White paper release: “Development of location based services”

Written by Martin Thörnkvist | April 28, 2010 | No comments

Rikard Windh (@mrwindh) from Combain is the editor of a white paper that was released yesterday at Elbes. The aim is to be a “kick start in your LBS project” and is a work thru of which technologies are available for positioning, which devices you can develop for and possible databases of information to add on your service.

Download the white paper for free here.

Elbes 2010 in pictures

Written by Pelle Sten | April 28, 2010 | No comments

Where are you?

Written by Helena Collin | April 27, 2010 | No comments

Is that a question you use today?

One interesting thing today at European Local Based Entertainment Summit was Rikard Windhs (@mrwindh) comment that social positioning isn’t new in any way. When he said that I really couldn’t understand it – for me social positioning is something that came together with the mobile devices.  But after a while I understand what he meant – first with the mobile phone our first question when we call someone is; where are you?

That time is over; today at the summit we have been talking about everything we could do when it comes to new games in the field of local based services. One of the biggest problems we stands for today here in Sweden is the fact that the most of the needed data is not free for developers to use. One good example where you can find some free data is on the site www.opengove.se – I really hope to see more of that in the future!

Non visual augmented reality

Written by Martin Thörnkvist | April 27, 2010 | No comments

The description of augmented reality has for me, until today, been “visual objects projected on the reality”. But, as Charlotte Magnusson pointed out in her speech, “we can use other senses than just vision”. Of course the reality can be enhanced in other ways than visually. For example, if you’re visiting an archaeological site you could hear people from the past doing there labour or people chatting about that big mountain that might have some volcanic action going on.

Furthermore Charlotte runs a project called Haptimap that seeks to combine virtual feelings with maps. For example, we could attach sensors to our bodies that give us impulses that have certain meanings and thereby are able to guide us. Imaging biking thru a city for the first time and instead of a map for directions get impulses on your arms that tells you which way to turn next. You can have both hands on the handle and focus on dodging busses and other dangerous traffic.

My perspective on augmented reality just got broader.

Kicking it off with Elbes

Written by Martin Thörnkvist | April 27, 2010 | No comments

The hype around places as a social objects is growing and this time it seems to have a real and durable value. Today the Nordic Game conference is kicking off with Elbes, European Location Based Entertainment Summit.

Location based services are popping up every day and the use of the Foursquare and Gowalla is exploding. For most of us these location based services are a relatively new experience which appeared due to a number of technical implementations in our mobile phones.

For the game industry the phenomenon is not that new and those new services we use in our daily lives has borrowed a lot of game mechanics that are in play. For those of us that originate from other media businesses there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the game industry about the possibilities that exist around this technology and the power of creating content around specific locations.

We have an interesting day ahead with, among others, filmmaker Scott Hessels that will talk about his GPS film) and Matthias Gullbrandson (@MGullbrandson The Story Lab) that will present his new project Gränslandet that blends interactive environments with real life.

Introducing Nordic Game by Media Evolution

Written by Media Evolution | April 26, 2010 | No comments

On this site Media Evolutioners together with Petter Palander (@achaido), Helena Collin (@collinskan) and Cecilie Stranger-Thorsen (@cilistranger) will be blogging about what’s happening at the Nordic Game conference. The idea is to put the discussion into a broader media industry context. What’s happening right now in the game industry have implications and provide opportunities far beyond the own industry.

As you can see on the right we are collecting stream from Twitter, Flickr and Google. If you post tweets from about Nordic Game tag them with #ng10. Flickr-pictures including Nordic Game will end up in our stream.

Are you at the conference and want to participate with blog posts here, you are more than welcome. Contact Martin (@thornkvist).