Advanced information overlay technology has long been the preserve of futuristic film and TV fantasies. Here, United Lane’s VP of Communications, Peter Warren, reveals how a pioneering California-based company is turning science fiction into hi-tech reality for the masses via its online data-fusion system – with huge implications for the real-estate sector

Ten years ago, the now defunct 3D company Silicon Graphics put together a 3D astral model of the Milky Way for the American Museum of Natural History. Called the Digital Galaxy Project, the model allowed you to fly through our galaxy, marvelling at the sheer size and scale of the system to which our planet belongs, and of which it is such a tiny part.

As one visitor took off from an Earth still immersed in the Bosnian conflict, he commented to Carter Emmart, the researcher taking him through the Horsehead Nebula, that the one thing that was amazing about the system was seeing so many unnamed planets, and wondering when names and information would be supplied about them.

Emmart replied that the process of digitally pinning information against an object would first take place on Earth. This would be the beginning of an enormous and constantly changing encyclopedia that would eventually start to spill out into the stars, gradually tabbing data against the dots and giving them meaning. But he warned, ‘Just finding out what a planet or a star is will be a massive task.’

Fast forward to 2009. The information overlay technology that was first introduced to us in the futuristic TV series Six Million Dollar Man, and then refined in sci-fi blockbusters like The Terminator – which based their research on techniques developed by NASA and the like – is now forcing its way into the real-estate market. It’s still in its early stages – you may not see a data readout on your eyeball just yet – but by simply clicking on a building on a map, a data screen can now drop down and reveal huge amounts of information on a particular location – almost instantaneously.

One system developed in El Segundo by Geosemble – a California-based company that up till now has concentrated on supplying its artificial intelligence and geospatial data-fusion systems to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, the US Air Force and other US government agencies including the CIA – can now pull together all the available data on a locality.

Within the last two years, the company has started to see real opportunities open up in the real estate market. ‘We have started to do work for cities that are undergoing redevelopment, who want to attract certain sorts of companies into an area,’ says CEO Andre Doumitt.

‘Up till now, you look on Google Earth and all you can see is rooftops. What we do is let you click on that rooftop and see who is in that building, and who are in the buildings around you, so that you can really get an idea of a neighborhood. We can deliver a lot of information.’

Just how much information is impressive. Go to one of Geosemble’s projects, the El Segundo website (www.elsegundobusiness.com), and you can home in on a particular area. By clicking on a roof you can drill down, uncovering information on the businesses you might be rubbing shoulders with, and all the restaurants, theatres and entertainment centers in the area.

The system depends on the ability of Geosemble’s technology to accurately overlay geospatial information on top of map data to achieve an absolute match between the two. When this is done, the system can then input information obtained from the web and other data sources to pinpoint a building and identify it.

This then allows the company to add other information gathered from the internet to a building’s data model. Precise data about what the companies in a block are doing, number of employees, recent news, etc, can then be displayed on a data readout.

So sophisticated is the system that it can also pull in information from social networking sites to present an even richer data picture. In the case of restaurants, you can even pull up menus if that information has been made available.

Geosemble’s business model is simple. The internet is changing, broadening and deepening; whereas once we expected a picture to be just that, now we want more information about what we are looking at than just a newspaper caption.

In the future, an image will be considered merely the entry point to somewhere in the real world.

This process is now gathering pace. With Google mapping streets in 3D, companies building interiors in 3D, and shopping centers and high streets developing websites about their services, a complex overlay of pictures and data is developing that mobile phone companies are now exploiting so as to be able to tell you where you are in that world, and what is around you.

‘If that information is open source or in the public domain, then we can display it. We can take geographic context and with our data-search techniques link that and other information to pinpoint content onto a particular location. In the old days, you would have to gumshoe it. Now, all you have to do is click on an image and you see a whole bunch of other information,’ says Doumitt. ‘A while ago, you would buy a computer that said ‘Intel inside’: well, now we’re the data inside when you tap on an image.’

This means that Geosemble can cut down on the time needed to research an area by presenting planning applications and development plans for an area alongside social and business information.

‘I see this as removing a lot of the fear that is involved in moving into an area,’ says Doumitt. ‘If you are looking to move into an area, it’s a bit awkward to go around and talk to people and ask them about what the area is like and what that gloomy-looking building is across the street. With this technology, you can determine if you want to make an investment decision very quickly.

‘For people investing in a home, that’s a big deal: they tend to only make those decisions three or four times in their lives. If it’s something like a business, then it can be crucial in being able to attract high-calibre staff.’

Costing around $10,000 to set-up for a small city, and with an annual maintenance fee of $2,000, Doumitt underlines the point made by Emmart 10 years ago about the model for the universe.

‘What can be accomplished all depends on the depth of the information and the frequency with which it is updated. We have got to the stage now with the internet when we are beginning to expect more and more from our images – we are aiming to be the data behind those images.’

• Geosemble Technologies provides automatic techniques for integrating and displaying geospatial information, including maps, aerial imagery, news, events, databases, businesses and more. For more information please visit: www.geosemble.com

The mobile phone is already considered indispensable in the modern world. As the device becomes increasingly powerful and complex, techno-evangelists are hailing it as the next frontier in digital communications

The humble mobile has become the focus of huge amounts of attention over the last four years, as companies ponder ways to turn it into both a hi-tech pocketbook and a universal communications device. The advent of mobile broadband and, increasingly, inexpensive mobile tariffs is now accelerating that process. Four years ago, researchers found that people leaving their houses always checked for three items: keys, wallet and mobile phone. The aim of technology companies today is to bring that down to just one item: the mobile.

