computer science

Learn the skills and resources you need to master virtual reality [Mark Metry, Tee Jia Hen, & Krill Karev]

On 08/15/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, computer science, digital photography, media/film, photography, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, programming, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Learn the skills and resources you need to master virtual reality — from vudream.com by Mark Metry

Excerpt:

[From] Tee Jia Hen, CEO of VRcollab
In my opinion, there are 4 specializations for the VR content professional.

VR native app development
Cinematic VR creation
Photogrammetry
VR web development

Also see:

Getting Started with WebVR –– from virtualrealitypop.com by Michael Hazani

Excerpt:

This is not a tutorial or a comprehensive, thorough technical guide?—?many of those already exist?—?but rather a way to think about WebVR and acquaint yourself with what it is, exactly, and how best to approach it from scratch. If you’ve been doing WebVR or 3D programming for a while, this article is most certainly not for you. If you’ve been curious about that stuff and want to know how to join the party— read on!

Why Natural Language Processing is the Future of Business Intelligence — from dzone.com by Gur Tirosh
Until now, we have been interacting with computers in a way that they understand, rather than us. We have learned their language. But now, they’re learning ours.

Excerpt:

Every time you ask Siri for directions, a complex chain of cutting-edge code is activated. It allows “her” to understand your question, find the information you’re looking for, and respond to you in a language that you understand. This has only become possible in the last few years. Until now, we have been interacting with computers in a way that they understand, rather than us. We have learned their language.

But now, they’re learning ours.

The technology underpinning this revolution in human-computer relations is Natural Language Processing (NLP). And it’s already transforming BI, in ways that go far beyond simply making the interface easier. Before long, business transforming, life changing information will be discovered merely by talking with a chatbot.

This future is not far away. In some ways, it’s already here.

What Is Natural Language Processing?
NLP, otherwise known as computational linguistics, is the combination of Machine Learning, AI, and linguistics that allows us to talk to machines as if they were human.

But NLP aims to eventually render GUIs — even UIs — obsolete, so that interacting with a machine is as easy as talking to a human.

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education [Chou]

On 08/04/2017, in career development, computer science, ethics, leadership, liberal arts, morals/values, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, society, strategy, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education — from qz.com by Tracy Chou

Excerpts:

I was no longer operating in a world circumscribed by lesson plans, problem sets and programming assignments, and intended course outcomes. I also wasn’t coding to specs, because there were no specs. As my teammates and I were building the product, we were also simultaneously defining what it should be, whom it would serve, what behaviors we wanted to incentivize amongst our users, what kind of community it would become, and what kind of value we hoped to create in the world.

I still loved immersing myself in code and falling into a state of flow—those hours-long intensive coding sessions where I could put everything else aside and focus solely on the engineering tasks at hand. But I also came to realize that such disengagement from reality and societal context could only be temporary.
…
At Quora, and later at Pinterest, I also worked on the algorithms powering their respective homefeeds: the streams of content presented to users upon initial login, the default views we pushed to users. It seems simple enough to want to show users “good” content when they open up an app. But what makes for good content? Is the goal to help users to discover new ideas and expand their intellectual and creative horizons? To show them exactly the sort of content that they know they already like? Or, most easily measurable, to show them the content they’re most likely to click on and share, and that will make them spend the most time on the service?

Ruefully—and with some embarrassment at my younger self’s condescending attitude toward the humanities—I now wish that I had strived for a proper liberal arts education. That I’d learned how to think critically about the world we live in and how to engage with it. That I’d absorbed lessons about how to identify and interrogate privilege, power structures, structural inequality, and injustice. That I’d had opportunities to debate my peers and develop informed opinions on philosophy and morality. And even more than all of that, I wish I’d even realized that these were worthwhile thoughts to fill my mind with—that all of my engineering work would be contextualized by such subjects.

It worries me that so many of the builders of technology today are people like me; people haven’t spent anywhere near enough time thinking about these larger questions of what it is that we are building, and what the implications are for the world.

