Today's Companies

HomePipe Networks has created a free networking app that allows the user to access their home computer from their mobile phone. HubSpot, a marketing software company that generates leads for small business, was invested in by Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Salesforce.com in a Series D round.

Fourth Wall Studios combines the real with the virtual in alternate-reality entertainment for multiple platforms (phones, pcs, etc.). Breezy is a mobile app that enables us to direct our printer through a phone, eliminating the need to plug our computer into the printer directly.

LearnBoost raised a debt funding round. The company makes software for teachers that allows them to create lesson plans, manage grades, calendars and attendance, all using one interface. Lastly, AdGrok helps small businesses with keyword ad campaigns on Google.

Which one of these six companies is most interesting to you?

In 1999 Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä started Mobile Disco in their native Finland. The next year, as it grew in popularity, they ginned up what has since become a popular element of online environments, the micro-payment model, and launched Habbo Hotel. Since then 172 million folks have churned out a character, grabbed a room, thrown up decorations, chatted, played games and whatever else it is kids get up to these days.

Of course it hasn't always been roses. Only a year ago, things weren't looking great for Sulake, which had to lay off 40 employees due to a revenue decline of $14 million from the year before. In 2007, the Dutch police arrested a kid for stealing $5,800 worth of make-believe furniture. (No I'm not kidding.)

Here's a little numerical snapshot of our Finnish friends.

• 172 million characters created
• 40 million monthly user hours
• 15 million monthly unique visitors
• 120 million active user-created rooms
• Users from over 150 countries
• 11 languages

Happy birthday, Habbo Hotel. We've sent you a lifetime supply of umlauts. (OK, it's no Kalevala, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a broken Nokia.)

As this trend becomes more common over the next few years (and it will, as both Web-connected sensors and virtual reality ramp up), what are the implications on how people use the Web? How will it change our interactions in both real and virtual life? In this post we'll explore some of these issues and offer some ideas: for example a bookstore that offers you personalized, contextual information on your mobile phone, in real time and with virtual reality.

Better and More Personalized Information

The more data that is exposed online about a person, the more personalized their media experience will be. This appears to be the most compelling argument for allowing your movements and interactions in the real world to be recorded and uploaded to the cloud. As long as there are privacy controls in place that allow people to opt out at any time (even for just a short period of time, e.g. if they're having a private conversation with a friend), then the pay-off of a much more personalized and contextual media experience seems worthwhile.

Imagine for example walking down to your local shops and entering a bookstore. Theoretically, the bookstore would recognize you as you entered and would 'ping' your mobile device, which then might bring up that wish list of books you've been compiling (let's assume it's not an Amazon wish list, but an independent third party app - perhaps an opportunity for any entrepreneurs reading!). The app would let you know which of your wish list books are available. Also it would display a virtual map on your phone of exactly where each book is located in the store, via the barcodes of the books. Armed with all of this handy, very contextual information, you make your way to the first bookshelf...

You may say: well I could've just ordered the book on Amazon and not gone to the bookstore in the first place. But a lot of people still want that experience of going to their local shops and wandering around, socializing and being part of the 'real world.' By integrating the online world more deeply into the real world, it creates a more compelling shopping experience.

Changing the Way You Live

A more fundamental way in which sensors and virtual reality might mix is in your home. An example that Joe Paradiso mentioned was being able to control a thermostat in your home without even touching it. Instead it would be controlled by sensors connected to the Web. All you'd need to do is send your preferences into the Internet cloud, once. And the thermostats would control your home heating from there on out. You could also check in on your home when at work or traveling, on the virtual Web.

One does wonder what would happen though when multiple people live in the same house, but have different thermostat preferences! Well, let's presume that the Internet will be able to work out an efficient sharing program for that too ;-)

Changing Social Networking

Sensors and virtual reality will change social networking. Paradiso mentioned that you might have a Zigby badge, which would automatically post data to Facebook. For example when you entered that bookshop mentioned above, Facebook would get pinged. Theoretically then this will enable your friends in the vicinity to meet up with you, or you could make new friends if you allow people to 'discover' you at bookshops.

You could do this virtually too - e.g. if you find that you have great conversations whenever you're in a bookshop, then why not try catching up with some friends via Second Life's version of that bookshop (which connects in real-time to the real bookshop)? And what's to stop you from visiting overseas bookshops, virtually, and meeting/making friends?

Wait, What About My Privacy?!

All of the above potential benefits (which just scratch the surface of what's possible) sound marvelous, but of course we haven't yet touched on the not insignificant privacy implications of living in a world enhanced by sensor data and virtual worlds.

This issue was discussed in the academic paper which we summarized in yesterday's post. The paper asked what happens when "potentially invasive media capture becomes an intrinsic property of devices scattered all over our environments?"

To try and solve this issue, MIT is experimenting with a small badge that people can wear to "passively manage dynamic privacy" in environments where potentially sensitive information is streamed across real and virtual worlds. Such a device might be embedded in your mobile phone, or on your body somehow, in the near future. It's early days, so don't panic just yet about brain implants. But here is how MIT describes the current solution:

"We have elected to address this [privacy issue] with badge systems, which periodically beacon a unique ID, to wirelessly mediate privacy (a prototype privacy badge is shown in Figure 7). Using received signal strength and/or the localization engine, the Portals know which badges are potentially within sensor capture range, and can passively and dynamically control data access according to the badge users' preferences. When the red "NO" button is pressed, however, an immediate opt-out signal is transmit to block any sensors in range - an important option if a sensitive conversation is initiated. The current protocol answers to the most restrictive privacy setting that is received. If we have any indication that the wireless network is being jammed or spoofed, the portals will revert to a conservative privacy level."

