It's a generalization to say that the realities of this market have driven the quality of Web experiences into the ground. But surely, you've noticed lots of annoying, flashing, animated ads bothering you to do something. Well, remember Cooliris? In October, we covered its first forays into 3D ads. Cooliris has a feeling we Web users would rather be delighted by ads than harassed. Sound too good to be true? Read on and see for yourself.

When we first met Cooliris, it was introducing its new ad unit, AdJitsu, which had just launched its first interactive, touch-controlled, 3D mobile ads.

One of the campaigns was for the Samsung Galaxy S II. Instead of a boring banner ad, consumers saw a phone jiggling around inside the banner in response to the accelerometers of their iPhones and iPads. When they tapped the ad, it opened up into a sort of app, in which they could zoom in and out on the product, manipulating it with familiar touchscreen gestures, in order to check it out.

It was neat. But was it revolutionary? Would the ability to play with a virtual model of a phone really convert any viewers into customers? Cooliris enlisted the help of some neuromarketers to make the case that AdJitsu ads were at least more interesting than passive videos, but the brain scans left us with more questions than answers. Sure, these ads are stimulating, but does that make them effective?

The Next Level

Well, Cooliris has been working on making the product speak for itself. What they showed me this time is not just better; it is bigger. There's more to these new ads. You can explore them, experience them. You don't need your brain scanned to find them enjoyable.

And there's more AdJitsu news than just new ad campaigns. Before, AdJitsu was an in-house mobile ad unit. Now, it's a platform, and it goes beyond mobile devices. Using Web technology and developer-friendly tools, now any advertiser can make ads that don't suck.

Setting The Ad World On Fire

"Our goal was to take the world of display advertising and set it on fire," says AdJitsu product manager Aneesh Karve. He says that ads today don't take advantage of the capabilities of today's hardware. AdJitsu isn't even stopping there; it is building an ad platform for devices one or two years down the road using next-generation graphics library WebGL. When phones get WebGL support and smoking-fast GPUs, AdJitsu will be ready for them.

The 3D models come from a variety of places. Some advertisers, like video game makers, already have 3D models ready to go. Other manufacturing companies, whether they make cars or phones, have engineering models at the ready that AdJitsu can simplify and prepare for the Web. Other ads use commercially available models or data, and some advertisers even spring for custom models. To bring those models to life in an interactive ad, AdJitsu has built versatile tools and a powerful engine.

The AdJitsu Engine

Currently, Apple doesn't allow third-party advertisers to use WebGL, even though the mobile Safari browser supports it. The only ads allowed to use WebGL on iOS are Apple's own iAds. Apple claims that this is because of security holes. Karve notes that it also lets Apple get a head start in 3D advertising on its platform. Either way, AdJitsu ads still run natively on iOS devices, and you build them with AdJitsu's software development kit.

But for other devices, PCs, tablets and phones alike, the engine uses WebGL. The performance isn't quite there yet on most Android phones, but it runs, and Cooliris is thinking ahead to next year's phones, anyway. AdJitsu has built upon the Web and cutting-edge hardware to enable silky-smooth, immersive 3D ads that run anywhere, and that anyone can build.

The Tools: Do Your Own AdJitsu

AdJitsu's tool is called PageKit. Developers can write an ad once and run it everywhere. PageKit even makes it easier for developers used to writing 2D code. It bridges the gap to 3D for them, so they don't have to start over again and learn OpenGL, which Karve points out has a "pretty heady API." You write in PageKit's markup, and it all compiles down to the native iOS engine and the WebGL engine.

Need more perspective on that? Allow me to introduce Max. He's 13. In this less-than-three-minute video, you can watch him build an AdJitsu ad in "62 or so" lines of code. Don't worry, non-geeks; he explains the process amazingly well.

The Kicker: Better Analytics

For those still looking for a traditional "value-add" for these 3D ads, you don't have to scrutinize an inscrutable brain scan this time. Cooliris has gone with something more easily measured.