Also see:

Why We Need the Liberal Arts in Technology’s Age of Distraction — from time.com by Tim Bajarin

Excerpt:

In a recent Harvard Business Review piece titled “Liberal Arts in the Data Age,” author JM Olejarz writes about the importance of reconnecting a lateral, liberal arts mindset with the sort of rote engineering approach that can lead to myopic creativity. Today’s engineers have been so focused on creating new technologies that their short term goals risk obscuring unintended longterm outcomes. While a few companies, say Intel, are forward-thinking enough to include ethics professionals on staff, they remain exceptions. At this point all tech companies serious about ethical grounding need to be hiring folks with backgrounds in areas like anthropology, psychology and philosophy.

Overall, tech-related skills accounted for nearly two-thirds of Upwork’s list of the 20 fastest-growing skills. [Gottlieb]

On 08/04/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Adobe, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, CMS/LMS, computer science, economics, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, marketing/social marketing, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, programming, tools, trends, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, workplace, by Daniel Christian

VR Is the Fastest-Growing Skill for Online Freelancers — from bloomberg.com by Isabel Gottlieb
Workers who specialize in artificial intelligence also saw big jumps in demand for their expertise.

Excerpt:

Overall, tech-related skills accounted for nearly two-thirds of Upwork’s list of the 20 fastest-growing skills.

Also see:

How to Prepare Preschoolers for an Automated Economy — from nytimes.com by Claire Miller and Jess Bidgood

Excerpt

MEDFORD, Mass. — Amory Kahan, 7, wanted to know when it would be snack time. Harvey Borisy, 5, complained about a scrape on his elbow. And Declan Lewis, 8, was wondering why the two-wheeled wooden robot he was programming to do the Hokey Pokey wasn’t working. He sighed, “Forward, backward, and it stops.”

Declan tried it again, and this time the robot shook back and forth on the gray rug. “It did it!” he cried. Amanda Sullivan, a camp coordinator and a postdoctoral researcher in early childhood technology, smiled. “They’ve been debugging their Hokey Pokeys,” she said.

The children, at a summer camp last month run by the Developmental Technologies Research Group at Tufts University, were learning typical kid skills: building with blocks, taking turns, persevering through frustration. They were also, researchers say, learning the skills necessary to succeed in an automated economy.

Technological advances have rendered an increasing number of jobs obsolete in the last decade, and researchers say parts of most jobs will eventually be automated. What the labor market will look like when today’s young children are old enough to work is perhaps harder to predict than at any time in recent history. Jobs are likely to be very different, but we don’t know which will still exist, which will be done by machines and which new ones will be created.

Report: AI will be in nearly all new software by 2020 [Bolkan]

On 08/02/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, computer science, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, pace of change, platforms, programming, strategy, user experience (UX), vendors, by Daniel Christian

Report: AI will be in nearly all new software by 2020 — from thejournal.com by Joshua Bolkan

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence will be in nearly all new software products by 2020 and a top five investment priority for more than 30 percent of chief information officers, according to a new report from Gartner.
…
The company lists three keys to successfully exploiting AI technologies over the next few years:

Many vendors are “AI washing” their products, or applying the term artificial intelligence to tools that don’t really merit it. Vendors should use the term wisely and be clear about what differentiates their AI products and what problems they solve;
Forego more complicated or cutting-edge AI techniques in favor of simpler, proven approaches; and
Organizations do not have the skills to evaluate, build or deploy AI and are looking for embedded or packaged AI rather than custom building their own.

Major Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business — from campustechnology.com by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

In a surprising turn of events, two major coding bootcamps, within the span of about a week, have announced they are shutting down all operations.

Most recently, after a four-year run, South Carolina-based The Iron Yard (TIY) revealed last Friday it would close its 15 campuses, including locations like Atlanta, Austin, Houston and Charleston where other coding bootcamps are flourishing.
…
Similarly, Dev Bootcamp (DBC) on July 12 announced via Facebook that it would shutdown operations at all six locations — Austin, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and New York — by the end of the summer.

From DSC:
I can almost hear the snickering from a variety of people within higher education about this situation. If gloating had an audible sound associated with it, I’d likely have to go find some earplugs. But I have a message for those who are snickering and gloating right now — saying something along the lines of, “Ha! So much for these alternatives to traditional higher education! They’re nothing, and they’ll come to nothing!”

