Apple iPhone FaceTime around the world

When Apple released the iPhone 4 last summer, one of the great new features was FaceTime — a phone-based video chat, the likes of which we hadn’t really seen before. It had some limitations (wifi-only being the biggest), but it’s proven to be very popular.

Not long after that, a variety of apps were released to help improve the service in various ways. One of the more popular is FTFun (“FaceTime Fun”), which allows you to FaceTime with other users without giving away your cell phone number or email address. To date, there have been roughly 180,000 calls using this service, so it’s been quite popular.

To help show off all of these calls, the FTFun folks have created a variety of Google Maps and Google Earth files to help visualize the data.

ftfun-3-hours.jpg

As you might guess, the data is anonymized so that they don’t give away precise user locations. What’s neat the variety of ways in which you can view it all:

• Last Three Hours: KML | Google Maps
• Yesterday’s Calls: KML | (too many to show in Google Maps)
• Live Data, updated every two minutes: KML | Google Maps

Google Earth is a great place to show off geo data like this, and the guys at FTFun have done a nice job of allowing you to view the data in a variety of ways. I’d maybe like to see thinner lines on it (especially on “Yesterday’s Call”), as things can get quite congested, but it’s nonetheless a fun use of Google Earth.

Augmented Reality for SketchUp

The first time I saw Augmented Reality in action, I wondered if I’d accidentally fallen through a wormhole on the way to work; it’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see on Boba Fett’s BlackBerry. AR is downright futuristic.

In the 3D modeling sense, AR involves combining a live video stream with a 3D model to create the illusion that the model is a physical object in the real world. All you need is a webcam (the ones that are built in to many laptops work just fine), a 3D model (SketchUp takes care of that), a printed-out paper “target” and a piece of AR software that can put everything together. This video shows AR in action:

And here’s an illustration that shows the setup:

A simple Augmented Reality setup for SketchUp, using an external monitor to show the video output.

Thanks to an Italian outfit called Inglobe Technologies, SketchUp users have been able to ride the AR wave for a while now. They’ve just released version 2 of their AR-media Plugin for Google SketchUp. Three great things about this shiny, happy piece of tech:

  • It’s available for both Windows and Mac OSX.
  • It’s available in three flavors: Free (Personal Learning Edition), Professional Lite and Professional.
  • I was able to use it, which means that it can’t be that hard to figure out.

Start out by grabbing the Quick Start Guide; you’ll find the relevant links about halfway down the plugin’s webpage. Follow Steps 2 and 3 to download and install the software; the free Personal Learning Edition will let you see how everything works without spending any money. After that, achieve instant gratification (my favorite kind) by skipping ahead to Step 6 in the Quick Start Guide: “Creating your first Augmented Reality Scene”.