Google Goggles: Why Didn�t I Think of That?

So, Google Goggles is now in beta in Google Labs and available on Android phones.

Humorous name aside, the product looks to be a huge leap forward in the field of visual search � by which I mean, you point a camera at something and Google figures out what it is.

Here�s a little video explanation.



As the Tech Crunch article mentions, it�s somewhat similar to ShopSavvy. I�ve used the ShopSavvy demo video in my last couple of presentations, replacing another video I had been using of an iPhone app called Bionic Eye. That made me think of an earlier post of mine where I said:

This is a nice little app for what it does, but imagine what it�s going to evolve into: a portable heads-up display for everything. Yes, right now it lists restaurants, subway stations (in certain cities), and wifi hotspots, but it�s not that hard to extrapolate a few years into the future where this app � or something like it � connects you to all the available information about whatever you�re looking at.

It doesn�t really matter whether it�s on an iPhone-type device, or whether it�s mounted on your eyeglasses, it�s going to be with you effectively 24/7/365 (only �effectively� because you can still choose to turn it off), have 99% uptime, and is going to get better every hour of every day as more information is added to it. Practically every urban location will be geotagged and infotagged (think Google Street View on steroids), extending further and further beyond urban areas with each passing year. In fact, I imagine the app will evolve into a two-way app, with users adding to the database as they go about their daily routines, constantly adding more locations and more data to the database.

Perhaps a few more years down the road artificial intelligence object-recognition software will be embedded, maybe even with some simple sensors to analyze the material it�s looking at, so that the app will be able to peer into just about any object and return information about it�s chemical composition, various useful facts about it, and ways the object can be used.

Huh. Maybe I shouldn't have changed my major.

Seriously, though, the truth is ending up stranger than fiction . . .

A Shift in the Digital Divide?

NPR has a short, but interesting story on the use of mobile devices by young people. Citing research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the story states that in regards to "robust" uses of mobile devices, "most of those hyperusers are young Latinos and blacks."


Chart from NPR, source data from Pew Internet and American Life Project, refers to above uses on mobile devices only

Now, the story is certainly not saying that the digital divide is no longer an issue, but it does bring up some interesting points. It attributes the higher and more sophisticated use of mobile devices among Latinos and blacks to four factors:

• Networking teens that spread the use to older members of their ethnic group (happens in all ethnic groups, but faster among blacks and Latinos, perhaps due to the relatively higher proportion of young people)
• Cheaper than a home connection (mobile upgrade cheaper than buying a computer and broadband)
• Communication across borders (easier on both sides)
• Convenience (the phone is always there, always gets a signal, no need to worry about wifi or battery)

I see some similarities to the cell phone versus landline access in countries like China and India, where lots of folks have gone straight from no phone to cell phone, skipping the landline phase. I wonder if we're seeing a similar leap among the traditional "have-nots" that have been on the "losing" side of the divide, where they are skipping the home computer/broadband phase and going straight to the mobile Internet phase.

If mobile devices (think phone, not laptop) become the dominant way of accessing the Internet - and I think that's still very much up in the air (pun intended) - then this just may signal a coming shift in the digital divide that might mirror the demographic shifts in the United States. We still have a long way to go in eliminating access issues, but perhaps this is an encouraging sign that the divide might be narrowing.

We Have the Technology

When I was growing up I liked watching the Six Million Dollar Man on television. Looking back, it was a pretty hokey show, but I really liked it at the time. In the opening for the show, there�s a line that says, �We have the technology.� I thought of that � for pretty obvious reasons if you�re familiar with the show - when viewing the video for the Bionic Eye iPhone application.



This is a nice little app for what it does, but imagine what it�s going to evolve into: a portable heads-up display for everything. Yes, right now it lists restaurants, subway stations (in certain cities), and wifi hotspots, but it�s not that hard to extrapolate a few years into the future where this app � or something like it � connects you to all the available information about whatever you�re looking at.

It doesn�t really matter whether it�s on an iPhone-type device, or whether it�s mounted on your eyeglasses, it�s going to be with you effectively 24/7/365 (only �effectively� because you can still choose to turn it off), have 99% uptime, and is going to get better every hour of every day as more information is added to it. Practically every urban location will be geotagged and infotagged (think Google Street View on steroids), extending further and further beyond urban areas with each passing year. In fact, I imagine the app will evolve into a two-way app, with users adding to the database as they go about their daily routines, constantly adding more locations and more data to the database.