Conclusion

Clearly much work needs to be done to enable people to effectively - and easily - control personal data from sensors. The benefits described above are compelling, but equally we want to ensure that our personal data is under our control and not being monitored by governments or corporations.

Now tell us what changes you forsee on the Web, as a result of the emergence of Web-connected environmental sensors and the continued growth of virtual worlds.

Image credits: sndrv; MorBCN; Alpha Auer; butkaj.com; Responsive Environments Group

Paradiso co-authored a paper that has just been released in the July-September edition of the IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. The paper outlines and analyzes Cross Reality experiments done within Second Life, the most popular virtual world with 15 million current subscribers. In this post we'll give you a layman's overview of the paper, because we think this trend is important to the Web's future.

Cross Reality is about connecting "location-specific 3D animated constructs" in virtual worlds to in-building sensor installations.

The paper notes that "the convergence of shared 3D virtual worlds with popular web-based data sources to form a "Second Earth" has been broadly predicted." It's also been the topic of many a science fiction novel. So it's interesting to see the latest practical experiments in this "hyper reality."

It should be noted that there are already commercial applications. The paper points to IBM's visualization of datacenter operation and VRcontext's ProcessLife technology. The latter "uses high-fidelity 3D virtual replicas of real plants or factories to remotely browse and influence industrial processes in realtime."

Billowing Power Strips

In one of its projects, MIT created a cross reality environment called "ShadowLab," which is a Second Life map of the Media Lab's third floor animated by data collected from a network of 35 "smart, sensor-laden power strips" (a.k.a. PLUGs). MIT chose to use power strips "because they are already ubiquitous in offices and homes," plus they have power and can be connected to a network.

Virtual DataPond in the Virtual Atrium (left) and a real DataPond in the real Media Lab Atrium (right)

MIT added other features to the power strips via expansion boards - such as motion sensors, temperature sensors, and memory cards for local data logging.

Ubiquitous Sensor Portals

MIT has also created a whole portal network that maps sensors to virtual worlds, called the Ubiquitous Sensor Portal. There are 45 portals currently in the Media Lab, each one featuring a myriad of environmental sensors - such as motion, light and sound level, vibration, temperature, and humidity. They have a small touch-screen display and audio speaker, for user interaction.

The Portals also act as base stations for an 802.15.4 network inside the lab, "enabling wireless communication with a variety of wearable sensors." Each portal has an extension into Second Life, allowing people to visit the Media Lab virtually. This isn't just a one-way process either; as well as affecting virtual worlds, portal interactions can push virtual phenomena into the user's physical space.

Two views of the virtual extension of a Portal into Second Life; the first shows sensor data over time, the second streaming real-time audio/video into Second Life.

Mobile

MIT expects that handhelds and mobile devices will play an important role in future Cross Reality applications, "both as a source of data to animate their users' environments and avatars and as augmented reality terminals through which local sensor networks can be explored and programmed." The lab has already begun to experiment in this area, with a Star Trek-inspired device it calls a Tricorder (image to right) and a newer device called the "Ubicorder." Both devices provide a real time interface to sensor data.

MIT expects the mobile area of cross reality to expand rapidly "once smart phone Augmented Reality becomes better
established." ReadWriteWeb has been following this trend closely; read our recent Augmented Reality analysis here and here.

Conclusion

The projects of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT are enabling real world data, increasingly being provided by sensor/actuator networks, to be plugged into virtual and physical interfaces.

The group is still exploring both the technical and practical sides of this, so it's uncertain what it will lead to in the commercial world. But we're certain it will fuel future startup innovation in the coming year or two. Watch this space!

Practically speaking, Visible Past is a mix of virtual reality, location-based data and a wiki approach. So users of the system not only receive information, but can contribute to it too. Features include social networking and content rating/review.

Naturally, because it's a wiki, the Visible Past system is read/write. Visible Past claims to open "read/write capabilities to all clients capable of reading and rendering georeferenced data," such as Google's Maps and Earth, NASA's WorldWind, location-sensitive mobile devices, and immersive VR environments such as Purdue's Envision Center CAVE. It also makes heavy use of wiki content from the likes of WikiPedia, Wiktionary and WikiMedia Commons. Everything is accessible via an Internet-connected device.

The way Visible Past works is as follows:

"...as a user moves through space (virtual, real, mapped), information tied to locations on the earth will be revealed to them as they approach those locations. Once revealed, the information can be edited and resubmitted (to greater or lesser richness depending on the client), consumed, or ignored. see this Demo page for a video clip of the client functionality we're developing."

You can browse by keywords, location or time. In regards to how location and time data is captured, that is done via GPS (e.g. on mobile phones) or through virtual reality locators.

Privacy advocates will be wary about the project's tagline, "Where information searches for you". Because the system tracks your location and time, it essentially follows you wherever you go. This is what many location-based web apps do, such as Brightkite. Although most of these apps ensure that the user has sufficient control to turn off and delete their data if they want to. That's the key thing with location-based apps, the user must remain in control.

In any case, in a learning environment - which is what Visible Past is aiming for - it's probably a good thing if information finds you. Currently, Visible Past has a limited set of models, such as one of Ancient Rome as it appeared in Antiquity (cca 400 AD), however it's a technology to keep your eye on as we move further in a location data based Web.

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