However, this is not a post about the helmet, its more about the validation of wearables and how certain product vertices get defined in this new age of crowdfunding.  The goal of the fund raising was to get $250,000.  Well just over 8 minuets after setting the site live at 6AM pst, they blew through the $250,000 mark and kept climbing.  If I was still riding I would have been one of those throwing my money at them as well.  This is something as a biker I have wanted for a long time.

However, I see this more than just validation that every biker out there wants a cyber helmet. I also ride bicycles, I drive a car, I jog, and one day… one day, will grab a plane and fly.  In all these cases having hands free HUD with full situational awareness would be great for safety and convenience.   ‘But wait!’; you might say.  “Didn’t you say you did not like Google Glass’?  That’s right, I do not … in public that is.  I also said that in specific use cases, it make sense.  Again, I want to repeat this is NOT Google Glass.  This is custom hardware/software targeted to the motorcycle rider.  This is key.  Just putting a HUD display is not good enough.  You have to understand what a rider would want and this is where Skully hits the mark and why they are about to clear $1M. I always felt the Glass was a product solution looking for a problem, and there is nothing wrong with that. Trying things is how you figure out what works and what does not.  However the Skully system took a particular, and I can attest, dedicated vertical and build to them. This is exactly what we saw with the Pebble kick-starter campaign.  After raising venture capital for the product under their former name inPulse, the company failed to attract traditional investors under their new brand name, so the company requested crowd funding in April 2012.  They raised over $10 million.  This product validation redefined and restarted the whole smart watch product category and validated the crowdfunding paradigm.  Two years later, many will argue, and I would be one of them, that the Pebble is one of the best smartwatches on the market based on price, functionality and design. This is because they build ONLY what is needed to provide value to the customer, although the recent Google ware watches comes close. It will be the same with the Skully helmet.  Its one thing to have a great prototype product, its something else to get that product to a consumer level, and manufacturer to that level on a massive scale.   And you know that after this market definition and validation, there are going to be tonnes of copycats snapping at their heals.  But that does not matter now… Skully is first to this newly defined market.

The next few years should be interesting……  I think I may start riding motorcycles again. 

Have you seen the game trailers for Watch Dogs? In the game, the player is a cyber-vigilante that explores a connected ‘smart’ city and accesses its 2D and 3D information like a high tech Batman. As an example of this, the game even has a website called We Are Data that shows real geo-located information about Paris, Berlin, and London from social media sites and public government datasets. The game seems like a glimpse into a distant future but believe it or not, we have the technology to make this notion of a ‘smart’ city happen now.

Unfortunately the building industry is currently very change-resistant and far behind almost every other industry in adopting new technologies, despite the fact that it has potentially the most to gain from interactive data visualization technologies and the Internet of Things. The technologies also already exist to model our buildings and communities in extremely high levels of detail, including fabrication-level data that is both extremely accurate and ideal for efficient fabrication of buildings components and large assemblies.  This same data can then be used by almost everyone to manage the facility and enable interaction with the occupants, both locally and remotely.  The lack of change is therefore not primarily a technology problem  (and the technology is getting better at an accelerating rate) but rather entrenched change resistance and silo thinking among architects, engineers, fabricators, builders, real estate developers and owners. Sure there is a growing use of 3D by both the geospatial and building communities, but the idea of intelligent interactive 3D cities seems more far fetched than a vacuum tube that shoots people from La to SF in 35 minutes.

In addition, currently we are seeing wearable tech becoming more common with devices like Google Glass, the Pebble watch and other tech that allows us to know things around us as well as letting other systems know that we are there. Yet most buildings are only smart enough to know when to turn a light off and on or other very basic functions. There is far more we can do, but the industry is risk averse and most building owners are unaware of how best to use these innovations. Someone needs to hack this…

Using advanced technologies, we can collaboratively design, manufacture and construct  innovative and high-performance buildings far less expensively and faster than by using conventional processes; but legal concerns, mindsets, domain wars and stubborn change-resistance is holding the industry back and delaying the inevitable democratization of the built environment through open digitization and automation. This has to change!