That may be so. Such relatively new alternatives to traditional institutions of higher education may come to nothing. But you know what? At least those organizations are trying to be much more responsive than many institutions of traditional higher education are being! They’ve recognized that there are unmet needs — gaps, if you will — arising from our current systems. Gaps in either the content that we’re providing and/or the manner in which we’re providing it. Gaps that thousands of students have signed up for in a relatively short time. Those gaps should be cause for action within traditional institutions of higher education. They should be cause for realizing that we aren’t responding nearly fast enough to today’s new pace of change.

The pace of change has changed. It is lightning fast these days. Don’t believe me? Go check out some of the descriptions for the hot jobs out there these days. Seriously. Go do it. Go find out which skills you need to get your foot in the door to acquire those types of positions. It’ll blow your mind!

And there are ramifications to this.

If our accreditation systems need to change, than so be it. Let’s identify those necessary changes and make ’em happen!

Because:

WE have some serious responsibility for the educations that we are providing to this next generation!!!
WE need to prepare them for what they’ll need to be marketable in the future — so that they can put bread and butter on their tables throughout their careers.
WE need to act!
WE need to be responsive!

This is not a time for gloating. Rather, this is a time for some serious action.

Addendums on 8/2/17 and 8/3/17:

Jobs Report: 97 Percent of Flatiron School Graduates Land Jobs — from by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

While two major coding bootcamps shut down earlier this week, another released its latest jobs report and says it had the strongest student outcomes to date.

The Flatiron School based in New York, NY has released an independently verified jobs report every year since 2014 — “pioneering the concept of outcomes reporting and setting a standard of transparency in educational outcomes,” the latest report reads. It’s the company’s commitment to accessibility and transparency that have allowed its programs to stay open for five years now, says Adam Enbar, co-founder of the Flatiron School.

More bootcamps are quietly coming to a university near you — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In the last two years, a surge of nonprofit, four-year institutions have hopped on the bootcamp bandwagon. These programs, often on skills such as software development or data analytics, have arrived in a number of ways—from universities partnering with local for-profit bootcamps, or colleges creating their own intensive training programs completely in-house.But while bootcamps are often associated with tech skills, it seems that traditional universities trying out the model are interested in more than just coding. An increasing number of traditional higher-ed institutions are now applying bootcamp trainings to other fields, such as healthcare, accounting and even civics and political science.

New app is helping the U of Washington community “experience” a new CS building 18 months before its doors open to students

On 07/24/2017, in 21st century, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, ideas, innovation, learning spaces, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

Mortenson Creates First-of-Its-Kind Augmented Reality App for Construction Visualization — from prnewswire.com
Akin to Pokemon Go, the new mobile app is helping the University of Washington community “experience” a new computer science building 18 months before its doors open to students

Excerpt:

SEATTLE, July 18, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — After pioneering the use of virtual design in construction, Mortenson Construction has developed a first-of-its-kind augmented reality (AR) mobile app to help the University of Washington community “see” the future CSE2 computer science building – well before its doors open to students in January of 2019. Similar to the popular Pokémon Go, users can either point their smartphones at the construction site on campus – or at a printed handout if off campus – to experience a life-like digital representation of the future CSE2 building.

Trying to develop a general AI illustrates that some serious glory & honor is due (again)

On 07/22/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, computer science, Daniel S. Christian, faith, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), programming, by Daniel Christian

Google’s AI Guru Says That Great Artificial Intelligence Must Build on Neuroscience — from technologyreview.com by Jamie Condliffe
Inquisitiveness and imagination will be hard to create any other way.

Excerpt:

Demis Hassabis knows a thing or two about artificial intelligence: he founded the London-based AI startup DeepMind, which was purchased by Google for $650 million back in 2014. Since then, his company has wiped the floor with humans at the complex game of Go and begun making steps towards crafting more general AIs.

But now he’s come out and said that be believes the only way for artificial intelligence to realize its true potential is with a dose of inspiration from human intellect.

Currently, most AI systems are based on layers of mathematics that are only loosely inspired by the way the human brain works. But different types of machine learning, such as speech recognition or identifying objects in an image, require different mathematical structures, and the resulting algorithms are only able to perform very specific tasks.

