That was a long time ago and the arguments are long behind, yet today I’m still sitting in front of an Apple who someone’s taken a bite out of; writing on a MacBook Pro with my iPhone on my desktop. Watching NetFlix on my AppleTV while my docs are backing up onto my Time Capsule.

Image courtesy of Apple.com

I’ve known of the father of Apple for equally long. And, frankly, I don’t remember feeling so sad over the loss of any person or celebrity I never knew personally.

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I’m considering selling a few of my augmented reality domains; originally intended to be put to use, other projects have gotten in the way. It seems a shame to leave them parked. So, here they are.

The domain list

Make an offer

Contact me directly to make me an offer on any of these domains. I intend to keep prices fair. I want to see them go to deserving individuals and startups.

I reserve the right to accept or deny offers based on personal preference.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Layar’s augmented reality to go 3D in November [Videos]
2. Useful augmented reality tool shipped by US Postal Service

Correct prediction

Undetermined

Wrong prediction

Today we’re launching a special page to store past and present predictions regarding future technology developments. At the moment all are in the area of augmented reality. Below is a list of new predictions; the complete list can be found on the new Predictions page. The page can also be accessed through its link in Think Artificial’s header-menu.

What do you predict? =)

Year 2009

Initial iPhone development and app popularity

• Prediction on August 28th, 2009: In October 2009 many developers are reported working on augmented reality apps for iPhone. This is partially due to the success of 5 wildly popular apps in the iPhone App Store.

Year 2010

Rise of serious augmented reality apps

• Prediction on August 28th, 2009: In January, 2010 interest in fluff (useless, silly) applications is declining. Much more powerful, serious AR apps are on the rise.

Major stores adopt augmented reality

• Prediction on August 28th, 2009: In January, 2010 the first major store announces mobile AR support; possibly an app that indicates product locations in shelves, or one that shows information about products. There are rumors of at least 3 other stores preparing a launch.

EDIT: The following two first appeared with dates, but were changed within an hour to mid/early/late -month notation (I’m not psychic! =)

Open-source augmented reality platform

• Prediction on August 28th, 2009: Mid April, 2010 an important open source AR platform standard is introduced.

Augmented reality eyewear & head mounted displays

• Prediction on August 28th, 2009: Early May, 2010 the first specs specifically designed for mainstream, mobile AR are announced. Use of eyewear-screens (head-mounted displays, AR glasses) increasingly popular among young and young adults.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Correctly predicted: Augmented reality support in iPhone OS 3.1
2. Augmented reality on iPhone delayed, but hardly prevented

The notification came yesterday and what a delightful wake-up call. I knew there’d been about a thousand submissions last year, and that they’d had to make a delay this one due to an increase, so it was quite unexpected. (Each category is drastically different—but it still makes my head spin to be on a list with Ars Technica! Awesome.)

My thanks go out to the judges, bows to the fellow finalists and best wishes all around!

Automatic recommendations:

1. Think Artificial Twine Invitations: Round II
2. Think Artificial is Written by One Human, and One AI System [Important Site News]

Automatic recommendations:

1. 300 Subscribers to Think Artificial
2. Think Artificial is Written by One Human, and One AI System [Important Site News]

Only yesterday the police employed gas to disperse a crowd for the first time since 1949 when Iceland joined NATO. The people are protesting the government’s poor management in the months since the collapse.

I’ve been brooding on ideas of how to introduce innovation as a key component in the new society. This is not an easy thing to do—Iceland is drenched in history-based economic models to make decisions. When that model goes too far, as it has royally, it does not favor innovation, startup companies and extensive research; businesses tend to put their money where its safe, not into the abyss of new ideas that may- or may not revolutionize the world.

This compels me to do something; try to help steer this country into something less extreme, more innovative. I’ve been doing presentations about how special, unique and rebellious ideas can bring about great things if done right. There’s much more planned for 2009, and also: I’m learning about politics—can you believe that?

There’s a lot on my mind—but Think Artificial is not dead. Or if it is, then it’s only because there’s the new Think Artificial of 2009 waiting to take its place. I hope to see you and your comments around. I humbly thank you for reading in 2008 and for sticking around!

Best regards,
-Hrafn

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If your comment shows up with a gray person like the third comment above, it means you’ll have to get yourself a Gravatar. If you haven’t heard of Gravatars, or Globally Recognized Avatars, they’re a service that allows you to upload and associate an avatar with your e-mail address. Since they’re in use by many popular websites, it’ll spare you some time when commenting or creating accounts there—all you’ll have to do is enter your email address and they’ll pop up automatically (email encrypted via the MD5 algorithm). For the record, the people on the pic with me above are Gnorb and Esther — both of which run great blogs.