Imagine using an Oculus Rift to walk through a building to see proposed design changes and its surrounding area, accessing building data via a Google Glass to assist with onsite construction, controlling the systems of a building touch free with haptic devices like LEAP Motion, or having intelligent building systems that interact with occupants via wearables and mobile devices. All of this is possible now,  but who is going to build it? We need a group of cutting edge designers, builders, coders and other change agents that are looking to disrupt the current status quo.

The biggest hurtle is really mindset. But this is not like the issues faced when web 2.0 was proposed, HMD’s for gaming, driver-less cars, even smart watches. Yet here we are. So to combat this, we have to hack it.  The goal of this event that will be held at Facebook’s campus, is to try to kick start the imagination of people in and out of the AEC community to realize there is a lot we can do with the tools we have now.  Imagine using a 3D printer to print out a new facet.  Why not?  Pipe broken, print a new one. Want to add that extra room to the house?  Call your local prefab house builder, send them your house’s digital files and everything is created exactly to fit your existing. Want some new wall art? Put on a Google Glass like device and load up some designs.  The computer already knows about your building so it can match up anything you want to see.

We are starting to see small starts in our smart buildings.  You can buy systems that allow you to turn lights on and off, change the temperature, smart fire alarms, and a few other small things from your mobile phone, but this is barley the tip.  If we can connect smart people with the right data, there is far more we can do.  Hopefully over the next few AEC hackathons, we will see a few hints of that future.  And who knows?  It’s possible something very cool, very fundable will come right from the event. Perhaps something the next version of Watch Dogs will incorporate as we build beyond what even the game proposes for our future.

So I just got back from the ESRI User Conference 2013 in San Diego and wow, what a trip.

Founded by Jack Dangermond, ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an industry leader and international supplier of Geographic Information System (GIS) software and geodatabase management applications. The company has an installed base of more than one million users in more than 350,000 organizations, including most US federal agencies and national mapping agencies, all 50 US state health departments, transportation agencies, forestry companies, utilities, state and local government, schools and universities, NGOs, and commercial business.

The user conference brought 15,000+ ESRI users from over 130 countries. Keynote presentations included Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information, Infrastructure, and Innovations Sam Pitroda and an inspiring discussion with pop culture icon Will.i.am. For the record I am a B.E.P. fan but this interview was something else.

This was my first time to attend the ESRI User Conference and I was amazed at the number of sessions, expo size (entire convention center floor), attendance, and diversity of the show. As an attendee pointed out, “GIS is everything” and it seems everything was represented at the event. Among what I saw on the trade show floor were a variety of mapping applications, LIDAR services (remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light) and drone data collection devices.

I am not a geo-specialist but I did recognize a few things I am familiar with. Among those was:

City Engine – a procedural modeling tool for rapidly creating large urban environments

Geoloqi – a platform for building location aware applications with geotriggers and realtime location capabilities.

Metaio – an Augmented Reality platform provider

One ESRI invited exhibitor was building company IDEAbuilder. IDEAbuilder uses geospatial data for a variety of uses in the building process and were showcasing a new application the company tech team has built that combines interactive 3D and digital fabrication with some ESRI tools and services. This was a great demonstration of how 2D/3D building data can connect with geospatial data to create highly intelligent interactive scenes.

The application that was shown was the virtual reality version of their Performance Shell Configurator or PSC. The PSC application is a green building tool for their builder partners that provides the builder the ability to go into an interactive 3D scene and snap together the shell of a structure from a library of digital fabrication ready components that can be robotically manufactured. These metadata rich components provide their partners with information useful to the building process. I posted several months back the web3D and Kinect version of this app that got covered on Wired.com (thanks Bruce Sterling!)

