Augmented Reality - Bridging the Gap Between the Real and Virtual Consumer Experience

What is AR?

Simply put, Augmented Reality enables superimposition of computer generated data onto our direct experience of reality. It aims to enhance the user's current awareness of reality by supplementing the real world with 3D virtual objects.

The term - Augmented Reality - was originally coined in 1990 by former Boeing researcher Tom Caudell. The technology gradually spread to other platforms such as mobile applications in 2008. New AR mapping and social tools such as Taggar - launched in 2013 - have made AR sociable by creating the ability to share hidden, "mutually" personal images, objects or locations.

How does AR Work?

AR can be achieved by applying two simple methods:

Marker-based systems

This method uses the physical world as a reference point to overlay graphics. For instance, placing a 2-dimensional printed marker in front of a web camera. The computer then comprehends this instruction to produce an overlapping illusion on-screen as if it were directly on top of the marker in the real world.

Markerless systems

This method involves using a combination of devices including electronic devices, accelerometer, compass and location data - such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) - to determine the position of objects in the physical world. At the same time, it detects the location of the physical world along with its axis.

What are the applications of AR?

The AR applications market is expected to register exponential growth - from USD 181.3 million in 2011 to USD 5.2 billion by 2017, at a compounded annual growth rate of over 95 per cent.

Many industries are already adopting this technology but the most obvious application of AR lies in mobile communications. The combined revenues from paid downloads, post-download items and advertising is expected to climb. Moreover, users who have used AR applications in their smartphone generally have positive feedback for developers such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, to name a few.

According to a wearables technology survey conducted in 2015, 52 per cent of businesses reported that AR technology is crucial in the wearable tech field. And it should be noted that 71 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24 prefer 'wearable technology' that allows them to carry out their daily activities with relative ease.

Prominent examples of various AR applications include:

Google Glass

Google glass - a type of wearable voice-controlled android device - resembles a pair of 'glasses'. It was first released in United Kingdom in January 2015. It allows users to take hands free pictures, videos as well as send messages. The user is able to see real world surroundings and use the glasses to perform multiple mundane activities such as driving, walking safely on roads and participating in sports as it provides an enhanced sense of the real world.

Be Careful When Following the Crazy Yellow Brick Link Trail

Links, what are they? When you go to a web site, links are the little bits of information that when clicked on will take you to another website of similar context. The thing is, with these strange and mysterious human minds of ours that we know so little about, these links if navigated subconsciously can take one to places of information you normally would never travel to. You could start out in the light and end up in a black hole. Let me give you an example of a trail I recently traveled without really thinking.

The other day I decided to search for a web site about one of my all time favorite musicians, Arlo Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie is a folk musician, son of another famous musician Woody Guthrie. When I was a little kid, one of the coolest things to do was to listen to his story/song entitled 'The Motorcycle Song'. So, I found his personal website through a Google search and it was pretty cool, and very positive. Guthrie runs a charity organization and a multi-religious church center where money is raised to help people with illnesses as well as giving less fortunate people a place to pray, meditate or just get off the streets.

So, I'm reading all about Arlo in his biography and there's a link to his court statement at the famous Chicago Seven court case. Well, as I'm a young guy I had never heard of this case, my curiosity was piqued and I clicked on the link. Next I was reading Arlo's funny comments about the time he was arrested for disposing of garbage in an illegal area on Thanksgiving because the dump was closed. Of course if you know about Guthrie you'd know that his famous song 'Alice's Restaurant' was based on this story. I get to the finish of the court transcript and there's a link for the 'Famous Trials' web site that the Chicago Seven trial was a page of.

Not thinking, I click on the site and start to absent-mindedly scan through all the famous court cases listed. Remember, I was originally looking up my old buddy Arlo, now I'm in a world of laws and crime. Well, I come across this crazy looking face: Charles Manson, and for some unknown unconscious reason I click on his court case. I didn't know much about the guy, but maybe because both my parents are x-hippies and he was from their era...

Now I'm spending an hour of my time (and nothing is more valuable than time, except love and peace) reading about the gruesome murders of Manson's Family as his group of devoted followers was called. I didn't consider myself interested in this sort of evil stuff, and still don't, as my feeling after the experience was one of distaste, sadness and plain wonder as to how people can do these sorts of negative actions.