Building AI that can perform general tasks, rather than niche ones, is a long-held desire in the world of machine learning. But the truth is that expanding those specialized algorithms to something more versatile remains an incredibly difficult problem, in part because human traits like inquisitiveness, imagination, and memory don’t exist or are only in their infancy in the world of AI.

First, they say, better understanding of how the brain works will allow us to create new structures and algorithms for electronic intelligence.

From DSC:
Glory to God! I find it very interesting to see how people and organizations — via very significant costs/investments — keep trying to mimic the most amazing thing — the human mind. Turns out, that’s not so easy:

But the truth is that expanding those specialized algorithms to something more versatile remains an incredibly difficult problem…

Therefore, some scripture comes to my own mind here:

Psalm 139:14 New International Version (NIV)

¹⁴I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

Job 12:13 (NIV)

¹³“To God belong wisdom and power;
counsel and understanding are his.

Psalm 104:24 (NIV)

²⁴How many are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

Revelation 4:11 (NIV)

¹¹“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they were created
    and have their being.”

Yes, the LORD designed the human mind by His unfathomable and deep wisdom and understanding.

Glory to God!

Thanks be to God!

The Business of Artificial Intelligence — from hbr.org by Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The most important general-purpose technology of our era is artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning (ML) — that is, the machine’s ability to keep improving its performance without humans having to explain exactly how to accomplish all the tasks it’s given. Within just the past few years machine learning has become far more effective and widely available. We can now build systems that learn how to perform tasks on their own.

Why is this such a big deal? Two reasons. First, we humans know more than we can tell: We can’t explain exactly how we’re able to do a lot of things — from recognizing a face to making a smart move in the ancient Asian strategy game of Go. Prior to ML, this inability to articulate our own knowledge meant that we couldn’t automate many tasks. Now we can.

Second, ML systems are often excellent learners. They can achieve superhuman performance in a wide range of activities, including detecting fraud and diagnosing disease. Excellent digital learners are being deployed across the economy, and their impact will be profound.

In the sphere of business, AI is poised have a transformational impact, on the scale of earlier general-purpose technologies. Although it is already in use in thousands of companies around the world, most big opportunities have not yet been tapped. The effects of AI will be magnified in the coming decade, as manufacturing, retailing, transportation, finance, health care, law, advertising, insurance, entertainment, education, and virtually every other industry transform their core processes and business models to take advantage of machine learning. The bottleneck now is in management, implementation, and business imagination.

…

The machine learns from examples, rather than being explicitly programmed for a particular outcome.

Let’s start by exploring what AI is already doing and how quickly it is improving. The biggest advances have been in two broad areas: perception and cognition. …For instance, Aptonomy and Sanbot, makers respectively of drones and robots, are using improved vision systems to automate much of the work of security guards.

Machine learning is driving changes at three levels: tasks and occupations, business processes, and business models.

You may have noticed that Facebook and other apps now recognize many of your friends’ faces in posted photos and prompt you to tag them with their names.

Video: 4 FAQs about Watson as tutor [Nitta]

On 07/15/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, colleges, community colleges, computer science, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, Natural Language Processing (NLP), personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, programming, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

Video: 4 FAQs about Watson as tutor — from er.educause.edu by Satya Nitta

Excerpt:

How is IBM using Watson’s intelligent tutoring system? So we are attempting to mimic the best practices of human tutoring. The gold standard will always remain one on one human to human tutoring. The whole idea here is an intelligent tutoring system as a computing system that works autonomously with learners, so there is no human intervention. It’s basically pretending to be the teacher itself and it’s working with the learner. What we’re attempting to do is we’re attempting to basically put conversational systems, systems that understand human conversation and dialogue, and we’re trying to build a system that, in a very natural way, interacts with people through conversation. The system basically has the ability to ask questions, to answer questions, to know who you are and where you are in your learning journey, what you’re struggling with, what you’re strong on and it will personalize its pedagogy to you.

…

There’s a natural language understanding system and a machine learning system that’s trying to figure out where you are in your learning journey and what the appropriate intervention is for you. The natural language system enables this interaction that’s very rich and conversation-based, where you can basically have a human-like conversation with it and, to a large extent, it will try to understand and to retrieve the right things for you. Again the most important thing is that we will set the expectations appropriately and we have appropriate exit criteria for when the system doesn’t actually understand what you’re trying to do.

