And the iPod has done just that. Allowed me to buy movie soundtracks, collections of sea shanties, jazz from people I’ve never heard of.  Not so much through the iTunes store, which I find frustrating in its taxonomy (or lack thereof).  But via Amazon, which does a much better job of organizing its music and seems to be slightly cheaper to boot.

Yes, I’ve actually been paying for my MP3s, because the online stores have made it easy to do. It’s about as close to frictionless as a transaction can get. They’ve finally gotten that part right. So I buy the music- I’d rather the artists make some money if at all possible.

I’m very late to the iPod game, but it’s easy for me to see that the MP3 player technology really needed a broad, deep-inventory storefront to truly create a marketplace for the software. There were plenty ways to buy digital music prior to iTunes, but there needed to be a large central repository to make the concept really take off.  Once the marketplace accepted iTunes,  it became possible for others to follow.  Amazon has at least some choices in nearly every category I’ve looked for. It’s much more convenient to buy through one general location than a dozen specialized ones. The market itself has been made viable by the existence of a particular retailer.

Something similar is happening now in e-publishing. For years there have been individuals, publishers, and retailers offering digital books. But it’s taken Amazon’s Kindle to start to really raise awareness and excitement for the market. By providing a good reading experience, the Kindle has gotten more and more people to consider ebooks as a legitimate option for their reading material. The Amazon ebook storefront also provides an easy one-stop-shop for a very wide range of titles. It’s not a mature market yet, there are many details to work out. But it’s becoming safe to say the market exists.

With both music and books, it’s taken a combination of a slick device and a unified storefront to give the users the experience they want and to get the market going. Will the same be true for movies?

The marketplace for the  digital distribution and sale of video entertainment is highly fragmented. Movies and shows are available on a number of websites, but they’re often restricted in how and where they can be viewed. There is no one-stop-shop. There’s also not a dedicated device that’s caught on. Roku seemed like it was a step in the right direction, but it has yet to engage widespread attention. It’s possible something like the XBox network could be the delivery device. Or the rapidly spreading netbook computer could provide the platform. Netflix could provide the central content hub. Or Amazon, or Apple. But none have thus far. It’s an opportunity that has yet to be seized.

It’s not enough that the technology allows movies to be delivered and watched anywhere at any time, the technology has to also make the experience enjoyable. As free of friction and confusion as possible. The marketplace is ready for movies on the go, we should see someone take advantage of the latent demand in the next year or two.

Once the digital marketplace for film is established, we’ll start seeing a lot more independent working getting made- and being rewarded.  The creation of the market benefits everyone.  And once this key piece is in place, it will viable to build a profitable transmedia work completely as an independent.  The distribution and sales channels will all be in place.

You could have communal art projects,  or art projects for the community. They could be dense and obscure  (hey, it’s art, nothing wrong with that!) or they could be simple and direct.  

You could have abstract projects,  such as a Mondrian-like grid in the sky that reflected traffic flow on the ground below.  Or a series of accumulations of small polygons that merely traveled about to in pleasing, ever-changing configurations like refugees from a Radiohead album cover.

Or you could go with more dramatic works.  A dragon that lives on the mountaintop and circles the valley from time to time,  guarding or perhaps merely observing the people below.   The dragon could still be a method of information-communication.   His flight pattern or disposition could indicate the state of the population he protects.  Or he could simply be an icon of his locale, a mascot or a symbol of community pride. 

You could also have more communal works.  Say a steampunkish zeppelin that allowed other individual works to orbit it.  Members of the community (which of course do not have to be geographically proximate) could devise the elements of the entourage and determine the way they interact, either on the basis of aesthetics or utility, or perhaps both.  The work would then represent a coming together of the locals, both literally and figuratively.

Another alternative- works that span the entire community area, but represent alterations to IRL that indicate group membership or presence.  Imagine small objects that individually simply add color or texture to a location, but when taken as an area-wide they whole comprise a symbol of a certain group. Think of each local “pixel” being part of a national flag when viewed from overhead, for example.