Since users interact so extensively with these 3D models, AdJitsu ads can record heatmaps of which parts of the experience are most interesting to consumers. That's valuable feedback for advertisers and product people, who can use it to figure out what kinds of features to emphasize. Can your average banner ad do that?

Ads That Don't Suck

Instead of racing to the bottom with garish display ads, Cooliris has posed a challenge to the advertising world. With all this potential at our disposal, why do ads suck so much? They don't have to. AdJitsu has proven they can be fascinating, beguiling, even beautiful.

What will we do when the ads are better than the stuff we're putting next to them? I know what I'll do: I'll try to make even better stuff. Thus far, Web ads have been a race to the bottom. Hats off to Cooliris for raising the bar for all Web experiences, not just for ads.

What do you think of these ads? Would you play with one?

Turns out that's a big "if," though. The requirements are pretty stiff. "Some low-end integrated GPUs" aren't supported, and apparently that of the latest MacBook Air is too "low-end." Even a 2-year-old MacBook Pro gets a warning message that MapsGL will "run slowly." You also have use Chrome (of course) or the latest Firefox 8+ Beta; Safari or ... the other ones ... won't cut it. MapsGL sure looks cool, though!

It's new technology, so Google is brave for pushing things forward, and anybody with a computer that isn't designed to scrimp on performance (like mine) should be able to get results. MapsGL provides sweeping, panning 3D views that let you rotate your satellite maps and watch the shadows change. When you want to go to Street View, drag the little man down, and your view will swoop down in three dimensions and put you on the street. Accordingly, Street View is faster and more responsive now, too.

Unfortunately, for some of us on brand new "low-end" computers, MapsGL is more likely to do this:

The Future of Maps

No hard feelings, though. The LatLong team has shipped a slew of impressive features recently. You can now fly along your directions in Google Maps using Google Earth views inside the browser, and that one will work for just about anybody. Maps also got a weather layer, which is handy for planning trips and outings.

Google Maps is also expanding its international reach. They've stepped up the importance of Google Map Maker for editing, recently graduating a big class of new crowd-sourced country maps to the live Google map.

Does MapsGL work on your system? Try it out and let us know how it goes!

But advertisers don't want to be in the background. They want ads to be engaging, interesting, even fun - whatever creates a lasting memory of the product. It's an attention economy, and whatever can grab users' attention wins. But touch-driven mobile apps are so immersive, advertisers need to step their game up. Palo Alto-based Cooliris has a solution, and the team thinks the science backs it up. World, ready or not, here comes interactive, touch-controlled, 3D mobile advertising.

"The advertisement experience does not have to be sub-par compared to the application experience," Cooliris CEO Soujanya Bhumkar says. "Good experience matters, because that is what delivers high engagement." To deliver that experience, Cooliris has created a standalone business unit called Adjitsu to build 3D mobile ads that users can touch to move, pinch, zoom and explore products.

"What we wanted to do was create a new generation of ads that allowed people to decide which parts of the experience they wanted to indulge in," says Aneesh Karve, product manager at AdJitsu. "Our mantra is pretty simple. It's 'Beyond HTML5.' We think [AdJitsu ads are] the next generation, which goes beyond video and beyond HTML."

"Video is telling the consumer what they should look at," Karve says. "What we've tried to do with our ads is to allow the consumer to decide which part of the ad they're most interested in."

The Ad Is An App

An AdJitsu ad starts off as a small, out-of-the-way display ad, but it has a 3D model of a product, like a new smartphone, suspended inside it. The model is linked to the device's accelerometer. As the user tilts the phone or tablet he or she is using, the product tilts and turns, catching the user's attention. Ideally, the user will then tap the ad, which expands to into a full-screen, app-like experience where the user can manipulate the product using typical touchscreen gestures.

The advertiser can display more info about the product on the screen alongside the model, but the experience is designed around letting the user closely examine the product and kick the tires a little bit - virtually, of course.

