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Excited About AR Workshop Next Week!

June 11, 2010

I’m really excited about the the W3C Workshop: Augmented Reality on the Web, taking place next Tuesday and Wednesday, 15 – 16th June as part of the OMWeb project. Excited for the obvious reasons: we’ve had some great papers, we have a great line up of speakers, 4 really interesting sessions and plenty of room for discussion — but excited too because the timing looks perfect.

There was a big and successful event in Santa Clara right at the beginning of the month. Next week’s workshop will include a report from there and it’s clear that W3C’s interest in this space was noted and welcomed. In the short space of time since then, several folks who attended that event have decided to join us in Barcelona.

Also, just this week, we saw the launch of the iPhone 4 that includes – yes – new features designed to support Augmented Reality including enhanced image tracking and full access to live data from the camera. Access to device features through common APIs are something that developers wishing to work cross-platform will depend on and that, naturally enough, W3C is working on!

We also need common ways of exposing and mixing relevant data with that camera information. At least two attempts have been made in this area and the blossoming linked data movement has an enormous amount to offer here too. All will be covered in the Barcelona workshop.

As with any cutting edge technology, the advances have been made largely in research establishments. The workshop will include presentations of exciting work being done to improve and extend the ways in which reality can be augmented, and the use cases to which the technology can be put. The workshop includes papers and talks from several researchers covering text, image and audio augmentation. Finally, as if further evidence were needed of AR’s growing relevance and importance, the workshop will include several demos and talks from companies building commercial businesses using AR.

Why Barcelona? Because mobile is key to the mass deployment of AR so the event is co-located with Mobile 2.0. Discount registration for that event is available for dotOpen members and you can sign up for that for free!

W3C workshops are often the starting point for future standards work and that is a very real possibility here. Although many of the features needed to build Augmented Reality applications are available on the Web and in the browsers with which we are most familiar, key elements are missing from the Web technology stack. Should those elements be added? And if they were, is the Web the right platform for the kind of applications that current practitioners are building and that are proving successful?

I can’t answer those questions today – ask me again in a week’s time.

Phil Archer

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W3C Audio Incubator Group Launches

May 14, 2010

Today,  W3c launched an incubator group on Audio, with the mission to explore the possibility of starting one or more specifications dealing with various aspects of advanced audio functionality, including reading and writing raw audio data, and synthesizing sound or speech. The Audio Incubator Group will engage the various constituents of such specifications, including musicians, audio engineers, accessibility experts, user-interface designers, implementers, and hardware manufacturers, to collect use cases and requirements on what can and should be done for various specifications at different levels of priority, and deliver one or more reports including recommendations for specification work items.

See the activity page and the charter for more information.

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Augmented Reality on the Web (W3C Workshop)

April 23, 2010

OMWeb is pleased to announce this upcoming workshop:

“Augmented Reality on the Web”
15-16 June 2010 — Barcelona, Spain
http://www.w3.org/2010/04/W3C-augmented-reality-workshop-omweb.htm

The Workshop is supported by W3C and the European Union’s  OMWeb Project.

The workshop will take place at the Barcelona Tech University (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and is co-located with the Mobile 2.0 conference that takes place on the following day (17 June).

Summary:
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a real-world environment whose elements are supplemented with, or augmented by computer generated imagery.  AR is a long standing topic in its own right but it has not been developed on the Web platform.  As mobile devices become more powerful and feature-rich, the workshop will explore the possible convergence of AR and the Web.

The objective of this W3C workshop on Augmented Reality on the Web is to provide a single forum for researchers and technologists to discuss the state of the art for AR on the Web, particularly the mobile platform, and what role standardization should play for Open Augmented Reality.

Important dates:
* From today: Send expression of interest
* 29 May: Deadline for position papers
* 7 June: Acceptance notification and registration instructions sent
* 15-16 June: Workshop

More information is available in the Call for Participation.