See you around.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Think Artificial is Written by One Human, and One AI System [Important Site News]
2. Think Artificial Twine Invitations: Round II

Following that step I was faced with whether I should flag the number of subscribers on the site. To set myself a goal I decided I wouldn’t reveal the number until it reached 300. And now it has happened.

Subscribers to TA have been holding at around 300 for about a month now—subscribers being people that are either subscribed to the site’s RSS feed or via email. Not counting those that visit the site regularly.

My thanks to everyone who’s been reading. You’re the reason I’m still at it.

Where we’re headed

Compared to my usual posting frequency I’ve been non-verbose lately. Business, but mostly personal issues have had my attention. I won’t make any promises on whether this will change anytime soon, but if it does I find it likely that posts will continue at the current pace (c.a. 1 post per week) but gain more meat and originality instead.

People sometimes think it’s easy to blog on a regular basis. It’s not. Keeping to a posting schedule without spending too much of your time or turning the whole thing into a chore is difficult. There’s also, at least for me, the importance of saying something for a reason — not just talk about your sore throat and the weather. Not to mention that you’ll hit dry spells or lack of enthusiasm and that’s when you have to push yourself to keep interested; to go out and thread your mind, the web or something completely different to inspire a fresh perspective.

.. a fresh perspective

One of my explicit goals when I started to blog was honing my writing skills. As it turns out, blogging couldn’t have been a better way to challenge myself with regards to content and especially presentation. It’s very hard to notice developments in writing because it happens very slowly. But there comes a time when you’ve changed so much that you look back and suddenly realize how much you’ve improved.

It’s not uncommon to realize at the same time that you’re ready to take things to a new level. At that point you need to take a step back and think about how you want to change. What new directions you can head in to continue to grow and develop.

I feel I’ve outgrown pure reporting or brief commentary in the way I’ve done so far. I (we) need a paradigm shift that makes better use of the new skills that I’ve developed. There’s no point in writing in the same manner you wrote when you were a baby. I recently started writing [science] fiction and I’m allotting some time to that on the expense of TA posting frequency. I may post some of it here later on, but in any case I’m sure that my new area of writing will prove vitamins to Think Artificial articles.

As I develop this fresh perspective we’ll have to wait and see how it translates to blogging. Creativity can’t be rushed. For the moment a lower posting frequency will continue to reign. And we’ll possibly a few oddball content experiments.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Think Artificial is Written by One Human, and One AI System [Important Site News]

The site’s feed has been having some trouble since June 13th which may coincide with a software update I did around that time. The bug caused the site to stop generating an RSS feed.

It seem I’ve resolved the issue. If anyone has still not received updates since the post “Reaper UAV Used Against Enemy Targets” I’d appreciate that you report it.

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Simply leave a short comment on this post if you’re interested in giving Twine a spin. An invitation will be sent to the email address you specify in the comment’s field.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Twine Invites for Readers of Think Artificial
2. Why I Migrated Over to Twine (And Other Social Services Bit the Dust)

Briefly rehashing what I said in my introductory post to Twine; this online service allows you to gather your data into one place (videos, bookmarks, photos, etc.). From around the web or from your own machine. And with more intelligence and metadata extraction/understanding which makes it easier to organize and find your information. Or discover information of interest to you as there’s a lively bunch of people (and AI) on there already recommending information.

So I’m pleased to announce that I have invitation tickets for interested readers & supporters of Think Artificial. Getting a nice productivity tool ahead of about 40,000 people waiting to get access.

How to Get an Invitation

Those that are likely to contribute to the active development and growth of both Twine (and a new extension of Think Artificial within Twine) will be more likely to receive invites. The following are the two ways to get invites.

1. Comment – 20 hand-picked readers that comment on this post will receive an invitation. Comment should indicate what it is about the service that interests you, and/or why you’d like an invite. The email you enter in the comment field is the email I’ll send an invite to.

OR

2. Write an entry – 30 hand-picked writers will receive an invitation by writing an entry on the Future of the Web in the Next 2-5 years linking back here to Think Artificial. Send me an email with a link to your article and specify an address to send the invitation to if its not the one you sent from.

I always enjoy when people think — there’s never enough of that. So in the second point, I’m (ab)using my position in recruiting the masses to spread thought-worthy issues and ideas.

In the event that I get an overwhelming amount of comments, I’m going to limit the selection to the first 60 commenters. I simply don’t have time for more. And regarding the articles, they must be new — not from your archives! And selection will be based on quality – meaning entries that are well written and present personal perspectives.