In the end, following the absent-minded link trail led me to a place so much darker than where I started. I don't know if I ever would have spent an hour of my life reading about Charles Manson otherwise. It's not my cup of tea you know. I'm into peaceful music, humorous novels, Tai Chi and foreign films. This can be taken as a sign that we must be careful, conscious and alert when we are searching the Internet. It is such a huge mass of information, and like all things in existence has its dark side as well as its light. Be careful Dorothy, the yellow brick link trail can lead to the wicked witch as well as the wonderful world of Oz.

Open Sesame - Password Security

"Open Sesame!" is probably the most famous password in literature. It gave Ali Baba access to vast treasure. In the realm of technology, computer passwords also give access to valuable treasures: precious business and personal data.

Information about your personal life, buying habits, credit quality and life style is valuable to those who can profit from it. For the Corporation, information has even greater worth. It is not the "Bricks and Mortar" but the intangibles such as intellectual property, client lists, market strategies, pricing and compensation that account for over half the value of the modern enterprise.

All of this personal and business data most likely resides on a database somewhere and is available with a password. In fact, passwords are the most common means of entry in any system. They are also acknowledged as the most vulnerable points for security. 

"Weak" or compromised passwords are the easiest way for hackers to gain entry into a system.

Simple or short passwords can be easily discovered through "brute force" or "dictionary" 

attacks which concentrate intense computer power to crack a password. A two letter password, for example, has only 676 combinations. A password with eight letters offers more safety with 208,000,000 combinations.

Ideally, a password should consist of 8 or more characters. They should also contain 

a mixture of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers. "A$d3B5i9X" would 

be an example. Microsoft security has encouraged the concept of the "Pass Phrase" as an alternative. A phrase such as,"TheLastGoodBookUBoughtCost$25!" has all of the needed elements and is also easy to remember.

The human factor or social engineering contributes to password compromises. It is estimated that employees share their password eight times a year. Passwords can also be cajoled from untrained or naïve workers. The standard rule is NEVER share a password. 

Remember the cliché of the "Six Degrees of Separation." You cannot know who will eventually end up with your password and own it.

To cope with these issues, many leading edge firms are adopting a defense in depth strategy utilizing three elements to better safeguard their information

The three layers of authentication consist of: 

What you know...

A strong password or pass phrase 

What you have...

A Crypto-key, smart card or token 

Who you are...

A biometric aspect such as fingerprint, hand, or retinal recognition

Usage of these three defensive measures will increase dramatically in the future as people seek to thwart ever increasing threats to their private and personal information. 

Many companies will be mandating them as a significant part of their security best- 

practices to safeguard an extremely valuable asset: their treasured data.

© 2004 Terrence F. Doheny

On Mining and Numerical Solutions

Algorithms for well-known mathematical functions have been developed in numerous ways. One single postulate is implemented under different configurations to accomplish the same results. It is precisely this flexibility that allows excellent choices when selecting appropriate software in mining projects. The application of numerical analysis in mining is essential where the selection of the best, most accurate subroutines will assist to process a solution faster.

Consider for example exploratory drilling in geology. When we have a number of data points obtained by sampling and experimentation, it is possible to construct a function that closely fits those data points in order to estimate the size of a mineral field available for extraction. There are various techniques for the solution of interpolation applications where algorithms based on Cubic Spline and Newton Divided Difference theory are often used.

We are cognizant that science and engineering concerns itself with the manipulation of vector and matrices. Why should we in mining be concerned with linear algebra? Linear algebra algorithms offer powerful operations defined for vectors and matrices, where the concise notation for vector and matrix operations can be directly adapted to mineral object-oriented programming. Very often solutions consist of large matrices that can be used to describe linear equations where matrices can be added, multiplied, transformed and decomposed in many ways. A very far-reaching and extremely useful tool.

Quite often optimization algorithms are used to find values of variables that yield a minimum or maximum function value. In mining, this optimization technique is applied to mineral extraction where the objective function consists of minimizing the total cost of mining based on constraint parameters. Restrictive parameters like grade of ore, transportation costs, manpower and other factors are applied. Several methods are available where the Simplex Method for multi-variable functions is widely used.

Complex numbers, complex functions and complex analysis in general are part of an important branch of mathematics. Complex numbers can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided just like real numbers. In mining the implementation of trigonometric functions (trigonometric, hyperbole, inverse) are often utilized to reflect fluctuations (terrain, faults) under certain conditions. Sine and Cosine Function based algorithms are often used.