Karve says these ads are especially effective for "products that consumers need to hold in their hands." It's not just for consumer electronics, but jewelry or clothing, too. "People want to see how a fabric hangs or how a material looks in a certain light, and we're uniquely capable of providing those kinds of experiences."

This Is Your Brain On AdJitsu

It's neat, it's technologically advanced, and it shows off the product better than any static or video ad can. But does it really engage users with the product? Cooliris has enlisted a neuromarketing firm called MindSign to prove that it does, and this is where things get a little... edgy.

MindSign is a San Diego facility that uses functional MRI to analyze consumer reactions to products and advertising. An fMRI scanner magnetically tracks hemoglobin, the iron-rich protein in the blood, as blood flows in the brain. When blood cells offload oxygen to activated brain cells, the hemoglobin's magnetic field changes, which shows up in the scan. This allows researchers to measure the level of activity in specific areas of the brain in real time.

MindSign did a study for Cooliris that presented one group of subjects with a Cooliris ad and another with a video ad that was the same, shot by shot, but not interactive. Using the fMRI, MindSign produced video of the subjects' brain activity as they experienced the ads. MindSign found that the passive act of watching video was the "most deactivating" experience across all subjects. The subjects who manipulated the 3D ads were lit up all over their brains, engaging motor and attention areas.

We're not neuroscientists at RWW, so the subtle differences between the scans might be lost on us, but one clearly defined area of difference was the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, what MindSign calls the "personal meaning area." This is a central region of the brain involved in decision making. "It's an area that activates with what I would call good, engaging content," says MindSign vice president Philip Carlsen.

Unfortunately, MindSign couldn't provide RWW with a shareable video that compared the control and 3D subjects side by side, but they did offer these still images that show an average activation across the whole trial. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is mostly dark for the control group, but it's brightly colored for the group that saw the AdJitsu ads:

Is Neuromarketing For Real?

Does this activation necessarily correspond to the kind of engagement advertisers want? MindSign couldn't really answer that. This is a brand new science, and MindSign admits it. "fMRI is still in an infant state as far as neuromarketing goes," says Carlsen. "Activation is compared to a baseline looking at a blank screen with a crosshair on it, so you're going to want your stimuli to be more activating than the crosshair."

"Whether that's good activation because they love it or bad activation because they're disgusted," Carlsen says, "that depends on the stimuli."

"The reporting that we do fits into the traditional marketing reports of memory retention, brand recognition, value judgments, but we can do lots more than that," MindSign president Devin Hubbard says. "You can quantify, pretty objectively, the brain reaction in these key areas that are researched and known to be caused by certain stimuli, and they react accordingly."

For now, it sounds like the best fMRI can do for advertisers is provide a corroborating hunch alongside traditional marketing surveys.

Bringing UI Into Advertising

"The importance of engaging MindSign was to show the brands that they could get a higher return on their investment for their dollars," Karve says. "A lot of the really deep things advertisers want to track, you can't do with just Internet cookies or tracking session data from an app. So by going to the brain data, we want to establish how this is going to really have an impact on people."

The brain data do look differently between the control group and the 3D ad subjects, but it's hard to make the case conclusively that this means 3D ads are really better ads. But there's no question that these AdJitsu ads make fuller use of the Web technology and hardware that users love than traditional ads do.

What do you think? From a user standpoint, does the opportunity to play with the ad in 3D make it more interesting to you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It's all existing Google technology, putting a browser view of Google Earth inside the Maps window, but it's a new integration. It's not the most useful feature, but it is a new and immersive way to plan a trip.

Google Maps is still on a roll with bold new features. In August, the 2D map view got a weather layer, which is another useful tool for trip planning. Recent accessibility improvements include voice search and new international domains. Maps also got more social with the introduction of g.co shortlinks and built-in +snippet sharing of Maps on Google Plus.

What are your favorite things to do with Google Earth? Share them in the comments.

