technology

Apple Maps inaccuracies in emergency services apps

Posted by hil

It’s a problem when inaccurate maps are used in apps that are supplying what might be critical emergency information to the public.

Yesterday in our record heat many people were using Fires Near Me, an app by the NSW Rural Fire Service. It maps and advises on bushfires that are currently burning in NSW. It’s a good development and a useful app. But on an iPhone (there is an android version) it relies on the half-baked Apple Maps. Check out some of the inaccuracies in my region around Canberra. Firstly, here is the accurate Google map of the area (on the left) compared with the Apple Map version.

firemap_3 firemap_4

On Apple Maps Cooma and Goulburn are both grossly misplaced, Queanbeyan to a lesser extent. Here’s how Cooma and Goulburn (about 40 km and 20 kms out respectively, and on the wrong sides of the highways) appeared on Fires Near Me yesterday, with the red dots showing where they should be:

firemap_1afiremap_2a

It seems that the fire locations are probably right, but not the towns, but you have to have local or on-the-ground knowledge to know that. Last December Victoria Police spoke of their concern about people being led astray into a wilderness area when they were trying to get to Mildura using Apple Maps. The mistake was not wholly Apple’s, and perhaps this is a similar problem, a confusion over same-named larger council areas.

Luckily yesterday this wasn’t critical, but you can imagine in some scenarios it could be. The app comes with a barrage of disclaimers, and the sensible advice to gather information from a variety of sources. But given the propensity to blame authorities (and more recently, the scientists providing information that warnings are based on) for lack of adequate warning after the fact, even in circumstances that are impossibly unpredictable, you can imagine what would be made of wrong information like this if it did play a role in a bushfire tragedy.

I don’t want to be seen at all as down on emergency service organisations. They do an amazing job and we rely on them. They are also trying to keep up with new technology and avenues of communication, some unrealistic public safety expectations and pressure from an increasingly litigious culture which seems to require scapegoats.

Robotic eyes and mouths as wearable rings

Posted by hil

 

I bet these would get snaffled as components for more complex puppets!

(via Laughing Squid)

An interactive animation of Starry Night

Posted by hil

I love this interactive animation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night! Made by Petros Vrellis with openFrameworks it imagines the energy flows in the painting and offers the ability to change them with touch-sensitive gestures. These also change the ambient background music.

(via Colossal)

Interactive Kinect Puppets

Posted by hil

Shortly after the Kinect was launched in late 2010 Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson from Design I/O used it make a quick interactive puppet protoype by skeleton tracking on an arm. Their updated 2.0 installation above, Puppet Parade, looks great fun, allowing

children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or making food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.

The unedited clip where it is easier to see the movements in more focus is also interesting. Although these are made differently they share some qualities with Philip Worthington’s earlier Shadow Monsters.

Some thoughts on 3D printing and the arts

Posted by hil

If you want to blow your mind, take a journey into the revolutionary realm of 3D printing. Rapid prototyping has been around for about 20 years, but 3D printing seems now to be quickly becoming a viable manufacturing process for a wide range of materials and objects. There are lots of examples, of which the following are only a small selection:

Like other disruptive technology, 3D printing looks as if it will follow the path of offering the ability to decentralize and customise, and to make unique things cost effectively.

It’s interesting to consider what impact this is already having and going to have on artists and how they make things, as it becomes mainstream. Imagine, we can digitally sculpt or scan something in 3D (or photograph it, send the photos to somewhere like Photofly to get them stitched into a 3D scan), then send the files to a fabricator or perhaps even our own 3D printer , and there it is. There is the obvious debate between new and old, manufactured and handmade, and whether quality will be enhanced or compromised.  Most likely 3D printing will become an additional useful tool for some processes, components and items, and competency in these technologies will become more expected in the arts industry.  And, entirely handmade is likely to become rarer but more valuable.

Being John Malkovich via real-time facial recognition

Posted by hil

Anyone involved in puppetry in any way knows that the first question you get asked is ‘So, have you seen that movie Being John Malkovich?” Here’s a system where you can control the face of someone else – even John Malcovich – using facial recognition in realtime via a webcam.

Puzzling over twitter app tweet preferencing

Posted by hil

Why do the Twitterific, Twitter for Mac and Twitter for iPhone apps preference against tweets in the recent past? For example, if I want to catch up with what’s happened overnight – the US day – the feed has a gap in it jumping from, say, 3 hours ago to 16 hours ago. The Twitter for iPhone app lets you load more into the gap, but it’s not ideal.

It’s not as if I want to necessarily read all of those tweets, I’m quite happy to fish what I want out of the passing river of news, and let the rest go. And it’s not that I’m not comfortable with the philosophy that if something important has happened the river will deliver it a number of times over. What I don’t understand is why the apps choose not to just let the river flow past me. What possible reason is there to preference tweets from 16 hours or a few days ago over what happened in the last 10 hours?

LetterMPress: letterpress app for iPad

Posted by hil

I imagine a large part of the attraction of letterpress printing is to do with the physical handling of the type, and it being a hands-on process. But the argument made by designer John Bonadies for LetterMPress, a proposed virtual letterpress app iPad, is that it will  ‘give designers, artists, students, lovers of type—anyone—the ability to produce their own authentic letterpress designs and artwork’ when wood type and vintage cuts have become sought after and rare.

I’m not sure if letterpress artists and printers will regard this as encouraging the preservation and recognition of the aesthetic qualities of letterpress, or as an undermining of the art. But it looks like an app I would find attractive.

(via Laughing Squid)

And now, a giant robotic sock puppet!

Posted by hil

Mr Weekend is a giant (4.5 metre tall) robotic sock puppet made by Michael Simi. He is fashioned over a large mechanical hand from a defunct Michigan car factory and is having some difficulty adjusting to his change of job into the art world…

(via @JudexJones)