Some features of our Oculus Rift virtual reality version include Razer Hydra hand controller support, the ability to import a blueprint image to use as a guide to build on top of, a live top down map so you can see where you are on the blueprint, a total structure cost calculator, elevated cherry picker view, a virtual ‘AR’ view where staring at a panel piece displayed part information including cost, and free navigation of a City Engine city that acts as the 3D backdrop to the PSC building space. There will be an official post with more information about the PSC app on the IDEAbuilder site so stay tuned over there.

The application was a huge hit and really helped visitors experience new ways of interacting with data. While most people were unaware of the Oculus Rift or have never had a virtual reality experience before, there were those that were more than ready to get started like John Bormann. In addition to the PSC app, they also shared an Xbox 360 controller controlled architectural visualization Oculus Rift scene created by real life architect, web3D supporter, and IDEAbuilder friend Jon Brouchoud.

In closing, I would like to thank the IDEAbuilder team for this cool virtual reality experience, everyone I met at the event that helped me understand more about GIS, and the people at ESRI for the opportunity and everything they did to make it a super ‘geospecial’ time. See you next year!

{UPDATE}  We have a response from the NYT.  Reading it now..

In John’s post titled Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway, he claims that the range of the Model S is so bad, that he had to turn down the heater, drive at 54 and at one point call for a tow truck.  Now here is the funny part, data logging was turned on the test car he was giving and it was MORE then clear, they John did everything just short of disconnecting the battery cables to insure the car would not perform up to standards.  In the past, there would have been no way to ever know what really happened, so you have to take the reporters word and the fact they are with the Times, you would think you could depend on that word.  Well clearly not!

Elon wrong a repost post titled A Most Peculiar Test Drive where he take apart John’s post point by point using data collected from the car directly. Lets have a look taken from Elon’s post…

Here is a summary of the key facts:

• As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck.

• The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.

• In his article, Broder claims that “the car fell short of its projected range on the final leg.” Then he bizarrely states that the screen showed “Est. remaining range: 32 miles” and the car traveled “51 miles,” contradicting his own statement (see images below). The car actually did an admirable job exceeding its projected range. Had he not insisted on doing a nonstop 61-mile trip while staring at a screen that estimated half that range, all would have been well. He constructed a no-win scenario for any vehicle, electric or gasoline.

• On that leg, he drove right past a public charge station while the car repeatedly warned him that it was very low on range.

• Cruise control was never set to 54 mph as claimed in the article, nor did he limp along at 45 mph. Broder in fact drove at speeds from 65 mph to 81 mph for a majority of the trip and at an average cabin temperature setting of 72 F.

• At the point in time that he claims to have turned the temperature down, he in fact turned the temperature up to 74 F.

• The charge time on his second stop was 47 mins, going from -5 miles (reserve power) to 209 miles of Ideal or 185 miles of EPA Rated Range, not 58 mins as stated in the graphic attached to his article. Had Broder not deliberately turned off the Supercharger at 47 mins and actually spent 58 mins Supercharging, it would have been virtually impossible to run out of energy for the remainder of his stated journey.

• For his first recharge, he charged the car to 90%. During the second Supercharge, despite almost running out of energy on the prior leg, he deliberately stopped charging at 72%. On the third leg, where he claimed the car ran out of energy, he stopped charging at 28%. Despite narrowly making each leg, he charged less and less each time. Why would anyone do that?

• The above helps explain a unique peculiarity at the end of the second leg of Broder’s trip. When he first reached our Milford, Connecticut Supercharger, having driven the car hard and after taking an unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan to give his brother a ride, the display said “0 miles remaining.” Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in. On the later legs, it is clear Broder was determined not to be foiled again.

As you can see, its more then clear the Broder had an agenda, or he is pretty clueless about electric cars, either way, the evidence is pretty damning.  I have yet to hear anything from NYT about this.  I would expect a retraction at the very least as well as Broder getting canned. That or perhaps all this data that Elon is releasing could itself be fabricated, but right now, the evidence seems to be pointing to bad reporter. I’m REALLY interested to hear John’s reply to this. But if Elon’s data is correct, the what is really concerning is someone would go to such extents to make an electric car fail in a test.  Makes you wonder if either he does not understand electric cars or he has an agenda.  Elon wondered that as well.

