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Vor kurzem habe ich über eine mögliche Möglichkeit berichtet, wie ich mir vorstelle, dass Augmented Reality und GeoCaching miteinander verknüpft werden könnten.
Nachdem Wikitude eine API bietet, um erweiterte Informationen in ein Kamerabild hinzuprojizieren, ist mit GeoBeagle – so wie es ausschaut - die Realität nicht mehr weit von meiner Vision entfernt:
Sie sind da! Die ersten Sammelkarten für GeoCaches. Sammelkarten? Genau! GeoCacher sind Sammler. Wir sammeln GeoCaches. Wir tragen uns in Logbücher ein und markieren einen Cache als Found im Internet. Dadurch steigt ein virtueller Zähler, und sobald der Marken wie 50, 100, 200, 500, etc. übersteigt belohnen wir uns mit virtuellen Trophäen.
Einige Cache-Owner legen sogar Urkunden in ihre GeoCaches für den First to Find, Second to Find und sogar Third to Find.
Noch mehr Spaß kann es da bringen, wenn man als GeoCacher tatsächlich einen handfesten Beweis dafür in der Hand halten kann, dass der Cache gehoben werden konnte. Und dafür gibt es jetzt die Cache Collectible Cards.
Bislang gibt es erst einen GeoCache, bei dem es so eine Sammelkarte zu finden gibt. Little Jones I ist gleichzeitig der erste Multi, den Aer1th und ich gemeinsam gelegt haben. Zum Start habe ich den Cache mit neun Karten bestückt. Sobald die weg sind, lege ich nach.
Damit die Idee eine weite Verbreitung findet, rufe ich alle interessierten Cache-Owner dazu auf, sich mit mir in Verbindung zu setzen. Den Entwurf für die Karte gebe ich kostenfrei raus. Er lässt sich prima auf 270g schwerem Fotopapier drucken und damit kann jeder selbst starten, der einen entsprechend guten Drucker sein eigen nennt.
Ich habe viele coole Ideen, wie sich diese Idee noch ausbauen lässt. Für den Moment habe ich erst einmal eine kleine Dummyseite geschaltet, die ich aber demnächst noch ausbauen werde.
Update:
After receiving a couple of spam mails today I was wondering how those emails were able to get through our companies’ filter. I took a look at them and noticed they were sent from a normal email address to a bunch of also normal email addresses. Sure, the subject looked like spam,… and they got pictures attached that were named like pictures taken with a digital camera (DSC…jpg).
However, the pictures showed a young girl with intimate details and were obviously not ment for the public. Looking for her name and email address immediately reveiled her facebook profile. And this is where privacy comes into play. I dropped an email on her account explaining that I received weird pictures and whoever was sitting behind that account replied with (and I will quote here):
yes i have sent them i have had enough do you want to fuck me 2?
i am willing!
I sent a report to facebook hoping that the administrators investigate this further and track down the problem. Somebody oviously hacked into this girls’ account, impersonated as her and made private pictures available to the public. This is not only a criminal act and therefor illegal, but also pretty embarrassing for this poor girl.
So my advice for everyone out there: Keep your privacy private and know your friends. Although most people out there are far away from being prude and don’t mind such pictures or even videos, there might be still people who you don’t want seeing your pictures…
For the german speaking community, have a look at this article: http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/5/0,3672,7509477,00.html
Microsoft’s neue Suchmaschine bing.com scheint früher als geplant als Beta online gegangen zu sein.
Die nächsten Tage werden zeigen, wie hoch das Feedback ist. Wir dürfen gespannt sein.
I have a new hobby. It’s called GeoCaching. In case you don’t know what GeoCaching is, you can get a good introduction here. Otherwise simply think of it as some sort of treasure hunt with the treasure map being GPS coordinates (that you find using a GPS enabled device) and the treasure usually being some sort of waterproof box with a logbook for you to leave your name and date when you found it. Believe me, it’s a lot of fun searching and more than that: finding GeoCaches.
As you can imagine, there are different types of GeoCaches. Traditionals like described above, Mystery Caches for which you need to solve puzzles, NightCaches that can only be found at night and several more. However, recently an absolutely awesome idea popped into my mind. An idea for a new type of GeoCache.
Augmented Reality basically means that the reality is “extended” by virtual information (most commonly 3D Objects). But how does this work? Easy: You place a marker that can be recognized by a special software that runs on a device which has an integrated camera (or the ability to have a camera attached). The software then extends the real world image with the virtual object and displays the result on the display. What makes AR so damn fancy is that this all happens in real time. So if you turn or tilt your device, the virtual objects does the same just as if it exists in the real world.
More easy: On the display it simply looks like as if the giant monster dwarf was really standing in front of you swinging his enormous warhammer. Only… that he’s of course not really there. 
Look here to get an impression of what the heck I am talking about.