Uniting a key with a mobile phone is a relatively simple process; the move to develop the phone into a mobile banking system capable of letting you pay for small items with your handset is taking longer. But, despite being hampered by the recession, things are now well under way. (See http://www.futureintelligence.co.uk/content/view/49/57/) Further mobile updates expected over the next five years will include new OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens which will have hugely increased resolution, soft metals, touch screens with tactile feedback, fast and accurate voice recognition systems, and keyboards and screens made from light.

The long-term aim is to produce completely mobile communications systems that can be easily worked with while on the move, have the same power and display functionality as a desktop PC, and which will provide instant internet access. The result of this will be mobiles that can be integrated into clothing, powered by our immediate environment, and capable of producing instant, full-size ‘air screens’ that we can interface with, either by talking or using ‘air keyboards’. Until the full emergence of this technology, in the short-term the attention is on the development of ultra-high-definition tactile screens that we can reconfigure into any interface required, using our fingers to access information.

The content industry is already gearing itself up to accommodate these developments, with film and mobile companies working hard to develop films, games and TV access via the mobile. Big internet companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are not only supporting this new technology, but are also actively engaged in developing it.

It’s a brave new world that is ignored by real estate companies at their peril. Real estate technology guru Professor Bernice Ross (See her interview and blog elsewhere in this issue) flags up the growing consumer trend to use their mobiles both to display property listing information, and then navigate to the location. She says companies should not just develop an internet presence, but one that can be accessed by the mobile.

‘The mobile is something that the real estate sector should not ignore. More and more information is being held by people on their mobiles; it is something that the President of Nokia has referred to as iPodification. All of your services should be delivered to one point. Because of that, there should be two variants of a real estate website – a full-blown version and a dot-mobi version which carries short, one-line descriptions for mobile.’

Some Realtors have already started to experiment. ‘We are seeing a lot of real estate companies starting to come to us for mobile websites,’ says Daniel West, CEO of Unity Mobile, a company that specialises in producing fully functional mobile websites capable of streaming high quality video.

‘Our technology allows people to set up incredibly inexpensive mobile phone websites in 10 minutes, which means that we can bring the functionality that only used to be available to large companies to smaller businesses, and that is proving very attractive to real estate.

‘We can redirect any website to a mobile so long as the content is digital, though it has to be remembered that no phone can deliver 100 per cent of the functionality that you get from the internet because a different technology is used. In some cases, people are finding that they have to build other applications to get an equivalent experience, but that’s not difficult to do.’

West points out that Unity’s system also allows huge amounts of analytical data to be extracted from any visit to its mobile websites. ‘Information about who a person is, what their phone number is, and what they have been doing while they were on the mobile website, can all be recorded. If you then think about the potential of being able to link that with SMS, then this becomes very powerful.’

Doug Garcia, director of research for Colliers Parrish, a large commercial real estate group based in the San Francisco Bay area, is already looking into ways that his company can exploit the trends in mobile, and also looking into the potential of the new locational services offered by companies such as Google. With other companies now working hard to offer services that will allow messages to be triggered on a mobile phone when you drive down a particular street, he predicts a world where you will sign up to receive alerts about a particular type of house within a certain price range from a Realtor’s internet site, and then be sent a message when you are near to a property advertised by that agent, asking you if you want to view it. This new mobile world will be supported by a huge raft of viewing technologies.

‘The rate of development of these technologies is already having an impact on the US real estate market,’ says Garcia. ‘We’ve explored using 3D modeling on the market. We are working towards a future where actual 3D tours will allow you to go to different floors of a building and look around the location using Google Earth.

‘Increasingly, we think that people will want to use 3D to assess the value of a property remotely, and the challenge there will be in the refresh of the 3D worlds that will evolve – though I could see that happening with social networking for an area where people will work to contribute information.’

Researchers working for 3M have announced that they have perfected the technology to produce a 3D mobile phone

Autostereoscopic technology offers 3D that can ‘escape the screen’.

The system, which uses autostereoscopic display technology, will be the first time that 3D technology has made it to a mobile for commercial use, and is capable of full resolution, according to Bill Bryan, technical manager of 3M’s St Paul, Minnesota-based Display and Graphics lab.

‘We expect to see a consumer electronic device by autumn in Asia, and you will see more products in the next 9-18 months,’ said Bryan, adding that 3M expected the development to drive a new market in 3D content to mobile devices.

‘This is going to be a new area for filmmakers and other content providers. Disney is now shooting all of its new films in 3D. We are already seeing 3D in the living room and the gaming room: the next differentiator in the handset market will be 3D.’

The autostereoscopic technology that 3M has opted for with its 3D screen sits between the light guides and LCD screens that are used in conventional mobile phone displays.

For those interested in the minutiae of the process, the screen is made from a double-sided micro-replicated film, which has microstructures on the bottom and the top. A directional back-light system is then used to generate the 3D effect.

Using a time delay, LED lights load an image onto the left side of the screen and then five milliseconds later, do the same for the right side of the screen. The whole process runs at 120Hz, so it does not generate screen flicker.

However, running the screen at such a rate could be a drawback according to some 3D experts, who see it as a limitation, because the screen uses four times more energy than the ones in use today.

The 3D screen can only be viewed when the screen is held at a particular angle, generating what is known as a ‘sweet spot’ – something that did not annoy those using the device, maintained Bryan.

‘The thing that we have noticed is that because mobile phones are handheld, people tend to naturally move them around until they have got it in the right place.’

The result, according to 3M, is 3D that can escape the screen it is generated on.