We assumed that the reporter would be fair and impartial, as has been our experience with The New York Times, an organization that prides itself on journalistic integrity. As a result, we did not think to read his past articles and were unaware of his outright disdain for electric cars. We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles. For that, I am deeply sorry.

However, this is only one aspect of the story that I find interesting.  When you look at the data, it’s really interesting.  If the day ever comes I can afford a model S, I would want every little bit of tracking turned on.  I want to know charging, power consumption over various movement attributes; acceleration, cruise regenerative breaking, 220v vs 110c charging, etc… During a visit to the Tesla plant when I first saw the very first Model S still in build, I was enticed by the large table display in the car. I would LOVE to have this detailed data right there on the screen. I do remember asking if there would be an SDK so coders could write apps for such things.  I was told; ‘Perhaps… “.

One thing you may notice is the graphs are pretty rudimentary. I would LOVE to redesign this and write a more intuitive and dynamic display where drivers like me can see instantly how my driving habits affect positively and negatively on the cars performance.  I remember I rented a Prius last year and loved playing with it as I drove, trying to squeeze every amp I could.  I think all electric cars should have super detailed data, not just ones turned on for reporters.

Given all the data cars are collecting now, not just electrics, when should we be worried about our privacy?  I have no issue with it, but I bet you a tonne that John’s does right now.

1. Improve existing HTML5 javascript and CSS libraries. I think famo.us is on to something when they did a full rewrite to achieved super fast 3D rendering without using a plugin.  I would like to see a concerted effort to optimise all core HTML5 libraries.
2. Improved voice control.  Sure the release of Siri and Robin and other copy cats, we were really looking forward to AI like voice control.  Did not happen.  Shame.  But it just might this coming year.  Odds are pretty good Apple will release an iWatch and advanced voice control will be needed.
3. A SMALLER iphone 5 socket adapter.  That is all.
4. Reduced fragmentation of Android.  Ok, I may be reaching with this New Years wish.
5. Better batteries.  There is SOO much cool tech, and I do not mean just personal tech, like way smaller phones and laptops, but bikes, cars, heck even airplanes that would be massive games changes if we can just crack this problem.  Imagine we can do a 10x improvement in batteries.  Think of an electric car with a 500 mile range.  Costing LESS then a typical car. However, an electric ultralight plane.  Mmmmm
6. Return of the convertible Tablet. I give both Apple and Microsoft credit for trying to add a keyboard to the tablet, but what I want is a full power PC that can convert to a tablet. Com’on guys.  Take the TC1100, shrink it, might it lighter and stronger and release it. Right now the only thing close is the Lenovo Yogo 11 but it is too underpowered.
7. Improved wifi across the nation.  We should ALL have 4G.
8. Digital Medical Records.  I cant believe we are heading into 2013 and the majority of health care system are not all Digital.  Really!  I think the savings would be massive.  And yet, here we are.
9. Better social media filtering.  I guess this is a bit on me because I wrote a Twitter filtering system, TwittFilter,  a number of years back and have not really pushed to take it beyond a person project.  And I guess I could do it for Facebook as well, but as we all know, its hard to find time for things.  So I guess MY wish is to somehow find the time (or money) to build a unfiltered Twitter, Facebook, Google+ social media filter.  If you got $350k to spend on a new company, give me a call.
10. Expanded 3D printing.  I love the speed 3D printing has been spreading, but missing is scanning.  We need a way to make it easy to scan an object so that we can reproduce or modify an object just as easy as 3D printing is becoming.
11. A breakthrough in HMD’s.  We MIGHT already have that with the Oculus, but time will tell.
12. Car to phone interface standard.  There should be an industry wide standard for all phones to interact with all cars using a standardized bluetooth protocol. Please include engine data and diagnostics while you are at it.