When dealing with measurement data inaccuracies obtained from drilling or sampling, we know it will contain significant variations due to measurement errors. The purpose of curve fitting solutions is to find a smooth curve that on average fits the data points. Curve fitting is applied to data that contain gaps and tries to find the best fit to a set of given data where the curve does not necessarily pass through all the given data points. The Straight Line Fit Method and a Polynomial Curve Fitting Method for distinct order-polynomials are widespread utilized algorithms.

Many scientific and engineering phenomena are characterized by nonlinear behavior and solutions of nonlinear applications and is a fundamental issue in engineering analysis. The simplest case to find the single root of a single nonlinear functions is widely used in underground mining operations where situations call for special requirements in underground construction (I.e platform at a slope, or ventilation equipment, or similar patterns). The Newton-Raphson Method is one of many used in industry. Fixed Point and Birge-Vieta methods are also popular.

We may recall that numerical differentiation deals with the calculation of derivatives of a smooth function (by bringing back our high school math). In mining, numerical differentiation occasionally is used to calculate displacements sometimes due to exploratory drilling or similar activities where terrain displacements (or any other discrepancy) may show different stress concentrations considered under uniform stress. To find the stresses and hence the stress concentration factors, it is necessary to find the derivatives of those displacements. Many algorithms exist: The Forward Difference Method, Backward Difference Method, Richardson Extrapolation, Derivatives by Interpolation.

When it comes to solving problems that involve given starting conditions, such as, volume, time, space and other parameters, differential equation techniques.are used. Several numerical methods exist to solve ordinary and high-order differential equations. The use of differential equations in mineral engineering is extensive. The scope of applications is as diverse as evaluating tasks quantifying the grade and tonnage of a mineral occurrence to everyday complexity encountered in open pit mining or underground shaft sinking, block caving, cut and fill, or similar extraction operations methodologies. Many commercial mineral algorithms are available based either on Euler Method or 2nd-Order Runge-Kutta Method or 4th-Order Runge-Kutta Method.

Problems originating in mining engineering often require the solutions of differential equations in which the data to be satisfied are located at two different values of an independent variable. These are called the boundary conditions and these algorithms approximate the differential equation by finite differences at evenly spaced mesh points. On occasion this technique is used in tunneling where the finite difference method is particularly suitable for linear equations. Commercial algorithms based on uch as, Shooting Method, Finite Difference Method, Finite Difference for Nonlinear Method, Finite Difference for Higher-Order Method and others.

Based on the few samples of algorithm utilization we can surmise that numerical solutions are attended to at every stage of a mining operation. The use of numerical analysis makes mining planning a much more organized and efficient form of mineral extraction. Mathematical algorithms in mining provide the industry with extraordinary tools to assist time-consuming tasks be reduced to manageable units to obtain solutions which otherwise would be very difficult to achieve.

Benefits of Portal Content Management

Organizations need to provide timely, relevant information to customers, partners, and employees anywhere in the world, to meet today's business requirements. Some of the hurdles that the organizations face in achieving this are IT bottlenecks, information getting lost, irrelevant and outdated information. If these problems are not looked at properly, then this will lead to escalating costs and erode customer satisfaction which will be a great loss for the organization. One good solution for all these problems is to create and deliver highly relevant content on a portal.

Companies can deploy a unified content and portal infrastructure to meet its business goals. This infrastructure should have tools that can unify content and infrastructure between portals to provide a consistent user experience and tools that can empower non-technical users within the organization to create, manage, and publish their own information to enterprise portals. In addition, the tools enable distribution of trusted, up-to-date, and accurate information to support multiple portal initiatives including partner extranets, and employee intranets and add content intelligence to increase the relevance and targeting of information for end users.

Problems that arise due to IT bottlenecks in the content contribution process and problems due to administrative overhead in the portal publishing process can be solved by empowering non-technical business users to contribute content to the portal. When you need to provide a unique infrastructure for the portals of partners, employers, and customers, you can unify the content and content infrastructure between portals to provide a consistent user experience. When end users need to access multiple applications and repositories for all of their content, content across enterprise applications can be integrated and delivered to accessed portals. Portal content management solutions not only empower non-technical users to within your organization to create and publish their own portal content but also ensures that the information published is relevant and personalized to serve multiple portal audiences

Some of the key benefits of portal content management include the ability to manage more content assets at lower cost, publish portal content faster and improves the reach of relevant content to the appropriate audiences. In addition, portal content management also empowers non-technical users to easily publish content on their own, increase online collaboration with partners or customers, and achieves better, faster integration of content via integrations with enterprise applications.

