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-- WITH PHOTO -- TO BUSINESS, AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS:
Smartphone Users Surprised to Discover Websites Can View Their Every
Move
SAN FRANCISCO, March 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile device users that
try this web based demo clearly see a live view of how their location
is being tracked right now. "Most people are aware their smart devices
can track them, but they have no idea how accurate this is or how they
could start to visualize this," said Rob Manson, CEO & Co-founder of
buildAR.com, the company that developed this demo.
Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140325/PH89622
To test this for yourself just open http://buildAR.com/trackme on your
mobile device. It shows you an interactive map that displays exactly
where your device thinks you are and how accurate this is estimated to
be.
"This opens people's eyes to the privacy implications of the modern
web," said Manson. "But try it for yourself and you'll see how
inaccurate this can be. It makes you think about applications that
rely on this location data."
buildAR has put together a blog post that walks thru how this can
impact different types of applications, including Augmented Reality
apps that use location to show you information overlaid on the world
around you. "Many AR apps quickly grab the first location estimate the
phone provides to load some data as quickly as possible," said Manson.
"This often means the wrong data can be loaded and as soon as it's
displayed it then moves around as the phone makes more accurate
calculations. This creates a very confusing user experience."
This demo is part of the awareness building that buildAR is working on
thru their new "Augmenting the Web" Kickstarter project. The project
makes it possible to deliver AR using standard Web browsers, making AR
available to Billions of devices including smartphones, tablets and
wearables like Google Glass. You can check out this project at
Location data has already had a massive impact on all our lives and
has become something we depend on every day, yet it is still an area
that needs a lot more research, especially from a user focused
perspective. "By helping people see what's really going on under the
hood we're hoping we can all learn more about how to create great web
based experiences that rely on locations," said Alex Young, CXO &
Co-founder of buildAR.
About buildAR.com
Think of buildAR.com as "Wordpress for the Real World." It makes
creating Augmented Reality as "easy as adding a blog post" or "sending
a tweet." The buildAR platform enables you to embed your digital
content into the physical world around you by linking it to images,
locations and more. And now buildAR is bringing AR to the Web.
buildAR.com was launched in 2009 as the world's first Cloud based AR
Authoring Platform and has been leading the way ever since.
Contact: Alex Young +1 415 800 3458
Read more news from buildAR.com.
SOURCE buildAR.com
-0- 03/25/2014
/Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140325/PH89622
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
CO: buildAR.com
IN: STW WIC WEB ITE MEN
PRN
-- PH89622 --
0000 03/25/2014 12:35:00 EDT http://www.prnewswire.com
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