However, improvements to the browser's graphics capabilities will be more noticeable to users. With added support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, Web applications using 3D effects will be "snazzier," Google says. So, what does that mean?

With 3D CSS, which is now available in Google Chrome, the browser has access to the computer's hardware to speed up the experience of viewing 3D effects. To see what this looks like in action, Google offers a link to a Chrome experiment called "Shaun of the Sheep." This cute cartoon (which works only in Chrome), demonstrates how 3D CSS lets you rotate a video, scale it up and down, turn the reflection on and off and activate a rotating carousel of videos.

In addition to 3D CSS Transforms, the experiment also takes advantage of hardware-accelerated HTML5 and the new audio-video format, WebM, open-sourced by Google last year.

More Security Tools

Also new in this release are enhancements to Google's Safe Browsing technology, which has now been improved to warn you before you download certain malicious files. Chrome has improved this detection process so that it can detected the malicious files without having ever seen what URL you visited. More details on that process are described here.

Bye-bye, Flash Cookies!

Google's close relationship with Adobe has allowed it to integrate Flash LSO (local shared objects) deletion right into the Web browser, so you can better manage your online privacy. These objects, often referred to as "Flash cookies" are similar to their "browser cookies" counterparts, in that they contain information used to customize your Web browsing experience, or hold data like your login info for a website. Unfortunately, Flash cookies are harder to delete than regular cookies - until now, Chrome users were only able to manage or delete cookies using this online tool. Now, you'll be able to delete the cookies from your browser Settings. Just click on the Wrench, go to Tools, Clear Browsing Data and select "Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data."

And More...

You can also launch your Chrome Web apps by name within the Omnibox in Chrome 12, the Settings pages have been updated, there's improved screen reader support and finally, you can say farewell to Google Gears. The Gears plugin will no longer be supported in this or any future releases of Google Chrome to provide offline access to Web applications. Those duties will be taken over by HTML5 going forward, starting with Gmail Offline, expected by Q3 2011.

Here Professor Dan Bailey and his crew have created Visualizing Early Washington D.C., a project to use today's technology to recreate yesterday's national capital. It was inspired by a request from PBS to create a 3D version of Capitol Hill for a documentary on the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. But it has grown over four years into a project to map the entire city, from 1790 to 1820.

Watching the project come alive online is analogous to watching the city come alive through the work of the IRC. It is so patently a Symbol these days that it is refreshing to see it again as a city.

According to Bailey, the tech has reached a point where it is not the problem.

"The task of visualizing the nascent city has proved to be more challenging than we'd anticipated, not due to the limits of technology, but due to the sparseness of reliable historical evidence."

The steps involved ran the gamut from hand drawing off a database of DC drawings, paintings and documents to advanced 3D modeling.

The project is not just about DC. In a sense, it is, to use Bailey's phrase, "proof of concept" that a dynamic computer rendering of history is a useful tool, responsive, detailable and here to stay.

Other sources: io9, OpenCulture, The Washington Post

Now, YouTube, Firefox and Nvidia are trying to bring 3D to the Web. Firefox 4 is using HTML5 and WebM to bring thousands of 3D YouTube videos to the Web while wearing Nvidia 3D Vision Hardware. The Web has been lacking 3D because it is a fundamentally different platform than the others, which are either distribution channels or specific devices. It is worth it to go get some Nvidia glasses to cruise YouTube in 3D?

• LG Launches World's First 3D Smartphone, Verdict: Not Bad
• What You Need to Know about 3D Technology & Vision Problems
• The 3D Web in 2008
• 3D Web Services in 2005
• 3D Interfaces on the Web - Useful or Novelty?
• Cooliris Lets You Enable Your Web Site For 3D In Minutes
• Wikipedia Goes 3D

The requirements for 3D video on the Web are pretty tight. You have to use the right browser, on one video platform and you need the glasses. I am using a three-year old MacBook to access the Internet, you may have the newest Dell and my friend uses an Acer Android tablet. Hence, the standard needs to come from the Web itself, not the device.

