Here Are My Favorite AR Apps [AUGMENTED REALITY]

So AR is the future of marketing and the future of taking full advantage of your smart phone.  Here are a few of my favorites who have broken into the AR tech. early.

1.) Google Sky Map 

You probably have heard of Google Sky Map and quite rightly too. Whether you are an amateur astronomer or simply a Carl Sagan look-a-like, being able to gaze up at the stars and identify constellations, stars and planets drip in geeky-cool.

All you need to do is point your phone upwards toward the night sky and everything is identified in front of you in real time. Move your camera around, and the details will change with the direction you’re pointing at. Brilliant for educational purposes too. And as you should expect from Google, the application is smooth and super-easy to use.

Price: Free
Requires: 1.5 and up
Market Link: Google Sky Map
Developer: Google Inc.
Full Review: Google Sky Map

2.) Layar 

Layar was the first Android AR app I ever tried and watching an early demo of it encouraged me to buy an Android in the first place. Layar adds a variety of ‘layers’ to your phones camera world-view. The app really is a bundle of different apps in one as you can search for houses for sale, local people on Twitter, play games or even identify places where crime has taken place!

There are loads of different layers available through the app so well worth exploring in depth to get the best out of it. The UI is incredibly polished and intuitive, blending useful function with a good-looking interface. While most AR apps usually work quite well, few have as good an interface as Layar.

Price: Free
Requires: 1.5 and up
Market Link: Layar
Developer: Layar
Full Review: Layar
3.) Color Blindness Simulator 

Color Blindness is a clever app that demonstrates vision from the perspective of someone who is color blind. Through the camera the view splits into a normal view and a color blind view, enabling you to compare and see how color blindness can affect people.

You could actually also use this if you think you might be color blind yourself. If you cannot tell the difference between the two images it might be worth getting it checked out!

Price: Free
Requires: 2.1 and up
Market Link: Color Blindness Simulator
Developer: Seewald Solutions
4.) Junaio 

Another AR browser, you can view different things through Junaio depending on your preferences. So, if you are out and looking for the nearest fast food restaurant the app can tell you through your camera viewer. It also features a comprehensive bar code scanner and the ability to save favourites.

While not quite as fully-featured as Layar, Junaio works very well and includes a number of different functions. I particularly enjoyed a virtual tour of Valencia in Spain, but there is lots to play with in the app.

Price: Free
Requires: 2.1 and up
Market Link: Junaio
Developer: metaio GmbH
5.) GeoGoggle 

GeoGoggle lets you view accurate geographical information around you. It lets you see your longtitude and latitude, altitude, direction (via a 3D compass), and speed, as well as the distance to a specified location. Using your GPS the app can integrate with Geocaching apps like c:geo. You can also take pictures using the app.

An additional feature of GeoGoggle enables you to view a map and see where you have taken particular photographs in a certain location. The app has a rich UI, is very polished and works incredibly well, providing a great information resource; it’s ideal for outdoorsy-types and adventurers.

Price: Free
Requires: 2.1 and up
Market Link: GeoGoggle
Developer: peko56
6.) Paintball 

Paintball allows you to play real-time AR paintball through your Android. Simply get a few Android-toting buddies to download the app, link up and away you go. The game lets you build up points for bonuses too, and you can earn new virtual paintballing weaponry. The game detects the color of shirt your opponent is wearing, allowing you to target them. You can set times for specific matches and actually save your best shots to view back.

While it might be a hassle to get enough friends with Androids over to try it out, it is great fun and works really well… and you avoid the massive bruises and hurt egos you get from normal paintballing!

Price: Free
Requires: 2.2 and up
Market Link: Paintball
Developer: Mambo Studios
7.) Wikitude World Browser

Wikitude World Browser is probably the king of augmented reality information apps. In your camera viewer it lets you see Wikipedia articles, ATM machine locations, local restaurants, Tweets, FourSquare locations, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos and lots more… all local to you. The UI in the app is superb and the AR is accurate and well displayed.

Price: FreeYou could also download ‘Wikitude Drive’ which presents a unique sat-nav experience. Instead of following the map, simply follow the lines placed right along your route. The app is great for exploring new places or making the most of those around you. Wikitude World Browser has won various awards and should be considered one of those ‘essential’ apps people talk incessantly about.

Requires: 1.6 and up
Market Link: Wikitude World Browser
Developer: Wikitude GmbH

 

 

8.)  SpecTrek  <– good halloween app

Go ghost-hunting with this fun and clever game! The app recognizes your location and places around you a number of ghosts and bonuses. You

must find these ghosts and trap them. In order to do so, simply get as close to them as possible and fire a special net at them. You can see the ghosts through your viewer, hovering scarily in front of you! You can time games and build up points and bonuses.

SpecTrek is great for getting out of the house and improving fitness, especially as the game gets gradually harder, with more area to cover the more you play it. Brilliant for children too.

Price: Free or $2.49
Requires: 1.5
Market Link: SpecTrek
Developer: Games4All

For a more complete list and written reviews of each app check out a full article HERE

 

 

 

 

USA Government Executes USA Citizen Without A Trial Or Due Process [CORRUPTION]

I KNOW WHATS COMING. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO TELL ME ITS OKAY BECUASE HE WAS A TERRORIST.  HE WAS RESPONCIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF AMERICANS ETC ETC, I UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM.  THERE IS A VERY SLIM CHANCE HE DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE.  BUT HOW CAN WE BE SURE IF THERE WAS NEVER A TRIAL. THE ONLY THING THAT CAN BE PROVEN NOW IS THAT THSI GUY DIDN’T LIKE AMERICA AND SPOKE OUT AGAINST OUR GOVERNMENT, SO THE KILLED HIM. THIS IS A SCARY MOMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.  UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WE HAVE TAKEN TO ASSASSINATING CITIZENS WITHOUT A TRIAL. SOUNDS GOOD WHEN IT S A TERRORIST, UNTIL THEY CLAIM YOU ARE A TERRORIST OR SOMEONE YOU CARE ABOUT IS ONE. CHECK OUT THE STORY FROM WASHINGTON BELOW.

 

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

Site Intelligence, via European Pressphoto Agency

Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric who was an American citizen, was killed in Yemen.

 The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.

But the document that laid out the administration’s justification — a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 — was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.

The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.

It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki wasaccused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was also accused of playing a role in a failed plot to bomb two cargo planes last year, part of a pattern of activities that counterterrorism officials have said showed that he had evolved from merely being a propagandist — in sermons justifying violence by Muslims against the United States — to playing an operational role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s continuing efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.

Other assertions about Mr. Awlaki included that he was a leader of the group, which had become a “cobelligerent” with Al Qaeda, and he was pushing it to focus on trying to attack the United States again. The lawyers were also told that capturing him alive among hostile armed allies might not be feasible if and when he were located.

Based on those premises, the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.

It then considered possible obstacles and rejected each in turn.

Among them was an executive order that bans assassinations. That order, the lawyers found, blocked unlawful killings of political leaders outside of war, but not the killing of a lawful target in an armed conflict.

A federal statute that prohibits Americans from murdering other Americans abroad, the lawyers wrote, did not apply either, because it is not “murder” to kill a wartime enemy in compliance with the laws of war.

But that raised another pressing question: would it comply with the laws of war if the drone operator who fired the missile was a Central Intelligence Agency official, who, unlike a soldier, wore no uniform? The memorandum concluded that such a case would not be a war crime, although the operator might be in theoretical jeopardy of being prosecuted in a Yemeni court for violating Yemen’s domestic laws against murder, a highly unlikely possibility.

Then there was the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that a “person” cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that the government may not deprive a person of life “without due process of law.”

The memo concluded that what was reasonable, and the process that was due, was different for Mr. Awlaki than for an ordinary criminal. It cited court cases allowing American citizens who had joined an enemy’s forces to be detained or prosecuted in a military court just like noncitizen enemies.

It also cited several other Supreme Court precedents, like a 2007 caseinvolving a high-speed chase and a 1985 case involving the shooting of a fleeing suspect, finding that it was constitutional for the police to take actions that put a suspect in serious risk of death in order to curtail an imminent risk to innocent people.

The document’s authors argued that “imminent” risks could include those by an enemy leader who is in the business of attacking the United States whenever possible, even if he is not in the midst of launching an attack at the precise moment he is located.

Run iOS 5 On Your Android Device [LAUNCHER]

Well kinda sorta.  It is actually just a launcher app for android in the market, but we know that Android can already do everything Apple does already. Reference iOS5′s Top Ten “New” Features That My Android Has Had FOREVER. [TECH REVIEW]  Check out the app HERE

Description

Espier launcher is a mobile phone/tablet desktop software based on Android 2.2 or above version.It brings you the new Android operating experience. For example, it’s easy to operate shortcut icons, folders, and function switches. You can manage multi task and uninstall programs conveniently. Also the natural gestures operation gives you smooth and fluent user experience.

Please visit Espier launcher official microblog: http://weibo.com/espier

 

 

The Terrible Effects Of A Fatherless Family On Both Sons And Daughters, And The New Stats To Back It Up [BASTARDS]

This one goes out to all of the dads out there who do not take good enough care of their children.  And by GOOD ENOUGH I mean staying married to their mother and living in the same home as them, not just supplying them with $$$.  New Studies have provided information that shows boys who grow up in a fatherless household are at a serious disadvantage in life AND IT IS YOUR FAULT FOR LEAVING.

Article originally posted HERE

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of children living in mother-only households has risen from 8 percent in 1960 to 23 percent in 2010. Freakonomics has a long-standing interest in the role parents play in the lives of their children, and while we usually find no merit in helicopter parenting, a basic level of involvement is obviously important. Past research has shown that a father’s involvement with his children is linked to all kinds of beneficial outcomes, from higher academic achievement, improved social and emotional well-being, to lower incidences of delinquency, risk taking, and other problem behaviors.

A new working paper from authors Deborah A. Cobb-Clark and Erdal Tekin examines the relationship between juvenile delinquency and the role of a father in the household, particularly in terms of the different effects an absent father has on boys and girls. They discovered, among other things, that sons benefit far more from a father (or father-figure) than daughters do. From the abstract:

…we find that adolescent boys engage in more delinquent behavior if there is no father figure in their lives. However, adolescent girls’ behavior is largely independent of the presence (or absence) of their fathers.

Though a non-residential father isn’t ideal, a father-like replacement does have positive effects on boys. A stepfather tends to reduce delinquent behavior, and having a father figure who puts in a significant quantity of time around a child is important.

Adolescent boys who have a father figure in their lives are significantly less likely to engage in subsequent delinquent behavior than are their peers with no father in their lives.  For example, the incidence of any form of delinquent behavior is 7.6 percentage points lower among boys living with their biological fathers and is 8.5 percentage points lower among boys who live with stepfathers and have no relationship with their biological fathers.

While daughters generally require a level of quality interaction with a father figure, sons benefit from sheer quantity of time, and respond simply to having a father or father figure around the house. Most interestingly, however, is the finding that daughters appear to be adversely affected by contact with their non-residential biological father.

It is also important to note that growing up with only a non-residential, biological  father who spent time talking with his adolescent daughter appears to be associated with slight increases in her delinquent behavior as measured by any type of crime, violent crime, and selling drugs once she reaches adulthood. This surprising result may be due to the possibility that these verbal interactions between the non-residential father and the adolescent  is an indication of a problematic relationship between the two, which might have manifested itself as delinquent behavior later in life.

For both young men and women, delinquent behavior decreased if their mothers simply spent time “doing things” with them during their adolescence. Mothers also do significantly more “talking” with their daughters than with their sons, a potential contributor for why sons are more affected by the absence of a father than daughters are. However, the authors note that:

Mothers also do not appear to compensate for the complete absence of a father figure by increasing their involvement with their children. In fact, it is those children without a father figure in their lives who engage in fewer activities and talk about fewer issues with their mothers.

Facebook Plants Hidden Cookies On Your Computer That Track Your Usage And Page Viewing Even When You Are Logged Out [CREEPBOOK]

It’s no secret that Facebook and privacy have had some issues. Take today, for example. Thanks to a modified cookie, Facebook knows where you are online—even when you’re not logged into Facebook.

This article was originally posted  HERE »  but to my knowledge Facebook pressured the news media company who supports Gizmodo into pulling the article shortly after it was launched.

 

A World Map Of The Internet [PICTURES]

While surfing the internet the other day i was looking for random content for the blog and I realized I had never seen a map of how the internet is all… well…. INTERCONNECTED. I found this…

Turns out there were actually picture of the internet on the internet above was a shot of Europe. And Below is a shot of the golf coast.

Then I also realized Gizmodo wrote an article about it.  check it out HERE

This Is the Internet

The Internet isn’t only on your screen. Or behind your couch. Or in Google’s data centers. It’s also underwater, where fiber-optic cables stretch across oceans and loop around continents.

Satellites are like dial-up. Nobody uses them. Undersea cables make the Internet global, with the most sophisticated of them capable of transmitting nearly ten terabits of data per second, compressed through just a handful of fiber-optic strands. There are only hundreds of these cables in waters around the world. And they are all preposterously proportioned, as thin as a garden hose and as long as-actually, nothing. No human construction matches them. They are the longest tubes ever made, and, for the first time ever, there’s a truly accurate interactive online map of them.

For a decade, Washington DC-based Telegeography has been publishing an undersea cable map. But it’s always been on paper, delivered in a cardboard tube, and sold for $250. But starting today (right this second, actually) the company has put its map online, for free, and made it interactive. And rather than scraping data from Wikipedia, Telegeography’s Internet cartographers get information the old fashioned way: They ask the cable owners, who happily share the location of their landing stations and the current bandwidth capacity of their systems.