Perhaps a few more years down the road artificial intelligence object-recognition software will be embedded, maybe even with some simple sensors to analyze the material it�s looking at, so that the app will be able to peer into just about any object and return information about it�s chemical composition, various useful facts about it, and ways the object can be used.

I know that scenario is frightening to a lot of folks, and certainly there are going to be more and more privacy/ethical issues we are going to have to figure out as a society. But, for the moment, let�s focus on the incredibly positive side of this � what kind of learning apps can be built on this platform? What will we be able to do as teachers and students that we can barely even conceive of today, but will be commonplace in the very near future? What happens when the sum total of the world�s knowledge � updated in real time - is available in a portable heads-up display?

Just imagine the possibilities. How many years is it going to be before we see something of this sophistication? I don�t know. My guess is more than three and less than thirty. So you�ve got to ask the question, does your school/district want to be ahead of the curve in figuring out best practices, or behind it?

Sixty Months

I wonder what implications this article from the February issue of Fast Company has for the future in our classrooms?

After more than 100 years of dashed hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies that can safely transmit power through the air � a breakthrough that portends the literal and figurative untethering of our electronic age.

The article describes three main variations of this technology. The first, inductive coupling, was scheduled to make it to market this month. Basically, it�s a charging pad, and you drop any device (that has the right electronics to utilize it) on it and it will recharge.

No more tangle of power cables or jumble of charging stations . . . And the pads are smart: Their built-in coils are driven by integrated circuits, which know if the device sitting on them is authorized to receive power, or it needs power at all. So you won�t charge your car keys. Or overcharge your flashlight.

It�s initially being made available to police, fire-and-rescue, and contractor fleets, and is also being integrated into a truck console (think a box connected to the electrical system of the truck, and contractors drop all their rechargeable devices into it while driving from place to place.)

The second variation is radio-frequency harvesting, which works across distances of up to 85 feet, and is also supposed to be available this month.

In this system, electricity is transformed into radio waves, which are transmitted across a room, then received by so-called power harvesters and translated back into low-voltage direct current . . . down the road, it will appear in wireless boxes into which you can toss any and all of your electronics for recharging.

But it�s the third variation which is the most tantalizing: magnetically coupled resonance (dubbed �WiTricity� by its MIT inventor). This one is supposed to be available in 12 to 18 months.

Like acoustical resonance, which allows an opera singer to break a glass across the room by vibrating it with the correct frequency of her voice's sound waves, magnetic resonance can launch an energetic response in something far away. In this case, the response is the flow of electricity out of the receiving coil and into the device to which it's connected . . . Importantly, then, WiTricity doesn't depend on line-of-sight. A powered coil in your basement could power the rest of the house, wirelessly.

The rest of the house � or your classroom.

Say you�re a classroom teacher. (Altogether now, �I�m a classroom teacher.� Thanks.) And let�s assume for a moment that you�re not in a 1:1 environment, and that you�ve been assuming that it�s going to be quite a while before your students each have their own computing device that works reliably and effectively in your classroom.

But then you notice that netbook computers are getting pretty darn good at a price point of around $300 to $400. And then you read this article and realize that in the next five years (conceivably), that the price of that very capable netbook could easily drop to perhaps $150 (or the iPhone could evolve into the netbook space at that same price point), and either of those might include the necessary technology to receive �WiTricity� right in your classroom, so no more worries about batteries going dead.

So, if you�re that classroom teacher (or principal, or central office administrator), and you�ve got sixty months until that�s a reality: what should you be doing right now to get yourself � and your students � ready for that very-near-future? You�ve got sixty months � shouldn�t you be getting started?

Disconnect(Ed)

Let's Go to the Polls

No, this isn't an appeal to get all of you to vote (although, seriously, you should if you haven't already). Anne Smith's freshmen recently began a unit that includes Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". Anne decided to get some discussions started before they started reading Harrison Bergeron:

The following day, before we read Kurt Vonnegut�s �Harrison Bergeron�, I used Polleverywhere.com to create an in-class texting poll asking them to submit their answers to the following questions. The paired up in class with one other student who had free, unlimited texting and then once I put up the poll question, they text in their answer, after discussing the possibilities together. It was AWESOME! The twosome discussed their answer, then we took sides in class. I had one participant be the voice of the yes, no, or maybe on each question presenting their case, and then opened it up to the entire class for discussion. They were so into it, it was challenging to bring them back to move onto the next question. Talk about motivated learners.

What were the questions? Statements like: History books are accurate. Censorship is never justified. People should always obey the law. Visit the post to read all the statements and the results of the polls. (Note: You'll need PowerPoint 2007 to open the polls and you have to actually run the slideshow to see the question and the results.)