That is what Firefox is trying to do and may finally have the tools for it with HTML5 and WebM, both of which are emerging standards gaining traction within the last couple of years. Then there is the issue of the glasses. The Nvidia 3D Vision Hardware starts at $149, a price that is not conducive to novelty purchasing.

To find 3D videos on YouTube, search "yt3d." You will need to set 3D settings in YouTube for the type of device you are using.

A 3D Web through HTML5 and WebM is a cool breakthrough from a technological standpoint, whether or not it is useful or practical.

Even without the glasses, check out a 3D YouTube video below.

Health BodyMaps is an exhaustive set of searchable body maps - think Gray's Anatomy meets CT scan. It comes with a library of medical and treatment knowledge, but the central focus of the tool are the colored, interactive maps of everything from the pancreas to the digestive system to the body as a whole.

Choosing either a male or female body, the user can mouse over parts of the figure, then click to get information on body parts, which includes text but also a 360-degree animation of the part, say a shoulder or knee. Above the central frame, in a row of slides, different aspects of the figure or body part (muscular, skeletal, etc.) can be accessed by a click. Above the figure you can also navigate by search term.

In the right-hand column you can navigate to a symptom search engine, which leads you to possible causes, many of which have 3D graphics; to a doctor-finder; or to a treatment search.

One of the most compelling aspects, beside the graphic quality and workable 3D, is the ability of a user to share a body view, with email or by posting or sharing on social media. Unfortunately there is no news on apps for smart phones and tablets.

The project was a collaboration between Healthline, a consumer health information company, and GE Healthymagination, a Web platform for health-focused projects.

Other sources: Technology Review

To celebrate the U.S.'s 120th Arbor Day, you can take a stroll through 3D stands of ancient redwood trees.

"Explore the park by activating the 3D trees layer in Earth (under 3D Buildings) and searching for [Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, CA]. Tilt your view angle toward the horizon to make the trees appear."

StR is also launching a new citizen scientist venture that sounds very cool. Redwood Watch launches today, powered by iNaturalist.org, a platform for recording, organizing and mapping nature observations.

"By sharing a simple digital photograph of a redwood tree and the time and location where the picture was taken, you can help the League track and monitor the species. If you know of a redwood tree--perhaps in your own backyard or in a nearby park--you can use the free Redwood Watch iPhone application or your own camera to take a photo, add a comment and submit it online. iNaturalist stores your observation and, if geographical coordinates weren't captured automatically, uses the Google Maps APIs to assign them to your photo. With your geolocated observation, we can zoom out and analyze your observation in the context of global environmental and climatic patterns."

A lovely way to celebrate our "often under-appreciated forests." Now, if you'll excuse me, I got some trees here in desperate need of hugging.

The Civil War was documented using state-of-the-art technology, stereo photography, the original 3D. Now, the Library of Congress has released some of their stereoscopic collection as modern 3-D anaglyphs to be viewed with blue/red 3D movie glasses.

General Ulysses S. Grant examining a map with General George Meade, 1864

Centerville, Virginia, 1862

Petersburg Rail Depot in Richmond, Virginia, 1865

Photos from the Library of Congress | other sources: MSNBC, A Blog About History

In 2007, the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands, where The Thinker resided, was burglarized. The meatheads who broke in did so not to steal the art, but to steal the metal. They made off with seven sculptures and started to try to chop them up to sell for scrap.

Quite aside from its artistic merit, it is worth, on the open market, up to $10 million. So the Singer Laren needed to figure out how to deal with the butchered figure. iMaterialise had an idea.

They did a CT scan of the damaged figure. Then they scanned the original mold retained by the Musee Rodin in Paris. They printed out a full-sized copy from the original on their Mammoth 3D printer.

The Mammoth uses a photopolymer resin to form the product in sections about six feet in length. The CT scans are imported and rendered using Materialise's software. Lasers guide the shape, laying down thin sheets until they build up into the figure. A modeler finishes, adding texture and color.