So that is my wish list for New Years 2013.  Anything I should add?  Let me know.

If this is the case, can Google adjust? Sure, I would bet with a little tweaking of the servers they will be running smooth in a week.  But for now, I’m going to be keeping a close eye out.  You never know, could be even more downloads as non iOS 5 users like myself start using the app.

Here is the description from the site.

Navigate your world with Google Maps, now available for iPhone. Get comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps with built-in Google local search, voice guided turn-by-turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more. Use Google Maps to discover great places to eat, drink, shop and play, with ratings and reviews from people you trust. Sign in to save your favorite places and quickly access all your past searches and directions from your computer, right on your phone.

Search
* Find addresses, places and businesses around the world with Google local search.
* Discover places to eat, drink, shop and play, with ratings and local reviews.
* Sign in to sync your searches, directions, and favorite places between your computer and your phone.

Directions
* Get voice guided, turn-by-turn driving directions.
* Find your way by train, bus, subway or walking directions.
* Access live traffic information in cities across the world.

Street View and imagery
* View 360-degree panoramas of places around the globe with Street View.
* See inside more than 100,000 businesses worldwide.
* View high resolution satellite imagery of locations around the world.

Simple and easy to use
* An entirely new Google Maps experience on your iPhone.
* Newly designed and streamlined interface for even easier navigation of your world.
* Use gestures to explore the map and browse results.

A company called Snappli, which just launched a few weeks ago (see coverage here and here) is a free mobile app that helps users stay within their mobile data limits by compressing and optimizing mobile data as well as video — a huge mobile data suck. Today they pulled some pretty interesting data around Google/Apple Maps, based on data from Snappli users in the UK and US.

“Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player,” he said. “They’re now coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and they’re competing against Google, which has the highest data set. What’s going to happen with the Apple maps, is that you’re literally not going to find things. When you do find them, they might be in the wrong place or position geographically. And if you do have it, the route to it may not be the optimal route.”

This lines up with what I have found when I finally got the beta working and tested it.  Shame.  Right now I rely on google map search to find almost anything and it works great.  For driving directions I use motionX which is a great turn by turn navigation app.  I do not know what motionX uses for search, but I really hope its google.

I have a hard time imagining that Apple is not aware of this limitation and thus must have a plan in place to try to improve the dataset, but I imagine this will take time.  In that time they may manage to piss off a number of users like myself who fell in love with Maps before anything else on the iPhone. In fact, it was Maps on the iPhone 1 that really impressed me, impressed me enought to become an iphone fan boy.

I still have hope though.  One of my MAJOR complaints with google maps on the iphone is how messy the traffic display is.  If you need to see what is going on with the freeways, I do not need to see every little side street as well making it almost impossible to see what is going on at a quick glance.  I have not see a good screenshot to see what this will be like, so I guess I have to wait to see this in action to really know.

Graphics aside, I’m expecting a pretty strong backlash from people complaining about poor search results and perhaps sub par navigation based on what I’m reading.  And who knows?  That might be enough to move a few people to Android.  Might be for me.  We’ll have to see.  In the meantime, no iOS upgrades for me thanks.  I wonder of one day they will simply cut off google for older iphone users?  That would really s&*k.

Essentially, this is Google’s answer to Apple’s virtual voice assistant Siri for iOS, which remembers important dates on your calendar, reminds you of appointment times, and allows you to search the web via voice controls. However, Google Now goes a bit above and beyond this concept by taking the data from your daily routine, search history, and other user behavior.

For instance, Google Now will learn your daily commute home. And if there’s particularly congested traffic that would cause you to get home much later, it’ll send you a notification suggesting alternate routes. Another thing it does is update you on restaurants/retail stores as you’re walking past them, provides reviews of those stores, and other recommendations.

I really love the driving aspect of this.  The more I learn about Android 4.1 jelly bean, the more I’m thinking my next phone could be an android.