So back to GeoCaching. GeoCaching means that you go to given GPS coordinates and then search for some sort of hidden treasure (the Cache). Sometimes you follow hints or need to solve puzzles.My vision now works like this: The coordinates lead you to a traffic sign for instance. You point your Windows Mobile cellphone with an integrated GPS device and camera to the sign and what you see on the display is a virtual three-dimensional arrow pointing to the right with a text on it saying 50m. Everyone else only sees that traffic sign. But you have a device that extends your sense of reality. You see more. You took the red pill!
So the AR Cache could incredibly increase the GeoCaching experience by adding hints, coordinates and visual clues to real world objects. Also, many cacher already use devices like Windows Mobile cellphones (for instance running CacheWolf) or the iPhone (running Groundspeaks own proprietary software). So there will be lots of people who can experience this new type of GeoCache.
For this type of GeoCache to work, a couple of things need to be accomplished. First of all, applications need to be developed that are able to recognize either simple marker or even basic geometric forms (to be able to work with real objects like traffic signs instead of stickers that need to be attached to real world objects). This application needs to be able to import markers as well as 3D Objects, images or whatever, so that a Cache Owner can create an own set of extension for his specific AR Cache. Of course it would be awesome if this application also has an Owner-Tool that makes it possible for the owner to create markers from real world objects instantly with the integrated camera of his device for instance.
Next, this type of software needs to be made widely available for different platforms. The easiest would most certainly be Windows Mobile. Also, Groundspeak should be pretty interested in extending their own GC software with this feature. A Java based application should be interesting, too, so that it will work on basically every device that is able to run own applications. Maybe this is something, the CacheWolf community is looking for?
Speaking of Groundspeak: I sent an email to them with a suggestion to create this new type of GeoCache. I am curious if I get feedback.
Please comment on this if you like the idea.
Having your Nabaztag communicating with Second Life ist not that hard as I found out. Others already tried it and now, even I did. I am currently able to wake my rabbit up and send it to sleep.
Well… it’s a start.
My girlfriend asked me lately, what she can do to put our Nabaztag to sleep, because she wanted to take a nap in the livingroom and that thing had a lot of fun talking to her all the time.
So I implemented a little tray-application for her that she can use to put it to sleep and wake it up again whenever she wants:
The one or other might have already stumbled across the famous three words when using InstallShields’ LogonInformation dialogs: List is empty. This preferrably happens right after you finished creating your setup and befor you are about to deploy it to a customers’s server. You click on <Browse> to see a list of available Domains and get “The list is empty”. You enter a domain name for yourself and click on <Browse> for a list of users in that domain and Windows Installer tells you it can’t find the domain you entered. So what the hell is wrong with that thing?
The answer is easy but you will be less than thrilled.
One of the software developers of Acresso explained they were using the API function NetServerEnum. And if you look here you will find out that if it does not work, the reason might be that the ComputerBrowser service is not active.
In all test cases I tried, I was able to get the LogonInformation dialog to work with enabling the ComputerBrowser service. However, this solution has a major drawback: The ComputerBrowser service itself depends on File and Printersharing. All these services are disabled by default on a Windows Server 2008 for instance.
In most cases you won’t be able to tell your customers they need to enable and active several services only for your setup to work. So I guess the bad news is that you will need to find a work around.
What I did, by the way, is implementing a couple of own Custom Actions and replace the calls in InstallShields’ dialogs with my own ones. That works like a charm.
If you are trying to deal with Security Descriptors, Access Control Lists, permissions and all that funny stuff, you might have already thought about why the hell nobody implemented an easy to use managed library for it yet.
Well. Somebody did.
There used to be a sample called Microsoft.Win32.Security that was released for free on gotdotnet. When you are reading this, I bet you already know that and found out that GDN does not exist anymore and Microsoft somehow forgot to put the code up on MSDN.
Also you will almost certainly already have stumbled across this site, that newsgroup and in case you are actually searching for a way of playing with DCOM also across myITforum and maybe Acresso.
If you also found out that the Assembly was built for .NET 1.1 and Microsoft already implemented an own (official) wrapper for .NET 2.0 and called it System.Security.AccessControl and if you also found out that it does not contain the features you needed, than read further.
Although you won’t find the official source of Microsoft.Win32.Security, there is at least one project still active that makes use of it and – fortunate for us – contains the complete sources. The project’s name is FlexWiki and you can download its sources easily with any Subversion Browser. Here is how:
For the last step you will have to enter the following URL: https://flexwiki.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/flexwiki and simply check out the main trunk.
You will find the sources for the Microsoft.Win32.Security assembly right under flexwikicore/trunk/lib/Win32Security. In the bin subfolder there already is a compiled dll you can use right away.
Hope that this information if useful for someone. If so, please comment.
Did you ever get to know something that existed right in front of you for years but you didn’t notice (like… factory farming for instance)?
Then look at this:
