Decius wrote:
] ] M Ken Co has developed technology that allows users of cell
] phones
] ] with a camera function to photograph an advertisement
] containing an
] ] electronic watermark and then immediately connect to a
] related website.
]
] Smartest application for watermarks ever.

so it's a cuecat for your phone. or, well, the conceptual basis of the cuecat, made to work via camera phones.

i never really thought much of the concept personally. most companies got sites that match their advertised trademarks, so it's reare to have any issue finding a company site on the web.

maybe my imagination is stifled this morning, but i really can't think of uses for this that would be terribly useful.

inignoct wrote:
] so it's a cuecat for your phone. or, well, the conceptual
] basis of the cuecat, made to work via camera phones.

Yes, but no. Its a cellphone. Its mobile. This is not some guy sitting next to his computer with a gadget in one hand and a magazine in the other trying to scan in an ugly bar code because he is too dense to type in a url. This is people walking around IRL accessing web pages associated with physical objects, and physical places. Not just advertisements. Anyone can create anything that is tied to the web this way. You can make stickers for your band and put them up all over town and people who figure out that you've watermarked them can access your band's website this way.

This is a way to interconnect the real world with the network. I think the possiblities are absolutely fantastic. When this takes off there will groups of people running around the city taking pictures of things just to see if there might be a watermark. People will run urban scavenger hunts by leaving marked stickers all over the place that only people with this software will understand.

I think memestreams users ought to sticker up the city. When you access the stickers you get taken to a memestreams thread about the physical location where you found the sticker, in the same way that the discussion bookmarklet ties you back to memestreams threads from web pages all over the net.

This is almost as cool as ubiquitous GPS, and its a hell of a lot cheaper and a hell of a lot smaller.

] Yes, but no. Its a cellphone. Its mobile.

sure. like i said, and that's it's only technological advancement over the cuecat.

] People will run urban scavenger hunts by leaving marked stickers
] all over the place

i guess you could call this advancement.

] I think memestreams users ought to sticker up the city. When
] you access the stickers you get taken to a memestreams thread
] about the physical location where you found the sticker, in
] the same way that the discussion bookmarklet ties you back to
] memestreams threads from web pages all over the net.

that could be cool, but i think GPS will become small and cheap enough, soon enough, that this tech won't stick.

the article was super lite on info all in all... i wonder how much data a given watermark can represent, and i wonder just how it's made not too visible to consumers, but identifiable by software processing a low rez photo. I also wonder how much you'll have to pay for both the service and the licence to create watermarks of your own...

i guess i just see it as a gadget, more than a transformational tool, and as the latter, i'm not sure i like the transformations i forsee. i'll reserve judgement, i suppose, until some real information is published and i get a better feel for why it's a good thing to be able to tag the earth with URLs, especially when it's a literal, physical, nonbiodegradable tag, potenetially many of them, all over everything.

while a ways off, a better solution is to tag digital resources with the geographical location (or region, or state, or whatever) relevant to them (if any). So, if you want to know things about "here", whereever you are, let the gps inform the network of what "here" is, tell it what degree of specificity you want (again, regional, state, city, or right-fucking-here-where-im-standing) and get back results from the network of documents relevant to your location. Lists of restaurants, nearby public phones, attractions, stores, maps, directions, someone on your contact list having lunch at the bistro on the next block, the website for the store you're in, current flight schedules for the nearby airport (with your flights at the top, since you've got that data in an email and your KM knows about that...). This is the kind of real world convergence i want.

And i want it out of a 8.5 x 11 x .3 inch, sub-3-pound tablet too, while i'm tossing my futurist cap on. ;)

privacy and security concerns arising from a personal network connected gps certainly bear some analysis, of course.

inignoct wrote:
] sure. like i said, and that's it's only technological
] advancement over the cuecat.

In the sense that the automobile is only technological advancement over the horse and carriage.

] that could be cool, but i think GPS will become small and
] cheap enough, soon enough, that this tech won't stick.

Thats certainly a possibility, but only time will tell. One advantage that this has over the GPS model is that it can be attached to things which tend to change their location.

] the article was super lite on info all in all... i wonder how
] much data a given watermark can represent,

Watermarks contain numbers which are indexes into an online database which can contain as much information as you want.

] and i wonder just
] how it's made not too visible to consumers, but identifiable
] by software processing a low rez photo.

In this case by making color changes that are inperceptible to the naked eye but picked up by your CCD. Most audio and photographic watermarks are designed to survive extremely lossy data conversions without being perceptible.

] I also wonder how much you'll have to pay for both the
] service and the licence to create watermarks of your own...

I think *I* can create a service which does this. I'll be looking into it. Expect it to be inexpensive. The encoding technology you need is already in photoshop. I need to look into how much the decoding technology costs.

] better feel for why it's a good thing to be able to tag the
] earth with URLs, especially when it's a literal, physical,
] nonbiodegradable tag, potenetially many of them, all over
] everything.

Well, my example was just that. In most cases we already have these tags all over the place. Everything is permiated with ads. I'm not really suggesting that people sticker up the whole planet. I think it would be neat to play with, but its not scalable. If we really want this stuff everywhere then there ought to be a well known watermark and centrally assigned numbers like the UPC bar code system. That way anyone can build a database off of the index numbers. There'll be an offcial system that gives you url resolutions, but you can query the tags against other systems which might offer different kinds of information.

] while a ways off, a better solution is to tag digital
] resources with the geographical location (or region, or state,
] or whatever) relevant to them (if any). So, if you want to
] know things about "here", whereever you are, let the gps
] inform the network of what "here" is, tell it what degree of
] specificity you want (again, regional, state, city, or
] right-fucking-here-where-im-standing) and get back results
] from the network of documents relevant to your location.

I definately want this too. Wanted it for a while now. I'm just excited about this technology because its a way that I can have something sort of like the GPS utopia, but I can have it right now.

Decius wrote:
] ] M Ken Co has developed technology that allows users of cell
] phones
] ] with a camera function to photograph an advertisement
] containing an
] ] electronic watermark and then immediately connect to a
] related website.
]
] Smartest application for watermarks ever. This is a way to
] interconnect the real world the network. I think the
] applications are absolutely fantastic. This is going to be
] big.
]
] If anyone on Memestreams owns a camera phone please
] contact me.

I'm getting ready to buy one. I'll let you know when I do. My phone has a camera attachment, but I currently don't have one.