Chatbot lawyer, which contested £7.2M in parking tickets, now offers legal help for 1,000+ topics [Sebastian Anthony]

On 07/14/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, bots, change, communications, computer science, disruption, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, legislatures / government / legal, programming, robotics, society, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

Chatbot lawyer, which contested £7.2M in parking tickets, now offers legal help for 1,000+ topics — from arstechnica.co.uk by Sebastian Anthony
DoNotPay has expanded to cover the UK and all 50 US states. Free legal help for everyone!

Excerpt:

In total, DoNotPay now has over 1,000 separate chatbots that generate formal-sounding documents for a range of basic legal issues, such as seeking remuneration for a delayed flight or train, reporting discrimination, or asking for maternity leave. If you divide that by 51 (US and UK) you get a rough idea of how many different topics are covered. Each bot had to be hand-crafted by the British creator Joshua Browder, with the assistance of part-time and volunteer lawyers to ensure that the the documents are actually fit for purpose.

British student’s free robot lawyer can fight speeding tickets and rogue landlords — from telegraph.co.uk by Cara McGoogan

Excerpt:

A free “robot lawyer” that has overturned thousands of parking tickets in the UK can now fight rogue landlords, speeding tickets and harassment at work.

Joshua Browder, the 20-year-old British student who created the aide, has upgraded the robot’s abilities so it can fight legal disputes in 1,000 different areas. These include fighting landlords over security deposits and house repairs, and helping people report fraud to their credit card agency.
…
To get robot advice, users type their problem into the DoNotPay site and it directs them to a chat bot that can solve their particular legal issue. It can draft letters and offer advice on problems from credit card fraud to airline compensation.

Free robot lawyer helps low-income people tackle more than 1,000 legal issues — from mashable.com by Katie Dupere

Excerpt:

Shady businesses, you’re on notice. This robot lawyer is coming after you if you play dirty.

Noted legal aid chatbot DoNotPay just announced a massive expansion, which will help users tackle issues in 1,000 legal areas entirely for free. The new features, which launched on Wednesday, cover consumer and workplace rights, and will be available in all 50 states and the UK.

While the bot will still help drivers contest parking tickets and refugees apply for asylum, the service will now also help those who want to report harassment in the workplace or who simply want a refund on a busted toaster.

From DSC:
Whereas this type of bot is meant for external communications/assistance, we should also watch for Work Bots within an organization — dishing up real-time answers to questions that employees have about a variety of topics. I think that’s the next generation of technical communications, technical/help desk support, as well as training and development groups (at least some of the staff in those departments will likely be building these types of bots).

Addendum on 7/15/17:

LawGeex: Contract Review Automation

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The LawGeex Contract Review Automation enables anyone in your business to easily submit and receive approvals on contracts without waiting for the legal team. Our A.I. technology reads, reviews and understands your contracts, approving those that meet your legal team’s pre-defined criteria, and escalating those that don’t. Legal can maintain control and mitigate risk while giving other departments the freedom they need to get business moving.

Are we at the start of the fourth tectonic shift in technology? These folks think so.

On 07/12/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, computer science, emerging technologies, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, IT in HE, platforms, technology (general), trends, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Intel seen losing to Nvidia amid ‘tectonic shift’ in technology — from marketwatch.com by Jeremy Owens

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Computing is undergoing a massive shift, and the company known for making the brains behind many of the world’s computers and servers has not shifted as fast as competitors.

Jefferies equity analyst Mark Lipacis came to that conclusion Monday, reporting in a note that Intel Corp. stands to take a hit in its data-center business amid a move to a new computing paradigm focused on artificial intelligence and connected devices that he believes represents a “tectonic shift” in technology. Instead, Nvidia Corp. is best-positioned to be the chip leader in the new landscape, Lipacis wrote.
…
Lipacis’s thesis on the semiconductor industry is that computing paradigms undergo dramatic shifts roughly every 15 years, with mainframe-focused technology giving way to minicomputers and then personal computers, and later to mobile phones and cloud data-center architecture. While Intel was a dominant player in the second and third epochs of the computing era, with its chips finding a home in PCs and data-center servers, Lipacis believes the current shift to parallel processing and the so-called Internet of Things will belong to different chip makers.
…
“We believe we are at the start of the fourth tectonic shift now, to a parallel processing/IoT model, driven by lower memory costs, free data storage, improvements in parallel processing hardware and software, and improvements in AI technologies like neural networking, that make it easy to monetize all the data that is being stored,” he wrote.

