, automatically broken down into identifiable parts (to the degree that the phone can see), fetching the geometry of what it can't see, letting you virtually remove parts out of the way to see what you need to get to, showing you how parts should look so you can see if something looks wrong, etc. They could
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What google's core business is has nothing to do with how they have to market a specific product. Nor is every product Google makes oriented around advertising (any more than its competitors' are). Furthermore, Google really has pushed itself to become more of a "big data company" in general rather than specifically advertising.
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Imagine a new tech idea that wasn't used to enhance my shopping or ad-consuming experience...
I work in the insurance industry and am pretty excited about this technology. I think it could revolutionize how we underwrite and process homeowner claims.
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It's a win for everyone really. Very easy for homeowners to record their property to be insured and reduction of the number of false claims.
I really just love 3d scanning tech, it's so broadly applicable to so many fields. It doesn't need to be "augmented reality" stuff, it just needs to be able to capture, isolate, and identify objects. I've been patiently (okay, not so patiently ;) ) waiting many years for this.
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What could go wrong? (Score:2, Funny)
This should be awesome, Lenovo and Google, two companies I totally trust with my privacy and security.
No, wait, the other one ... Lenovo who installs spyware and Google who wants to monetize every fact about you, tied in with whatever other ad and alaytics they can jam into this.
Hell to the no.