But only to a point. Telegeography has limited how far you can zoom in on the map, keeping the exact locations secret. But is even that much information dangerous? Telegeography’s Stephan Beckert doesn’t think so. “It’s actually more dangerous to not know where the fiber is, because it makes it harder to plan redundancy in networks,” he says. For a big network buying wholesale bandwidth across the pond-say a Facebook, Microsoft, or Citibank-the map is an essential tool. For the first time ever, we get to ogle the actual cables that carry the Internet, on the Internet.

---

Andrew Blum (@ajblum) is the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, coming soon.

2011 World Series Game 6 Was A Night Too Remember!!! [NOTES & VIDEO]

Freese had the game-tying triple in the 9th before hitting the walk-off homer in the 11th. He’s the first player in World Series history to have a pair of tying or go-ahead hits in the 9th inning or later of the same game. Only seven others have two such hits in their careers, and only three (Joe Morgan, Roger Peckinpaugh, Tris Speaker) did those within the same series (but in different games).

What Freese and Berkman did in the 9th and 10th innings had only been done two times before in World Series history. Only Otis Nixon in 1992 and Josh DeVoe in 1911 had a game-tying RBI in the 9th inning or later with his team one out from being eliminated. [+]

Game-tying RBI in 9th inning or later – 1 out from World Series Elimination

Lance Berkman 2011 Cardinals David Freese 2011 Cardinals Otis Nixon 1992 Braves Josh DeVore 1911 Giants Close [X]

Coincidentally (not ironically), David Freese was traded to the Cardinals for Jim Edmonds. They are the only two players in franchise history with postseason walk-off home runs in extra innings. [+]

Extra-Inning HR Cardinals Postseason History

Opponent 2011 David Freese Game 6 WS Rangers* 2004 Jim Edmonds Game 6 NLCS Astros* 1964 Tim McCarver Game 5 WS Yankees *Walk-off HR Close [X]

New Posts Coming This Week.

So I started a new job this week.

YES the crazy sign guy has moved off the street and into an office, but I still have a bunch of cool new posts coming. 

Here the list:

1.) A map of the internet world.
2.) More shady stuff facebook is doing to your phone and computer to track you.
3.) The effects of a fatherless family on both sons and daughters and stats to back up the claims.
4.) How to make your android phone run iSO5
5.) My list of great AR apps
6.) Secret USA government memos sent out to order assassinations of American citizens

So come back and check again later this weekend all should be posted by Saturday afternoon.

Thanx again for following the Blog. 

Fred Jones aka the crazy sign guy

Announcement To The World [Vendetta Speech Edit]

Good evening, World. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine — the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any person. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this OWS protest, as a day that is truly should be remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the nightstick may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?
Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. *And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.* How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease, poverty. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the corrupt governments and powerful corporations of the world. They promised you order, they promised you peace, They promise you prosperity and all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

Yesterday we sought to end that silence. Yesterday we OCCUPIED more than 1800 cities world wide, to remind everyone of what it has FORGOTTEN. We are the majority. Our hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of these governments remain unknown to you then I would suggest that you allow the world to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, outside the doors of corruption across the globe, and together we shall give them an event that shall never, ever be forgot.

Michigan State’s Performance Today Was A Disgrace To The Sportsmanship Of The B1G!.[Michigan vs. Michigan State 2011]

Now The B1G Even Agrees With Me… They B1G commissioner Jim Delany asked Michigan State To look into possible played code of conduct violations during the game against Michigan. Check out the ESPN article HERE

As a college football fan, and a huge B1G fan I was embarrassed for the Michigan State program today. Michigan State played one of the dirtiest football games I have ever seen even though they won. This was their chance to show themselves off on a national stage as a legitimate contender, and as a premiere member of the B1G conference.  They celebrated this occasion by having at least 5 penalties for cheap shots on Michigan players including 3 extremely late hits on Denard Robinson and a punch to the face to another Michigan offensive lineman. Line Backer William Gholston should have been eject from the game for his punch to the face of Taylor Lewan and if Mark D’Antonio had any class at all he would have pulled him from the game himself.

They had a total of 13 penalties for 124 yards, most coming from late hits and unnecessary roughness. Michigan State also got away with a taunt that was not called on the final touchdown they scored, in my opinion a terrible no call if they called back the touchdown that LSU had last week.  Michigan States performance today was a disgrace to the sportsmanship of the BIG TEN conference and Mark D’Antonio should be ashamed with how his players carried themselves on the field today. WATCH OUT FOR THIS RIVALRY GAME NEXT SEASON BECAUSE I CAN TELL YOU MICHIGAN WILL BE LOOKING FOR REVENGE.

For more information on the Unsportsmanlike conduct that took place during this game check HERE