Apple’s new programming course — intended for college-level learners — is available for free through iBooks

On 07/07/2017, in Apple, computer science, platforms, professional development, programming, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Now Everyone Really Can Code Thanks to Apple’s New College Course — from trendintech.com by Amanda Porter

Excerpt:

Almost everyone has an idea for a mobile app or two but not everyone has the skills to build a usable iPhone application from start to finish. Last fall Apple released Swift Playgrounds, an iPad application that was intended to teach the programming language Swift to the masses, but for many users the path from the basic program language learning to a full blown, usable app was unclear.

At the same time, Apple started the Everybody Can Code program, a K-12 curriculum to teach the next generation the coding skills that will be necessary in future job markets. However, neither of these programs have been a great fit for adults who want to make their iOS app development dreams come true.

Now, Apple is launching a new program intended for college-level learners, extending Apple’s learning courses from kindergarten age and adulthood. This new course, called Apple App Development Curriculum, is available for free through iBooks. It includes everything one needs to learn to code with Swift and build a mobile application from start to finish.

“ARKit: AR on 195 million iPhones & iPads by year end” plus 3 other items re: AR

On 07/06/2017, in Apple, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, interactivity, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

ARKit: Augmented Reality on 195 million iPhones and iPads by year end — from blog.mapbox.com by Ceci Alvarez

Excerpt:

Apple’s ARKit just made augmented reality (AR) mainstream — and together with the Maps SDK for Unity, will fundamentally change the types of location-based apps that developers can build.

Using ARKit plus Maps SDK for Unity allows you record your bike ride up to Twin Peaks in Strava and project the map of your route on your coffee table. As you plan your next vacation over dinner, you’ll be able to open your Lonely Planet app and have the Big Sur coast hovering in front of you as you browse the different camp sites. Or, when you’re at work appraising a property for flood insurance, you could just tilt up your phone and see the flood plain in front of you, and which parts of the property are susceptible to flooding. Or, when you’re teaching a geology class you project the evolution of Pangea in 3D for students to visualize instead of being limited by 2D images in textbooks.

Inside Peter Jackson’s New Augmented Reality Studio — from cartoonbrew.com by Ian Failes

Excerpt:

At Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, one of the stand-out demos was from Wingnut AR, the augmented reality studio started by director Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh.

On stage, Wingnut AR’s creative director Alasdair Coull demonstrated a tabletop ar experience made using Apple’s upcoming augmented reality developer kit called ARKit and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. The experience blended a real world environment – the tabletop – with digital objects, in this case a sci-fi location complete with attacking spaceships, while being viewed live, on an iPad.

Soon your desk will be a computer too — from wired.com by Elizabeth Stinson

More Fun Uses for Augmented Reality & Your iPhone Keep Popping Up — from ar.reality.news by Juliet Gallagher

Excerpt:

Developers are really having a field day with Apple’s ARKit, announced last month. Since it’s release to developers, videos have been appearing all over the Internet of the different ways that developers are getting creative with the ARKit using iPhones and iPads.

Here are a few videos of the cool things that are happening using the ARKit:

Addendum on 7/10/17:

Google Lens offers a snapshot of the future for augmented reality and AI — from android authority.com by Adam Sinicki

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-lens-augmented-reality-785836/

Google Lens is a tool that effectively brings search into the real world. The idea is simple: you point your phone at something around you that you want more information on and Lens will provide that information.

Learning Ecosystems

Learn the skills and resources you need to master virtual reality [Mark Metry, Tee Jia Hen, & Krill Karev]

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education [Chou]

New app is helping the U of Washington community “experience” a new CS building 18 months before its doors open to students

Apple’s new programming course — intended for college-level learners — is available for free through iBooks

“ARKit: AR on 195 million iPhones & iPads by year end” plus 3 other items re: AR

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