Video: NRC demo - Nokia Image Space mobile client

Published by Rafe Blandford at 14:04 UTC, June 18th 2010

As part of Nokia's 'Open for Ideas' event, I had the opportunity to attend the Tampere Innovation Experience @ Demola day, which included a showcase more than 40 research projects that had been guided by open innovation principles. I teamed up with The Really Mobile Project's Ben Smith to shoot three videos of NRC (Nokia Research Centre) demos. The first video covers the Nokia Image Space research, with a demo of the Image Space mobile client on a Nokia N900.

Nokia Image Space

Nokia Image Space is a Nokia Research centre project that is exploring ways in which photos can be shared and viewed by showing them in a 3D visualisation of physical space. It is similar to viewing photos on a 2D map (geo-tagged), but with an extra orientation dimension added so that the view becomes 3D.

There are two key parts to Image Space:

• Capture - capturing the necessary sensor information so that photos can be viewed in image space. In addition to the common location sensor (GPS), orientation information is collected through the use of compass and accelerometer sensors.
     
• Viewing - viewing the photos in a 3D representation of the physical world so that location, orientation and contextual information can be displayed. Although it is possible to view just your own photos, additional value is apparent if you view the photos from many users.

The idea is that viewing photos in this ways provides better contextual information. For example, imagine seeing a collection of photos, captured from 50 different locations, of a building such as the Eiffel Tower. A standard list based album would be relatively uninteresting. However the same photos displayed in their 3D context would allow you to gain a much better appreciation of what you were looking at.

Nokia describes Image Space as follows:

Nokia Image Space is a prototype online community service. It lets you share your experiences, photos and other content about specific places as well as helping you understand their spatial relationships.

You can create content and access it seamlessly via the web or a mobile device. The service is a fusion of sensors and computer vision. It creates an exciting mirror world where users can collaborate in many ways.

The service is already, partially, available via Beta Labs, where there is also a good video that introduces the ideas behind the service.
   

Video from Tampere Innovation Experience @ Demola - Nokia Image Space mobile client

The current publicly available Image Space service limits the full Image Space viewing experience to a PC. The video below covers this new mobile viewer/client implementation of Nokia Image Space, which looks to replicate the full viewing experience on a mobile device.. 

Severi Uusitalo, from the Tampere Nokia Research Center, walks us through the client and explains how it displays geo-tagged and orientation-tagged images in a 3D representation of the physical world.

Key points:

• When taking a picture, orientation (compass and accelerometer) information is recorded, in the EXIF data, in addition to location (GPS). Captured photos can be stored locally or uploaded to a service like Flickr. Beta Labs has an daemon for Symbian phones that does add this capture ability for existing phones, but it could easily become a built in feature in the future.
   
• This extra information can be used to view photos in a new way - Image Space'. It is best thought of as an additional way of viewing photos that provides an alternative to existing viewing conventions (album and time-based views).
     
• Image Space view, which places the photos on a 3D landscape map/visualisation, and allows you to access photos by 'flying' through the landscape. 
  
  
• Photos can either be stored locally or come from a remote source (e.g. Flickr). In the case of Flickr, the mobile client allows you to add and view comments associated with the image. 
  
  
• This can be thought of as the next stage on from geotagging. It allows people to see the context in which a photo was taken. Particularly valuable is being able to see photos in the context of others' photos that might have been taken in the place.  

Here is Nokia's description of the demo:

"Image Space Mobile Client makes geo-tagged photo browsing fun by presenting the photos in your mobile device in a 3D space. If you hook it to your flickr account, it also shows the photos from your friends."

The Really Mobile Project also has a post on this video, which you can view here. Thanks go to Ben Smith for his camera work and video editing skills.

We'll be publishing the second and third videos in due course.

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered I have a great idea for Nokia to research - fix the Ovi store! How about letting users updating their software? Seeing program version in the store? When BASICS are done, come back to those experiments.

Very insightful post ... not.

Do you know anything about project management or software development?

Nokia have *lots* of developers, working on a variety of projects. The issues with the Ovi store cannot be solved purely by their throwing resources at it.

I'd just be happy if Nokia would remove the dross from the Ovi store - some good apps in there, but some really, REALLY lousy ones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by clonmult Nokia have *lots* of developers, working on a variety of projects. The issues with the Ovi store cannot be solved purely by their throwing resources at it.