The conservators at the Singer Laren have used that and the scans of the original to re-fabricate and lay in the missing and damaged parts of the statue.

The remade Thinker is on display at an exhibit at the Singer Laren called The Thinker Thinks Again through May.

First photo copyright by Kees Haageman | second photo copyright by Paul Kramer

Much of the development around the technology is concerned with bringing 3D to your living room, such as is the case with the 3D-enabled TVs from LG and Toshiba, for example, Samsung's 3D LED monitors, or the addition of 3D movies to the streaming service VUDU, which can pipe Hollywood entertainment directly into your living room. But 3D is showing up on other screens, too - mobile phones and tablets, gaming devices and mobile 3D DTV devices - although still in early forms.

But before you go all in, early-adopting this new craze, there's a little tidbit of not-inconsequential data you need to know first.

Apparently, viewing 3D images, even the glasses-free kind, can negatively impact the vision development in small children. According to a report from The Wall St. Journal, both Nintendo and Toshiba have recently issued warnings about the vision damage that could occur when children under six view 3D video images. To quote, Toshiba's warning says that "due to the possibility of impact on vision development, viewers of 3D video images should be aged 6 or older."

Outside the U.S., a Japanese 3D consortium with members like Samsung and LG for example, has issued similar warnings, the WSJ reported.

That sounds serious, right?

Engadget recently downplayed the dangers though, specifically referencing Nintendo CEO Reggie Fils-Aime's statement from six months prior that his company's warning is only in place because children, especially young children, have eyes that are not fully-formed. In other words, it's no big deal.

But the warnings, you should know, aren't just your run-of-the-mill precautions (do not eat silica gel packets, do not leave child alone with plastic bag) - they're based on the recommendations of an electronics industry group's recommendations, Toshiba says. The company's TV marketing chief, Yuji Motomura declined to tell the WSJ which one, however.

We think we may have an idea. The unnamed group could be the well-known 3D@Home Consortium, especially considering it recently held a meeting on an oddly related topic: using 3D to diagnose vision problems in young children.

Wait: 3D Identifies Vision Problems in Children? Doesn't Cause It?

According to 3D@Home's website, the group met on Dec. 7 in San Diego to discuss several topics relating to vision standards, including the "promotion of the benefits of utilizing stereo viewing for diagnosing and improving vision in children and adults." In fact, reads the article, "early research by experts has shown that binocular vision issues, which inhibit successful perception of 3D images, are often linked with reading and comprehension issues in children."

Or, more simply put, vision issues mean other developmental problems may be present. And 3D technology could help identify these problems.

Well now, that sounds great, right?

On the conference's home page, a session regarding "special issues related to 3D and children" was held mid-day on the 7th. Included in this session was a presentation by Dr. Maureen Powers of the Gemstone Foundation, a research institute in California. You can read through it for yourself here. In it, she described several issues related to viewing 3D images. To save you time, the conclusion is that a large number of school-aged children have binocular vision problems and a relatively large number have binocular dysfunction.

What This Means

What this means, says Dr. Powers, is that while most children will be fine viewing 3D, but some children will not be comfortable - in fact, the group experiencing discomfort may be as high as 25%. Some of the children will complain, some will not and some will be so uncomfortable that they will not watch 3D video images at all or play games. The best guess at this time is that latter group will be about 5% to 10% of school-age children.

This early research has clearly resulted in the "recommendations" to warn against 3D viewing by small children by the hardware manufacturers like Toshiba, we would guess, as it's believed that these types of problems fade as children age. (Dr. Powers notes that it's expected that children will "differ from adults" in terms of discomfort and related issues).

At the end of the day, what this really means is that tech enthusiast or not, it may be unwise to plop your smallest children in front of 3D movies like Avatar or Toy Story, for example, and it may be unwise for you to do the same. There's actually very little research in the effects of long-term 3D viewing on children and adults.

