Georgia Tech releases open standards mobile AR browser

By mark | February 15, 2011

Argon is a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) Browser for the iPhone. From the website:

Argon is the completely open standards augmented reality browser that allows rapid development and deployment of Web 2.0 style augmented reality content.

Argon renders a standards compliant combination of KML, HTML, CSS and JavaScript served via typical HTTP servers

Multiple simultaneous channels, analogous to browser tab on the desktop, let authors create dynamic and interactive AR content using existing web development toolsets.

The browser is stated as being the reference implementation of Georgia Tech’s work on the KHARMA Mobile AR Architecture, which combines HTML for content with KML for defining geographical co-ordinates (as used by Google Maps, Google Earth & Yahoo Maps).

Argon Mobile AR Browser

Argon Mobile AR Browser

One thing that seems to counter-balance this standards flag bearing though (for me, at least) is the fact that Argon is only available on iPhone – in fact, the developers go so far as to specify that it is best run on the latest version, iPhone 4. Hopefully that will change over time and we’ll see versions for the other popular mobile platforms too: the ever growing Android and the recently adrenaline-injected Windows Phone 7. After all, it would seem a little odd lauding the open standards route while then being restricted to a single delivery platform.

But there’s plenty of growing room in the still young AR space. With the technology making a significant appearance in this year’s Horizon Report – given a ‘Time-to-adoption’ period of 2-3 years, and us already seeing mobile augmented reality being implemented at Exeter Uni on their JISC LTIG Project: Unlocking the Hidden Curriculum, it’s good to see a new offering in this area to possibly compete with the current big players: Layar, Wikitude & Junaio.

My wish? My wish is that we could see something like Argon develop into a platform for AR developers, built on open standards, that would be supported by those players and open up the AR space to easily create interactive and immersive mobile AR experiences & content that you could then deploy cross-browser. Like I say though…early days yet. Hopefully we’ll see it happen.

Oh..one more thing…I have installed Argon on my (now lowly) iPhone 3GS and while the browser looks pretty standard fare - channel view, map, search, etc - unfortunately it seems there are absolutely no POIs (Points of Interest) nearby and the search for local channels isn’t yet implemented. So, as yet, it’s a bit difficult to get a handle of whether Argon would float my boat. Next up I shall go and check out the developer’s area and have a look at creating my own POIs and content. I’ll let you know how I get on…

The Argon browser can be found at http://argon.gatech.edu/

*** Update ***

There are POIs available nearby - I just hadn’t looked at the getting started tutorial properly (I know…I’m one of those blokes that doesn’t read the manual). I’m liking the search box in the realview but the POI icon itself is a bit flaky and judders about a bit too much - I suspect their recommendation of using iPhone 4 is down to the gyroscope aiding with that, which the 3GS doesn’t have. But as you can see from the screenshot, it does the basics and I would imagine one can customise the look with your own CSS. Now…let’s hope their documentation is clear and helpful and not simply written by some Tefal headed genii in a Georgia Tech Lab…

Screenshot of Argon AR Browser

Screenshot of Argon AR Browser

Posted in augmented reality, mobile learning, mobile technologies, mobile web | 10 Comments

Mobile Web Roundup

By mark | September 17, 2010

The Mobile Web

Well…I’ve been travelling around the interweb, reading - or simply adding to Instapaper for later and trying to get round to reading - lots of lovely articles, blog posts and suchlike on the current happenings around the Mobile Web. As you’ll well know (seeing as you’re reading this) the Mobile Web is a hot topic at the moment, so I thought I’d highlight some of the things I’m reading up on right now.

The Opera Mobile Web Optimisation Guide

The guys at Opera are superb when it comes to talking and teaching about web development techniques and the current state of the web. I’ve enjoyed listening and talking to both Patrick Lauke and Bruce Lawson in the last few months and Bruce has taken his talk around this and built it into a handy guide, available on the Opera Developers website. Bruce talks about the options available when looking to deliver your content to mobile devices and gives loads of really useful advice and tips on stuff to do, stuff to avoid and delivers a really nice outline on why CSS Media Queries are so powerful and can help you build mobile-aware, adaptive websites that don’t have to check which browser the content is being delivered to but checks the device settings themselves (think “display resolution”). I strongly encourage you to check this guide out if you haven’t before.