Texting, tapping, clicking, tweeting, filming: The Rocky Covers the DNC

I've written several times before about how I think one of my local newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News, seems to be doing a fairly decent job trying to transition a traditional newspaper into the digital age. The first part of the title of this post is the headline for John Temple's article from Saturday's paper on covering the convention:

For Sen. Barack Obama, this could be the pivotal week of his long campaign.

We hope the same holds true for the Rocky in what has been a long journey from being just a newspaper to becoming a live source of news and information.

For the first time in planning for a major news event - and we've prepared in the past for everything from the pope's visit for World Youth Day to the Summit of the Eight - our focus has been first on what we would do on the Web, on how readers would experience our work on their computers and cell phones.

I find that an interesting choice of words, "just a newspaper." And while it makes perfect sense, I also find it interesting how they are acknowledging that they are producing for the Web first, and the paper second. And given schools' almost universal ban on cell phones in the classroom, it will be interesting to see how policy clashes with practice if major news organizations start producing for the cell phone first.

For us, the change is exciting. But it's also challenging. It's required many of us to learn new skills. We've been training for months, testing our new approaches to make sure we're ready to give you something different, something you'll value not just in the morning when your paper lands on your doorstep, but all through the day and night.

The Rocky will have about 150 journalists on the street covering every aspect of the convention. Their work will be featured on RockyMountainNews.com and on our mobile Web site, TheRocky.com. If you want to follow what they're reporting, you can sign up to receive their Twitter Tweets by going to RockyMountain News.com/twitter. If you want to see what's going on all over Denver, you'll be able to watch their video clips and see their still photos posted almost instantly on our Web site. If you want to comment on our Web site about what's happening, you'll be able to do that, too.

It's going to be a rich stream of content that we'll organize for you in real time to keep you atop everything from what the candidate is doing to which celebrities are in the Mile High City.

So a newspaper is going to be tweeting the convention.

The Rocky Mountain News uses Twitter in several different ways. Each reporter has a Twitter account they use to communicate breaking news from the field. When you see a Twitter feed embedded with a story, those updates are live and immediate. The Rocky also has Twitter accounts that act as news feeds.

If you go to their DNC page you'll see their embedded live twitter feed.

And posting videos. And allowing - and encouraging - comments. And providing a "stream" of content.

We'll have more people with cameras on the streets than any other news organization, from reporters with cell phone video cameras to sophisticated, award-winning videographers. Our goal is to immerse you in the scene.

In the past, we've published instant books to commemorate the most dramatic events in this city. Well, this time we're going to produce something we'll make available to a global audience - an instant multimedia retelling of the events of the week. Working in collaboration with MediaStorm, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia documentary company, the Rocky will have on its site next Saturday what we hope will be the definitive interactive account of an event that will be talked about for generations.

Their goal is to "immerse" us, and then they'll provide an "instant multimedia retelling" of the events of the week that they're going to make available to a "global audience." (Okay, could that have been written by an edublogger?)

Now, contrast all that with what's happening in many classrooms around the country this week. Anyone else see a disconnect? I'll close with John Temple's last paragraph (emphasis added by me):

You won't be able to be everywhere this week. We will be. I hope you'll join us.

Cell Phones That Read

I heard this story on NPR today:

Gashel is showing off his new phone in a hotel ballroom filled with people who have come to check it out. Many are holding white canes, and there's a guide dog resting by the wall. Everyone listens to the small silver phone as Gashel holds it a few inches above a green rectangle.

"Taking picture ... detecting orientation," a digitized voice from the phone says. "Processing U.S. currency image, please wait � $20."

The phone is loaded up with software developed by the company Gashel works for �K-NFB Reading Technology, a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind.

Besides reading labels and telling a $20 from a $10, the phone can read pages of printed text.

Reading machines have been around for decades � this company already makes a hand-held device. But this reader is the smallest yet � just 4 ounces and a few inches long. And it's in a high-end Nokia phone with features like an MP3 player, high-speed data connection and a GPS navigation system.

If you listen to the NPR broadcast, you can hear what it sounds like when the cell phone "reads" part of a page of text - and the cheers from the audience (about the 1:47 mark). Pretty cool. Oh, by the way, yes it's that same Kurzweil that I reference in Did You Know?/Shift Happens.

Now, it's still very expensive, about $2000 for the cell phone (Nokia N82) and the software, but I imagine that will come down quickly. I'm thinking some schools may have to adjust their cell phone policies pretty soon . . .