Augmented Reality in JavaScript
July 10th, 2009 | Published in open standards, web
I’m convinced that open webtechnologies are suited for more than just web page development. I don’t see why you can’t write desktop applications using open webtechnologies. So, I’m also pretty optimistic about what Google is trying to do with Chrome OS.
Many of the problems people currently see with Chrome OS are in my opinion solvable or not relevant for the type of work people do on netbook devices. Javascript can and will be extended with more platform specific functionality, and for other things laptops will no longer be essential. Uploading photo’s to the internet? Most of my pictures are uploaded directly from my phone to picasaweb. Mobile phones will replace point and shoot camera’s. Soon, this will be the same for video. Soon, there’s no need to upload pictures from your camera to a netbook.
Currently open web technologies aren’t really a good fit for heavy graphics applications. We are moving into the right direction, with the video and canvas tags, css transitions in safari and some support for svg, but using silverlight or flash is still a better solution here. So i also thought that Augmented Reality applications weren’t really doable in using open web technologies. But apparently, i’m mistaken: Augmented Reality is hot, and the Web can do it.
Another issue that needs to be solved in javascript, is access to all the sensor in mobile phones. As the Augemented Reality example shows, access to the digital compass is already possible. But smartphones will be used for so much more data input. The data collection part of smartphones might prove to be more important than the mobile internet access functionality.
The number of netbooks and smartphones will surpass all other computing devices. Just like there are more unix servers than mainframes, there are more desktop pc’s than unix servers, there are more laptops than desktop pc’s, netbooks/internet-tablets will outnumber laptops, and smartphones will outnumber internet-tablets. Smartphone will become the most widespread computing platform of the future (especially as it will replace a number of devices like photo and video camera’s and other devices). It is my hope that we will have simple and open technologies to target these devices.
