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Project Tango

google.com

51–60 of 353 posts

Re: Project Tango

#52
Really cool. I love how this could help the blind (my first thought when I saw how it worked - glad it was acknowledged in the video as a use case). The stuff Google's working on (and the face they're making it public is really exciting me (this, Glass, contact lens etc.). The more I see the more I think I'm going to spend more time developing for Google's platforms and less time developing for Apple's. I'm sure Apple has a few cool projects they'll be sharing this year but Google seems to be the one pushing the boundaries.

Re: Project Tango

#53
"Imagine measuring your room by just walking around in it." Yes, and imagine transmitting each of those footsteps in real time back to Google, so they can have a map of your room, too, in case they, or other parties, ever need it.

I was just having a discussion yesterday with a friend who works at Google about what data they store when you query their search engine. Every single keystroke, including backspaces, is stored. They don't just know what you ask. They know how well you can spell and know how well you type, not just in general but down to specific letter sequences. With this data, they can tell if you are regularly more impaired (fine motor control) at some times than at others, or if you're growing more impaired over time and match that against the content of your queries, etc.

"Phones that don't limit their boundaries to a touchscreen", meaning, we're not satisfied limiting our knowledge of you to just what we can extract from what you enter and how you enter it and when on a touchscreen. We want to know every step you take, when you sit, when you stand, how and where you walk.... SO much more data about you and your world that we can mine for treasure!

I'm not saying that Google is evil. My friends at Google certainly aren't. It's just that they are like kids in a candy store with unprecedented access to data and so many great, new algorithms for extracting information from it that they are just loving it, the way geeks would. But we're really going down a rabbit hole here.

Re: Project Tango

#54
This kind of technology will lead to very big changes in the surveying industry, which is big. Also will lead to open 3d city models (the next openstreetmap will be in 3d and textured - IMO gmaps and apple maps will lose out to this eventually) and real-estate models (see your apartment without actually visiting) which will lead to lnock-on effects for a range of other property industry fields. Academically - urban studies (a field mostly based on experience and conjecture) will benefit hugely from realistic 3d modelling...

Re: Project Tango

#55
I can see tech like this being used in the next Bond film. Every day, the advances in modern technology surprise and impress me. I love our line of work, where we can set our mind to something and just make it.

Re: Project Tango

#56

Tango looks a lot like The Structure Sensor by Occipital - http://structure.io/

I still like that Occipital is planning to ship a standalone unit, and support people wanting to 3D print various housings.

I guess the positive interpretation is that crowdfunding seems to be putting some pressure on larger companies to go public with research projects earlier than they normally would.

Re: Project Tango

#58
post #50

I wish I could go back to the time when I thought this kind of thing was awesome. Nowadays, it's just one more aspect of our private lives that'll be stored on Google's (or whomever) servers, sold to advertisers, harvested by the NSA, and abused by law enforcement. Add some object recognition to the 3D scanning, and you can start getting marketing messages about how much better [Featured Brand]'s refrigerator would s…

[deleted]

It isn't paranoia if they are actually watching you.

Re: Project Tango

#59
post #31

"- Johnny Lee and the ATAP-Project Tango Team" Johnny Lee was the guy with the awesome Wii Controller demos back in 2007 (can't believe it's been that long). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw edit: here's the full set of demos: http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ (also, I'm assuming it's the same guy, but his site says he's at Google now)

I am so happy to see a familiar face when I played the video. Back in 07/08 when he demoed his hacks in TED it really blew my mind. [1] I was really hoping someone would pick him up and let him loose on some projects. I guess Google did just that. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H1zrLZwPjQ

He worked on the Kinect project at Microsoft as well. In fact he put up the prize money for the Open Kinect contest run by Adafruit to develop drivers for the Kinect.

http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2011/02/windows-drivers...

Re: Project Tango

#60

I wonder if Google has a stack of experimental projects to release whenever a competitor announces some headline grabbing news.

PR works better when you don't compete with competitors for attention. You either beat them to the headlines, or you wait a couple of days to find a clearing. This announcement is interesting, but not nearly the scale of WhatsApp/FB.

An exception might be if you have a very similar announcement. Doing so would get you included in the same articles as your competitor.

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