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/the-mobile-web-optimization-guide/

Combining meta viewport and media queries

Following on with the CSS Media Queries angle, this article on quirksmode gives you a full walkthrough of how to combine <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width”> with media queries to enable your website to resize to fit any display. It tells you what these do, why you should use them and gives the whole technique, with helpful screenshots. Excellent.

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/09/combining_meta.html

Rethinking the Mobile Web

This is a truly great set of slides that Bryan Rieger of Yiibu recently delivered at the Over The Air event at Imperial College, London. Here Bryan gives us an outline of device usage, mobile browsers and - echoing Patrick’s & Bruce’s message - the options available to us when it comes to making mobile friendly websites (and apps - we can’t ignore those). Bryan puts a damn good point across that maybe we should design our sites for mobile devices FIRST, then add in the capability for the site to adapt for desktop. It’s a different way of approaching the whole creation and I’m really into that way of thinking.

http://www.slideshare.net/bryanrieger/rethinking-the-mobile-web-by-yiibu

The Mobile Web is NOT The Next Big Thing

Haha…now to end with something more leftfield :) This article, written by web designer John O’Nolan takes a playful swipe at those people that trot out the whole “Next Big Thing” line. John gives us an entertaining look at the evolution of the web on mobile and does put a nice perspective on things. What’s even better is that some of the thoughtful comments round out the whole thing to make a nicely smart piece on viewing the state of the mobile web.

http://john.onolan.org/the-mobile-web-is-not-the-next-big-thing/

So, a few things there for you to have a look at and digest. We’ll be seeing this talked about more and more I suspect. Cheers! M

Posted in mobile technologies, mobile web | 3 Comments

Mobile Tech meeting raises issues

By mark | June 24, 2010

I recently ran a JISC CETIS event on mobile technology at the University of Bolton and, it seemed to me, to be rather successful. Of course the day was packed, we ran over time and my session on AR at the end of the day was rushed and sketchy…but it nicely lines up some more focused future events.

First of all, the presentations from the day are available on our wiki at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Mobile_Tech_Meeting_15th_June_2010

Throughout the day we highlighted some of the key challenges, issues and general questions that attendees shared in this space…

Feasibility of supporting massive variety of devices, software, etc

With a huge variety (around 350) of the mixture between devices, manufacturers, families and platforms, how does an institution deliver to mobile while having to focus on the all-important issue of inclusion? Apps are the flavour of the day right now with the runaway success of Apple’s App Store leading to competing providers to follow suit and push development along the native app path. However, with the advent of HTML5 and CSS3 now giving web developers far more power to create engaging and powerful web applications, along with new frameworks that harness these and JavaScript allowing the use of APIs that can tap into the native functionality of devices such as Geolocation - now we can have a fairer and more balanced discussion about “Apps v. Web”. You can read more about these frameworks at http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/06/new-frameworks-give-mobile-web-apps-a-boost/

Who supports the use of mobile in institutions?

There are 2 main parties to think about here - Preparing staff within institutions & the support for students (perhaps through induction processes). Now, assuming this would involve different departments and that these should (ideally) have a dialogue with each other…who supports the supporters?

Integration with existing systems: VLE, PLE, eP…

This ties in - for me at least - with the discussion around the Distributed Learning Environment & the widgets work that CETIS is heavily engaged in. The mobile device seems such an obvious part of a learner’s “PLE” (as in, it’s personal) that this area is ideal for focusing on the overlap and connectivity between institutionally controlled systems and the tools and services that learners use. Also, the provision of data from institutional services to mobile devices. Can I get a map of where I am on the campus? Can I see if there’s an available room nearby and book it, check my timetable or search the library?