Portal content management software provide a simple, web-based user interface for creating and publishing content to portals, to empower non-technical, line-of-business users to create, manage, and publish their own content. The Portal content management software also provides a powerful navigation system for editing and updating content within the portal. Portal content management solutions ensure that only relevant content is delivered to each audience based on an enterprise taxonomy that drives content tagging and categorization for creation and powerful attribute search within the portal. This ensures that the content and metadata published are mapped to personalization rules created and deployed in the enterprise portal.

Powerful attribute finders of Portal content management software enable end users to easily locate content within the enterprise taxonomy that is exposed as intuitive, browseable categories in the enterprise portal. The enterprise content management platform of Portal content management software provide robust enterprise content management services such as workflow, versioning, lifecycle management, and security. Enterprise integration services provided by Portal content management solutions enable easy integration of transactional data from enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, etc.

Electronic Contract Manufacturing Today

Fifty years ago, all components of an electronic product were manufactured by the same company that produced the final product. This meant that the manufacturer had to purchase the raw materials, employ experts, carry inventory for each and every individual component that goes into the product. In addition, this made it extremely difficult for small companies with small runs to enter the market and compete.

The market was ready for 'electronic contract manufacturers' that specialized in the design and manufacture of specific components that would then be sold to the OEM to be placed in the final product. Narrowing the focusing of a company to just one product or component, allowed them to offer economies of scale in the acquisition of raw materials, talent and expertise in the design process, and equipment for production. This cuts costs for the original manufacturer and frees up their capital.

With this new structure, manufacturing companies were able to produce a better product, more efficiently, and easily scale up or down to customer demand. In the design development process, usually the most complex and difficult part of the process, a contract manufacturer is more likely to accumulate a team of experienced engineers that will focus their expertise on the specific component. In the production process, they are more likely to keep up with the latest, high tech equipment and state-of-the-art technology.

Suppose there is a problem with one of the components. If the manufacturer is producing all the components in-house, it may take a while before it is found - and maybe even after it has gone to the end-user. In addition, the problem has to be solved using in-house resources and capital. When working with a contract manufacturer, in many cases component flaws have already been caught long before they reach the OEM - often due to experiences with other manufacturers. Often a third-party view of the problem is what's needed, and the resolution is solely on the shoulders of that third-party.

Since an ECM only purchases materials for the components they produce, they are able to purchase in bulk offering the OEM substantial cost savings. And since they are purchasing from their individual supplier in greater frequency, the manufacturer takes advantage of the strong relationships developed.

Finally, the contract company will thoroughly test the components they provide for quality. They will stay at the forefront of technology proposing improvements and upgrading their product so that it works better, lasts longer, and is more efficiently. This is a daunting task for the original manufacturer that has hundreds of components to keep up with.

An electronic contract manufacturer is an expert in the components they develop and provide. This expertise offers extreme value.

Considerations when choosing an Electronic Contract Manufacturing partner

For many companies, especially small to mid-sized companies, having a contract manufacturing partner is not only a good idea, it's critical to the success of the business. Besides pricing structure and quality requirements, there are several other items that should be considered in evaluating potential partners:

How much and why do they want your business - Choose a partner with compatible objectives.

Some companies may only be interested in the amount of money at stake. While it is important that the numbers match up for the benefit of both parties, find out what their main driving force is. Larger contract companies may be interested in smaller manufacturing companies if they offer the opportunity to gain experience in an industry that is new to them. Or a product that has big growth forecasts.

Learning the answers to these questions is important before proceeding to the length process of submitting an RFP, and more critically, entering a partnership.

If the business principles do not match up, the OEM may not get the attention they need to make their product successful.

What will the ECM be looking for in a partner - Provide accurate forecasts

No one knows where an original manufacturer plans to go unless they see a well-developed forecast. If they want to make the most of the partnership, they need to inform the contract manufacturer about where they have been and where they plan to go in the future. This provides needed credibility.

The contract manufacturer will need to know what level of risk they are signing up for, while determining what level of resources will be needed to meet the requirements. Will they be able to purchase materials when needed, will they be able to handle the inventory?

What are the expectations regarding inventory

Determining up front what the policies and liability for inventory are between the two companies will minimize the possibility of conflict, and surprises. Understanding inventory issues and supply chain management, and actively making efforts to reduce exposure, is crucial when forecasts do not match up to sales, or a crisis occurs.