Until now, 3D video viewing has been a somewhat isolated experience - a movie here and there, where you wear silly shades for a couple of hours. But with the advancements in the technology, there's an industry-wide push to 3D-enable all your screens, before the research on what happens by doing so is even complete.

And for that reason, manufacturers are prescribing caution, at least for children. What 3D-related warning labels will crop up in the future for the rest of us is still unknown.

Image credits: plant - Callipygian, phone - PocketLint, TV - Toshiba

Fast forward a decade and the programming necessary becomes easier to do and the number of people who know how to do it have increased substantially. The costs involved in creating a virtual world have decreased at the same time that academic and scholarly institutions have become much more willing to invest in it.

Rome Reborn
Working with international partners, the Virtual Heritage Laboratory at the University of Virginia has created a series of "3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the depopulation of the city in the early Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 550)." They stared with Rome in 320 A.D., after which date few civic buildings were added to the city. Click through for a video tour of the city.

Ancient Spaces: Acropolis of Athens
Ancient Spaces is a "a student-built, 'massively multiplayer' world based on classical antiquity" at the University of British Columbia. Among their projects are a set of 3D video tours of areas in classical Athens' Acropolis, including the Parthenon and the Propylaea.

Prof. Antonio Serrato-Combe: Tenochtitlan
University of Utah's Serrato-Combe reconstructed the main public spaces of the Aztec city under Moctezumah. He produced a digital model of the "Great Temple" complex in that city on the eve of the Spanish invasion. Like all good historical digital modeling, the spaces are built on rigorous archaeological and architectural study. Prof. Serrato-Combe's work formed the basis of the British Museum's exhibition "Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler."

IBM and the Palace Museum: The Forbidden City
IBM and the Palace Museum, which oversees this Chinese national treasure, worked together to create a virtual walkable version of the Forbidden City, headquarters of Imperial China from about 1420 to 1912. The City, which requires you download a proprietary client to run the interaction, allows you to create an avatar, talk to other visitors and even practice archery.

In the same way that data visualization can be used to look at statistics and render them more immediate and meaningful, virtual or digital or 3D modeling, whether in graphics or video, can do the same thing for history. The present reality of the artifacts of history can exert a tyranny of their own. For instance, most people don't know that the majority of Greek and Roman statuary was painstakingly painted. Digital models can help elbow aside the dictatorship of the present for a flash of insight into the past.

Sharing these re-imaginings via Web services, from video sharing sites to downloadable models, is a radical distribution model we can only have dreamt of not long ago. In the past.

Column photo by Cliff

Back on April Fool's Day, 3D viewing was accessed from a button within the Google Books app, and now the feature has returned as a URL hack Easter egg. It's pretty clear Google doesn't really expect people to read text in 3D - reading is tough enough on the eyes already - but they obviously think it's fun to leave it in. When viewing in 3D, the text becomes an anaglyphic image and is bent to give the appearance of a rounded book page. Any pair of red-cyan 3D glasses should work, Google says.

While Google is clearly having some fun here, does this bring up a larger question about 3D? Are books a viable market for 3D technology? This writer respectfully disagrees with anyone that says they are, at least until 3D technology improves. Then again, I'm more inclined to listen to an audiobook these days than read a physical book, so perhaps a little glitz and sparkle is what the printed (or digital) page needs.

Follow this link to see an example of 3D viewing in Google Books, and leave us your thoughts on 3D reading in the comments. And if someone has 3D glasses on them, let us know what you think of the Google Books 3D experience.

Built by a French company called Newscape, as a demonstration of its technology that allows mobile devices to process large quantities of data, Mobile 3D City appeared on our radar today via a video posted to design blog PSFK.

It appears that this app will cover just one city, and it certainly is a far cry from where Google Earth is today, but can you imagine if this kind of 3D experience was part of what Google's global ball of zooming, spinning and Wikipedia entries offered in the future? That would be pretty cool. It would likely take some serious, serious technology to be possible though. Thus the technology demonstration.