Personal & Professional

This is an interesting one for me and it also links to the PLE area (in the way I think about it anyway). Increasingly, the ubiquity and all-round saturation of technology in so many parts of all our lives is leading to this blurring between work and private/personal life. As professionals we face these questions and for some of us, our whole use of technology has almost completely broken down the lines between the two. The things I do at work are the things I am interested in outside of work too, so I’ll find myself twittering and posting facebook links at any time, anywhere. But is this the same for learners? Also, context and location is hugely important. The use of mobile devices enables you to capture photographs, video, blog, twitter…whatever…from wherever you are (yes, assuming connection, etc), so what are the ethical issues?

Business Case

Now, this seemed to get the most nodding of heads. How do we make the business case to our institutions for the need to engage with mobile technology and focus some development? Do we assume it is want the learners want or is it something that we think is important and growing and soon-to-be all pervasive? How can mobile learning improve learning in general? Is there a case for it? Where does the focus get placed and (!!) the money go toward?

Can the pedagogy map to the affordances given to us by the technology available? Two of the presentations on the day covered work in Geography field students and assessment in healthcare practices. I think it’s easy to to see how these areas are prime for the enabling and enhancing of in-the-workplace/field activities that mobile devices and their functionality providebut… Is mobile tech from an institutional, learning delivery sense, not really applicable or practical for all?

Lots and lots of questions.

One thing I’m sure of is that the mobile tech area is currently the most fast moving (almost dizzyingly so) and exciting areas around in educational technology at the moment. The opportunities that such increasingly affordable and powerful technology, always on, always connected are handing to so many of us are changing the shape of the learning landscape. Institutions need to get a handle on this, otherwise they’ll be quickly left behind…but I know, it’s not a simple issue.

Oh and yes, I know I said above that this tech is with “many of us”. I’ve not forgotten the very important aspect of inclusion, in all its forms. But I think I’ll leave you with this blog post from one of our speakers at the event, Dr. Richard Hall (DMU) - Inclusion, social relations and theory: issues in mobile learning

http://www.learnex.dmu.ac.uk/2010/06/inclusion-social-relations-and-theory-issues-in-mobile-learning/

Posted in learning platforms, mobile learning, mobile technologies, web apps, widgets | Tagged | 13 Comments

Mobile tech, web-apps & frameworks

By mark | June 24, 2010

One of the big questions around institutions throwing themselves into the mobile learning world is how do you cater for such a huge variety of handsets and operating systems? Tom Hume, Managing Director of Future Platforms (http://www.futureplatforms.com/) recently presented at the excellent Eduserv Symposium: The Mobile University. Tom pointed out that to reach 70% of UK mobile owners, you need to be available on 375 different devices, 70 different families from 8 manufacturers.

But anyway, go and check out Tom’s talk, along with all the others from that day, on the Eduserv website: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym10/presentations

The following resource is related to this and exists in a debate that is building in some quarters: If different providers are channeling development of different application platforms, and you look at it and think, “Argh! how do we manage to cover THAT lot??”…do we get the question - Apps v. Web?

Sencha Touch: Mobile-Web Framework

Sencha Touch: Mobile-Web Framework

Up step a number of JavaScript frameworks and support for cutting-edge web features afforded by HTML5 and CSS3, while also enabling developers to take advantage of device capabilities such as geolocation (rather an important aspect given we’re talking mobile, eh!). So this way we mix the 2, being able to develop we-apps that can run across a variety of devices while being able to have that very nice look we see in native apps.

So…here’s the more in-depth link on the Webmonkey site that covers a few of these frameworks. Check it out..it’s very interesting :)

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/06/new-frameworks-give-mobile-web-apps-a-boost/

This is, of course, closely related to CETIS’s work in the widgets space and the Distributed Learning Environment.

Posted in mobile learning, mobile technologies, web apps | Tagged , | 10 Comments