Carpenter

As magical as Apple's iPad maybe, it's unlikely to go mass market anytime soon. That's according to research carried out in the UK, which concludes that consumers struggle to see how the device could fit into their lives. Simpson Carpenter's qualitative research drew comments from participants such as: "It's just a big iPod Touch ... a big iPhone without the phone" and "everything it does I can do on my PC or my phone right now." All of the iPad's perceived advantages were seen to be filling a niche or too use-case specific, such as reading eBooks, consuming content on the train, or making presentations. And while the majority of those interviewed thought that the iPad had the wow factor, they couldn't justify a purchase.

Budding AR Developer? Put Your Creativity to Use and Win $5,000 —

If you've been following our posts about augmented reality (AR) in the last few months, you've noticed that we speak often about practicality and its importance for the proliferation of the technology. Sure, gimmicky applications can be fun and new, but it's my opinion that the more practical and useful an AR application is, the better suited it is to help push AR toward mainstream acceptance. With that being said, AR developers should be aware of a contest being hosted by metaio, the makers of the junaio iPhone app and mobile AR platform, which will reward creativity and practicality in AR.

Sponsor

The company says over 200 developers have flocked to the platform since opening up junaio's API to the public, and to reward them, they are giving $5,000 to the developer who makes the best use of it. Developers can sign up on junaio's website where they can follow instructions on how to get started creating a "channel" for their AR content. The company is encouraging as much creativity and practicality as possible in order to stand out against the crowd of simple POI locators.

"The creative potential of junaio is vast: AR Mashups, multiplayer games or scavenger hunts, interactive, indoor and outdoor exhibitions, tours with animated 3D characters, eduainment right on the spot and location independent gaming," the company expressed in press release. "It is up to the developer to challenge his imagination and become as much creative as he wants to."

On June 16, the top five channels with the most subscribers will become finalists in the contest, and the winner will ultimately be chosen by a panel of AR and IT aficionados, including Robert Scoble, Thomas Carpenter of Games Alfresco, and Dr. Christian Geiger, professor and mixed reality researcher at Düsseldorf University. I will also be participating on the judges panel, and am very excited to see the innovative AR channels that could come from this contest.

I am also thrilled that metaio and junaio are pushing the creative side of the contest. It is much easier for gimmicky AR applications to become popular, but these kinds of applications don't benefit AR as much as actual useful implementations. The subscriber threshold will merely be used to shorten the list of applications that will be considered for the prize, but that doesn't mean the most popular one will win.

For more information on the contest and on the junaio platform, check out their website, or if you happen to be in Germany, stop by at AR DevCamp in Berlin this Friday. There will be free sessions available for developers to learn the capabilities of the API and will provide a jumping-off point for those new to the platform.

Discuss

Would You Watch A The Thing Prequel Even If Most of It Was In A Foreign Language? [The Thing] — New tidbits about The Thing prequel, starting filming, have surfaced, and they're making us a bit nervous. Can this reimagining live up to Carpenter's work? Will it hold up to the snowy alien greatness, even in a foreign language? More »

What do you do when you’ve lost faith?

Perhaps it’s lost faith in your religion, in the spiritual practices that once brought you comfort..

Perhaps it’s lost faith in your community, in the people around you that once inspired you.

Perhaps it’s lost faith in yourself, looking in the public or private mirror, seeing less of what’s supposed to be there.

How do you recover your faith? How do you rebuild that energy, that belief, that conviction, the passion that drove you to impossible ends, forcing the very gossamer clouds to crystallize into bridges to the stars through your will alone?

Losing faith is losing light, losing illumination, losing your way. All seems to be darkness around you. Confusion, despair, depression, forsaken. We hope for a helping hand or someone else’s light, and for a short time, a friend may help us find the path, but darkness inevitably returns. How do you find the light that you know used to be there?

Faith, light, and hope come from within us. We lose our faith when we lose our will to search, to quest, to seek out more, to be more than we are and closer to who we can be. An apathetic jeweler who loses the will to polish a gem ends up with a pile of only rough stones, barely hinting at their potential glory. A carpenter who has lost their way builds only small huts instead of grand palaces fit for emperors. So it is with all of us.

But how do you re-ignite that fire, that light? Where do you start when all is darkness?

With a single match and a small pile of tinder, the same way you start any fire. You go back to your basics. The wonderful thing about having lost faith is that you’ve already discovered the process by which you create it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just build a new one – and build it better, tempered by the experiences and wisdom of your previous efforts.

Back to the basics. Back to what you know, back to what you are proficient at, even if you don’t believe in yourself, your skills, your friends, your anything. Back to the beginning of the trail, back to the plain white belt around your uniform. That’s the wonderful beauty of the basics. You don’t have to believe. You merely have to do.

From the basics, you build momentum. You pick up that camera more frequently and take more shots. You write those blog posts a little sharper, a little fresher. You pray a little harder and share a little more with every parishioner. You polish those gems a little more crisply, build a little bit taller with every time-tested basic you know by heart.

From dimly glowing embers on a pile of tinder, you add kindling. You practice and execute your basics over and over again, seeing the results, feeling the comfort that familiar ground and old friends bring. You add twigs, sticks, branches, then logs, until the fire is rebuilt.

Before long, your fire is brighter and hotter than it’s ever been. The way is lit again for you, the furnace ready to forge your victories once more. You dare to believe again, this time better, stronger, wiser, more focused, more ready. The light inside of you illuminates the pitfalls ahead more clearly. The anvil and forge you burn away impurities with will make even stronger tools to guide your will.

At the end of the process of rekindling your faith, you may even notice that the light blazing inside of you is lighting the path for others to find you. Pass them some embers, and see where their faith will take them.

May your light shine ever brighter.