Can Startup Bubbli Turn Geotagged Photos Into Matrix-esque Augmented Reality?

BY KIT EATONWed Feb 9, 2011

Startup Bubbli just raised $2 million in funding from August Capital, which will help it in its mission to build "the Matrix (minus the sentient AI)." What's it all about?

Bubbli's home page is mystical, to say the least. It really does say its mission statement is to build the Matrix, but there's a string of text that gives us some big clues: "Take a look in your pocket," it suggests, "You probably have a smartphone. You're looking at something that governments used to pay millions of dollars to launch into space. You presumably launched your device into your back pocket for merely a few benjamins." So we know this is smartphone-centric. But then the text goes on:

While you were out shopping: Thousands of brilliant papers have been published in computer vision about understanding the world around you through a camera chained to a workstation in a basement. The algorithms need to be set free. Why liberate the algorithms? The better we understand reality through a camera lens, the better we can replicate it elsewhere. After all, our eyes are just light sensors, what does it matter that the light that goes into your eyes is reflected off of an object from the sun or comes from a digital display?The company is trying to recruit three programmers, including a computer-vision expert, and will soft launch at the upcoming TED event.

Bubbli's site has resulted in some speculation online thanks to this mystery, and the fact that some of the site's support has come from John Doerr, who injected massive amounts of cash into Twitter--a venture that has done pretty well. Doerr noted he'd seen Bubbli, and thus had "seen the future."

But what can we infer from Bubbli's site? It seems the firm is planning something pretty impressive. Bubbli has realized that when all of us, by the million, snap photos and videos (by the billion) of our daily events, we're recording a rich digital story of the world--with accurate GPS locations, angular information and digital compass data (in some cases), so that it's possible to work out precisely where the images were created.


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FROM FAST COMPANY

Visa to Use Your Phone's Location to Prevent Credit Card Fraud

Sure, you like all the great benefits of having your phone know where you are. Looking up directions or local weather information becomes that much faster. But outside companies and agencies are equally delighted to have access to your location information--and not just to send you coupons. Increasingly, they’re going to be using that information for purposes that have nothing to do with your convenience and fancy.

Some of those purposes you’ll like. Others you might not be so keen about. One you’ll probably be okay with was just announced by Visa Europe. The credit card company is going to start using information about the location of customers’ mobile phones to prevent credit card fraud.
Visa Europe has partnered with a company called ValidSoft that can establish whether your mobile phone is in the same place as the merchant or ATM where your card is being used. The assumption is that if the two devices are in close proximity, it’s probably you using the card, even if you’re far afield from your usual stomping grounds. If the two devices are not in the same place, the system may send up an alert.

Proximity information will only be one of a number of variables the system will use to assess the likelihood of fraud during any particular transaction. The companies say the system will both reduce card misuse and cut down on the number of “false positives.” That, they say, will create a better experience for users when a particular purchase deviates from their expected patterns--no more annoying calls or locking your card up when you're simply on vacation--and it will cut down on case-management processing costs for card issuers.


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From New scientist

Smartphone app monitors your every move


CAN'T be bothered to tell your Facebook friends what you are up to? A smartphone app called Jigsaw can help.

Jigsaw figures out what you are doing by monitoring your phone's microphone, GPS and accelerometer for patterns characteristic of routine activities - and it could be set to send the results to social networking sites.

More importantly, Jigsaw can log how active you are each day, producing records that could be useful to a doctor or fitness trainer. Its pattern-recognition algorithms can identify a range of behaviours, making its logs more detailed than those of similar apps, says Hong Lu at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, who developed the app in collaboration with the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California.

For example, the jolts produced when the user is walking depend on whether the phone is in a trouser or jacket pocket, so the software can recognise both patterns. Information from the other sensors helps to further define the activity.

The less active you are, the less often Jigsaw kicks in, so it can capture your activity patterns while minimising the drain on the phone's battery. "If you're stationary there's no point in getting regular GPS readings," says Lu. He adds that a smartphone running Jigsaw in the background would get 12 hours of use from the battery, so you can log your behaviour from morning till night on a single charge. "Without smart power management it would drain the battery in 6 hours," Lu says.

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