Bo Begole - PARC blog

Ubiquitous Computing: For business

19 April 2011 | Bo Begole

There’s a big gap in publications about technology business. There are technical books that explain the low-level details of technologies, how they work, and how to piece them together. There are vision books that describe how the world will change dramatically and inspire us to think beyond what we see today. Then there are business books that explain how to manage and operate technology companies. While such books provide comprehensive and complete explorations within their genre, they tend to gloss over the important aspects of the other genres. Technical books leave business readers wondering why a capability matters, business books lack technical novelty, and vision books leave us all wondering, “Um…okay. Now what?” With Ubiquitous Computing for Business, I try to bridge these gaps by describing a set of innovation case studies around ubiquitous computing and the business implications thereof...

It’s time to reap the context-aware harvest

21 September 2010 | Bo Begole

It's ironic that following the invention of the Personal Computer workstation and laptop computers at PARC, researchers would then turn toward making the computer disappear. To most people at the time, having a single “personal” computer was a dream, but Mark Weiser and many others envisioned that we’d soon all have more than just one personal computer in our lives... Today, context awareness isn't about devices and location - it's about people getting things done.

Defining ubiquitous computing vs. augmented reality

2 March 2010 | Bo Begole

What's the difference between Ubiquitous Computing ("ubicomp") and Augmented Reality ("AR")? I hear this question often, and you could replace "augmented reality" in that question with any of the following buzzy paradigms for people-interacting-with-computers: Virtual Reality, Pervasive Computing, Mobile Computing, Wearable Computing, Multi-Device Interaction, Cloud Computing, Intelligent Systems, Ambient Intelligence, Context-Aware Computing, Adaptive Systems, Machine Perception, Social Computing, Smart Environments, Everyware, and so on. For the most part, I don’t find formal definitions useful; you can call it whatever suits your fancy. All that matters is that I understand what you mean when you use a term and that you understand what I mean when I use it. The attributes of a definition that carry lasting meaning are not technological properties (performance, cost, size, distribution, latency), but the core capabilities that the paradigm enables for usage.

Making mobile printing easier with QR codes

5 August 2009 | Bo Begole

One of the best features of the new class of U.S. mobile smartphones is that they're finally capable of reading QR (Quick Response) codes. These codes, which already appear all over Japan and Korea, are 2D bar codes typically displayed on something -- such as a poster, webpage, magazine ad, or store window -- and captured by a phone camera. The phone decodes the image and launches the appropriate application to see the text, browse the website, send SMS, or call the number that was contained in the QR code. In all these scenarios, the phone is reading the QR code. But you can also turn this model on its head by having the phone display the code to be read by another device.

Serving shoppers’ needs in physical stores: Responsive Mirror

1 July 2009 | Bo Begole

We've found that there are certain types of information that shoppers need but still cannot get online. Certain kinds of tactile and physical information cannot easily be communicated electronically: texture, fit, drape, flow, movement, light refraction, heft, etc. So, people still visit stores to find out how things feel. But we can still help shoppers by supplementing their decision-making processes with electronic information.

The future of pervasive marketing: Scenarios

30 June 2009 | Bo Begole

"Responsive Media" applications are one of the most exciting areas of current research in human-computer interaction. Based on technologies that can detect human response using cameras and other sensors to glean demographic data (gender, race, age) and physiological states (eye gaze, orientation, pupil dilation, skin temp, expression), these applications can be used for human-robot interaction, marketing, gaming, digital concierge avatars, and more.