Yes, it requires resources and competence and project management etc. Judging by results Nokia doesn't have any of that. Still I would move resources to where they are needed most and suspend those hobby projects until basics are done.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Yes, it requires resources and competence and project management etc. Judging by results Nokia doesn't have any of that. Still I would move resources to where they are needed most and suspend those hobby projects until basics are done.

Its project management and designers that are the issue - just moving a couple of developers from one project to another won't necessarily have the desired effect.

And who's to say that Nokia aren't working on updates to the Ovi store? It just may not be ready for release. I will definitely say one thing for Nokia - whilst they don't always get things right on first release, the gradual improvements made to products/services do tend to eventually result in something rather good.

There is also the issue that I've mentioned on here before - Nokia are quite possibly a typical large corporate - changes are not necessarily easy to follow through and make, the approvals required to push them through can be difficult. Such make a change to the corporate infrastructure to speed up such processes can be ..... close on impossible without top level management buy in.

From the looks of the N8, things have definitely improved - a lot. To a certain extent Nokia have rested on their laurels and had become complacent. It may well be 3 years since the original iPhone hit the market, and Nokia are taking quite a long time to turn things around, but their core competencies in developing what are generally good (albeit slightly flawed) products will always be there, the process just needs some refinement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by clonmult Its project management and designers that are the issue - just moving a couple of developers from one project to another won't necessarily have the desired effect. And who's to say that Nokia aren't working on updates to the Ovi store? It just may not be ready for release. I will definitely say one thing for Nokia - whilst they don't always get things right on first release, the gradual improvements made to products/services do tend to eventually result in something rather good. There is also the issue that I've mentioned on here before - Nokia are quite possibly a typical large corporate - changes are not necessarily easy to follow through and make, the approvals required to push them through can be difficult. Such make a change to the corporate infrastructure to speed up such processes can be ..... close on impossible without top level management buy in. From the looks of the N8, things have definitely improved - a lot. To a certain extent Nokia have rested on their laurels and had become complacent. It may well be 3 years since the original iPhone hit the market, and Nokia are taking quite a long time to turn things around, but their core competencies in developing what are generally good (albeit slightly flawed) products will always be there, the process just needs some refinement.

I agree that Nokia lacks proper management, startegy, sense of direction etc. since iPhone release.
I do not agree that thing have improved - after years od neglected Download service, Ovi store is a WRT widget, lacking most basic functionalities. N8 is late, not shipping, Symbian^3 isn't ready, no dates of availability defined. And while N8 is supposed to be better than 5800, it does not seem to come close to iPhone 4 or DroidX. By the way, 12 megapixels is too much for such a small sensor and lens, Nokia has decided to take part in the wrong race.

Quote:

Originally Posted by viipottaja no strategy? they have a very clear strategy.

Really? What is it? Concentrate on low-end low-margin phones, developing countries markets and abandon high end? Because this is what happens so far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by viipottaja n8 will, btw, likely ship with a new version of Store.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows when and if. Anyway it is too late for me, I'm done waiting for better future "next year". Let's hope it will happen before everybody jumps ships...
http://www.nokiadna.com/2010/06/noki...of-blog-posts/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered I agree that Nokia lacks proper management, startegy, sense of direction etc. since iPhone release. I do not agree that thing have improved - after years od neglected Download service, Ovi store is a WRT widget, lacking most basic functionalities. N8 is late, not shipping, Symbian^3 isn't ready, no dates of availability defined. And while N8 is supposed to be better than 5800, it does not seem to come close to iPhone 4 or DroidX. By the way, 12 megapixels is too much for such a small sensor and lens, Nokia has decided to take part in the wrong race.

Download was neglected, Ovi is leagues ahead of that in every possible way - its not ideal, but its definitely usable (unlike Download).

On what counts does the N8 not come close to the iPhone 4 or the <insert name of this weeks hot generic droid device>? Neither droid or the iPhone have ever beat Symbian for functionality, its only in "mind share" that they've had any lead.

And finally on the sensor, you have heard that the sensor in the N8 is larger than that in most dedicated compact cameras - which is why its probably (possibly?) going to be one of the best truly pocketable cameras on the market - regardless of it being in a phone or a dedicated device.

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