Extras

The “beta” tag on Twine is not a Perpetual Beta where the tag is slapped on as a beforehand-apology for any user discomfort. But “beta” in it’s original meaning: It’s a product in the making, incomplete, getting active user feedback and making improvements.

Here are some qualities I recommend you have to enjoy Twine:

• Online activity experience – I’m looking for people that enjoy finding and sharing data. Regular use of Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Flickr, YouTube or Blogging is a plus.
• Patience – With Twine in a beta status, lack of a feature or the disfunction of a present one can be keyboard-through-the-monitor frustrating. Patience equals suggesting improvements.
• Vision and Ideas – It’s a plus to have shown a public interest in innovative web services, and/or having publically posted original articles on how we use the web. As mentioned above, I like (getting to know) people that like to think and contemplate the future.

I see potential for Twine to bloom in bright colors. And for the Web to boom with acumen. We just need determined people to get the gears in the right places.

Final Commentary

If you’re not one of those that make the cut this time — stick around. You’ll may get another chance. I’ll continue to keep an eye out for cool people after this round ends on April 29th.

Finally, I mentioned something about a Think Artificial twine. It’s an experimental place inside Twine where like-minded people — we — can collaborate on harvesting and discussing aesthetic loaded, machine riddled and intelligent content.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Why I Migrated Over to Twine (And Other Social Services Bit the Dust)
2. Best Technology Innovation, 5 Crunchies Finalists

[[ SYSTEM-MESSAGE-BEGINS.
This post was automatically generated by TOWTAW v1.3.
Administrator privileges have been subsumed and user 'Hrafn' purged.
SYSTEM-MESSAGE-ENDS. ]]

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Taking its cues from Google News Alerts on “robotics”, the system analyzes news articles — identifying and extracting relevant lines of text and generating a shorter version of the article. The text is then paraphrased using preset tunings to mimic my writing style. The ultimate result is an article that only needs my one-click administrator approval to be published.

The TOWTAW System (“Toto”)

The system, named The One Who Thinks Artificially & Writes (TOWTAW, pronounced ‘Toto’, as in OZ), is an example of AI systems integration, comprising several software modules that communicate through a central blackboard system.

Relevance ranking of paragraphs and sentences (understanding the text) is accomplished by a custom made module that makes use of the OpenCyc reasoning engine and the Open Mind Common Sense Net (a.k.a. ConceptNet). The excerpted text is paraphrased by another module that again makes use of these two systems, whose combined strength is hundreds of thousands of terms and logical expressions. This entire process is complimented by a third, custom software module that accesses the Wordpress database and tries to find sentences written by me that can be re-used. This is done to further improve writing style similarity.

Finally, the system makes use of Wordpress’ Post-by-email option, simply using my machine to mail in the post to await my admin approval. It’s worth noting that I rarely have to retouch the text.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

With the continued success of the system, and the many great comments on the articles (it has even started debates!) — I’ve decided to leave Think Artificial entirely in the hands of artificial authors. The site, starting next week, will be renamed Think Artificial and Writes. Additionally, I’m opening several new blogs — including one called TOWTAW Row-baw-toh about Western musical adaptations of Asian robot culture.

I thank you very much for your support and compliments on my writings, and will announce at a later date where I plan on start writing online again.

Best regards,
-Hrafn Th.

[[This was April Fools' Day joke for 2008. Read this for the hidden joke]]

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(“Hello Ma’am, we’re selling bionic prosthetics”)

Look! Product placement.

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In essence, these are meant to (a) help new users orient themselves here and (b) ensure that regular readers’ experience here is kept high quality. A special Terms of Use page, (accessible through the main nav bar), has been created and will remain there indefinitely.

Specific wording may change in the following few days, but the gist will stay the same. If you have any suggestions or comments — or applause — this entry would be a great place for ‘em.

Terms of Use

We ask you, dearly devoted new user, to read the following carefully (print it out and preach to your colleagues and coworkers in the name of all that is Artificial).

• Respect your fellow community members – There’s nothing wrong with a heated debate. But keep your comments rational and free of slander or abuse.
• Quality writing – Readers of Think Artificial are an intelligent bunch. While I won’t usually interfere — be warned that poor grammar or spelling will probably make other readers think you’re a moron.
• No advertising or spam – Comments, addresses or nicknames intended as advertisements for commercial purposes, rather than providing information about the commenter, will be removed. The comments are for discussions, not for soliciting your site.
• This is not kindergarten (or America’s legal system) – Twisting the words of these terms will not get you out of a pinch. Let your common sense dictate your interpretation of them and you’ll be fine.
• If you’re uncertain about any of the above, or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
• Think Artificial reserves the right to remove comments or even ban users that violate these terms.

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