Nokia consider Maemo Linux as alternative to Symbian ?

As cnet point out Symbian is not mentioned in the joint Intel-Nokia press release about 3G and Open Source Software collaboration. Only Maemo and Moblin are mentioned. Symbian, though also open sourced is left out. It could be that Nokia is less enthusiastic about Symbain OS now. Existing Symbain OS UIs are inferior to iPhone UI, Symbian OS third party applications are not getting enough traction and most of Symbian users are not even aware they exist. Symbian Signed restrictions are not helping either. BTW most of Symbian users are not even aware they are Symbian users.
So Nokia seems hedging its bets with Maemo linux. Cnet think Nokia could switch to Maemo for high-end devices and leave Symbian for mid-range.

Nokia released cleaner for the “Curse of Silence”

Nokia released tool for FP1 phones, cleaning the “Curse of Silence” exploit form the phones.

Polynesian stick charts were mapping wave patterns

Polynesian Stick Charts were completely different way of navigation, they were mapping not only locations, but also oceanic swells, patterns of waves.

Specific map encoding was closely guarded secret, known only to group of navigators who own them.

Navigating by the wave pattern navigator “would crouch in the bow of his canoe and literally feel every motion of the vessel.”They “concentrated on refraction of swells as they came in contact with undersea slopes of islands and the bending of swells around islands as they interacted with swells coming from opposite directions.”
Fascinating staff, kind of technology which could have been developed by alien, or in alternate history line.

To filter or not to filter

Time-domain smoothing filter is somehow controversial question in image registration. The video is inherently smooth, necessity of time-domain smoothing is usually sign of instability of image registration algorithm. Taking average for several frames is especially notorious. Ideally good, stable algorithm don’t need any smoothing in time-domain. However what to do if there is small jittering in otherwise stable and fast real-time algorithm. Just couple of pixel in amplitude, it’s not noticeable on the big virtual objects, but on small, especially stretched or linear objects it’s quite noticeable. I have found that at least in my case, simple, several frames, smoothing filter remove jittering and is not causing any visible alignment artifacts.

Reception – first imppression

First reception of the demo is positive. It seems generally users have no problems with concepts of fiduciary markers and keeping them in the camera frame. Mostly people want more stuff and gameplay, as always, but seems there is no problem with usability. Well, of cause there is problem of Nokia platform fragmentation, but that is not exactly AR related. Well, it could be. Mobile AR applications are CPU hungry, and that force them to squeeze device hardware to its extreme. Which make AR apps especially vulnerable to platform fragmentation. I’ve already mentioned strange problem with N96 in previews post.
The concept of tabletop marker-based game seems viable.
The main question is, how to bring more real-world interaction into game ?
Right now we have phone as 3d mouse and small objects scanned and placed into game.
Make markers movable ? Wouldn’t it hinder gameplay ? Scan surface of the table and use it as game “terrain”, with game physics properties imported from real table surface/objects ?
Questions, questions…