How will the ECM handle product changes

With electronics changing at lightning speed, changes are bound to occur fairly regularly. Find out the preferences for handling product changes, and the process they have taken in implementing them in the past with other customers is very important.

Defining the level of involvement expected by each party in the change proposal, analysis, and execution is important for the success of the partnership and the product itself.

Partnering with a company that has a large amount of experience in the multiple phases of a product lifecycle will provide valuable input in the various phases. Therefore, this experience as well as the documentation process should be discussed.

There are many aspects of electronic manufacturing that need to be considered when deciding on a manufacturing partner. These are some of the less obvious, but very important issues to make sure are not forgotten.

General Microcircuits is a North Carolina based Electronic Contract Manufacturer providing simple solutions for circuit board manufacturing since 1980. We design new products and improve existing ones, supporting the entire process from concept through production, serving a wide range of markets, including industrial, commercial, telecommunications, medical, and defense.

How to Get The Best From Your Monitor Calibrator

You've bought your monitor calibrator, installed and updated the software, connected the measurement instrument and you're all ready to make your first display profile. Accurate on-screen color is just a click away.

Or is it?

Before calibrating and profiling a monitor for accurate color display, there are a number of 'pre-flight' checks you should carry out to ensure that the results you get are as good as possible.

Uniformity assessment: It's not worth attempting to profile a display if it significantly fades at the corners or has a localised color cast, as any judgements you make will be affected by this. A quick way to visually test uniformity is to set a neutral mid-gray desktop pattern and close all windows. Older-style CRT displays usually have controls that allow you to adjust for mis-aligned screen display and various other screen geometry faults, but there isn't anything you can do about a faulty LCD panel; be aware that LCD manufacturers do specify tolerances for uniformity and defective pixels.

Clean the screen and position the measuring device: LCD panels don't attract dust the way electrostatically-charged CRTs did, but it still settles there, and fingerprints won't help your calibration efforts either. Make sure that if you have a colorimeter with suckers for attaching to glass CRTs that you don't press it against an LCD panel as it could pull the front membrane off when you remove it. All recent colorimeters for use with LCD displays ship with counterweight arrangements that allow the instrument to rest against the front panel. It usually helps if you tip the screen slightly backwards, to ensure that the colorimeter stays flush to the screen and doesn't move during measurement.

Resolution and bit-depth settings: LCD panels are best run at their 'native' (maximum) resolutions. Most LCD displays support lower resolution modes for compatibility with older video cards, but it may interfere with color rendition as well as image sharpness if you run the display at lower settings. If you're not certain whether you're running at maximum, it's a good idea to check this and that you're running the display at maximum color (bit) depth - see your operating system help for how to do this, but you should have 'millions' of colours, 24- or 32-bit selected.

Display warm-up: It's crucial that you let your display warm up before attempting to calibrate and profile it. Although CRTs were always known to require a warm-up period to stabilise, it is also true for LCD panels, though once warmed up they then remain more stable than CRTs. Allow at least half an hour.

Energy and screen savers: Disable anything that is likely to change or shut off your screen before beginning profiling. Most screen-saver timings are based on user input activity and won't necessarily notice that a calibration application is running. Given the warm-up requirement even for LCD panel displays, it makes sense both for calibration purposes and for general working to disable anything that turns the screen off too quickly.

Ambient lighting: Changing the luminance (brightness) on a calibrated display to allow for changes in lighting conditions will invalidate your calibration. Aim to achieve consistent lighting instead. Some display calibration and profiling tools (and some displays) offer ambient light adjustment options that are intended to compensate for changes in the lighting environment. These should never be used.

Arrange things so that the display is the brightest object in your field of view but don't work in a completely dark room; lighting levels similar to those that are comfortable for watching TV are appropriate. This will help increase the apparent contrast and reveal more shadow details in your images. A monitor hood (included with many high-end models) may be helpful here. When measuring your screen for calibration and profiling, do switch the lights off, draw blinds or curtains, etc, to minimise the chance of stray light getting into the measuring instrument and giving false readings.

Once everything's set, go ahead and run your calibration and profiling software and enjoy the benefits of accurate color.

This article is based on Practical Colour Management for Photographers and Digital Image Makers, an e-book that's full of detailed practical tips on how to 'do' color management on real computer displays to support high quality image editing. It includes tips on choosing and using colour-critical equipment and the optimum system software settings and working environment for reliable results.