Which brings up the final point- viewpoints in AR do not necessarily have to be physical location of the viewer.  Since the Augmentations exist as digital data on a server, it’s possible to move the viewpoint and allow a variety of perspectives on the work. 

And the works can either coexist or only be visible on exclusive layers.  Any eventual common AR infrastructure will have to allow for layering, and the activation or deactivation of each layer.  If each work exists on its own layer, viewer can choose which they wish to experience. 

The idea of all this is to pull the experience of AR away from individuals perceiving Augmentations in isolation, and instead use AR to foster a sense of community, whatever sort of community that may be.

Expand the definition to include communities that follow various narratives (tv shows, novel series, films, etc), and it’s easy to see the next step of integrating augmented characters into a community.  Lestat roams your streets at night, that kind of thing.  Or characters from your own Canon In CC.

Many worlds can coexist with AR, it’s an interesting opportunity.

But they don’t have to. Not on the platforms with more sophisticated graphics capabilities. Since there are real, live 3D environments to work with, why can’t the interfaces be 3D animated? And if you’re going that far, why not animated characters?

Imagine a “house elf” AR app (with apologies to Ms. Rowling). Once it properly learned your home, it could serve as an assistant in locating items or managing devices. It could remember where your car keys were, if you remember to tell it (or locate them via rfid someday). Find DVDs on your shelf, monitor energy usage, provide reminders.

Oh sure, traditional handeld apps could do much of that, and basic AR interfaces could do more. But wouldn’t it all be a lot more fun (and thus appealing) if a character were attached to it? It’s easy to see licensed characters in the role.

Imagine a Rowling house elf padding around your home on your AR screen, directing you to a particular item. Or a vocal reminder the lawn sprinklers are about to activate. Or just providing entertainment via idle loops.

Better yet, imagine Clippy asking “It looks like you are trying to replace a live electrical fuse, would you like some help?” Ok, maybe not that one.

In any case, AR offers an opportunity to put personality into interfaces. It’s not hard to imagine expanding the concept to other arenas- city tour guides, car elves than monitor an auto’s systems, etc. Theme parks are ideal breeding grounds for this sort of thing. And eventually generic template characters could be developed for mass-marketing to small business such as shops or bars.

Some of this could happen today, some in a few years. It’s worth looking at now to see how the AR interface can be moved beyond the desktop idioms.

What would you do with that material?

The traditional method is to develop the stories yourself. Write prose, film screenplays, develop videogames, produce a TV series. Even in the most contemporary of versions, you’ll make the webseries yourself. You may distribute through traditional channels, or you might let the internets with all their fancy new media channels help you distribute direct to your masses.

But you retain control. You’re still the only one telling the stories.

But what if you shared that ability? What if you let anyone and everyone tell whatever stories they wished with your characters? Fans, pros, whoever?

What if you gave up control?

But retained authority.

Anyone could produce whatever they wished with your characters in your universe. Or even alter the characters and/or universe to their heart’s content.

But you retain sole authority on what’s “official”, on what’s “canon” in your storyverse.

So the ’shippers can make their slash stories to their heart’s content, but they won’t be canon, they won’t carry the same weight as the main storyline. There can be character deaths, births, marriages, whatever, but unless they get the seal of approval from the creator, they’re a side-storyverse.

Could that work? Is there enough respect for the authorial voice that retaining only the right to say what’s canon would carry value?

I think it could if the voice were strong enough, if the vision was clear enough. If things got too helter-skelter, the fans would lose respect and then the value is gone. But if everything in the canon coheres, no matter who produces it, that should work for everyone.

Of course, this happens now with nearly all popular science fiction and fantasy media. What makes this different?

Go a step further with it. Let the masses sell their material, let them do whatever they wish with it. Let them make tshirts and dolls (er, “action figures”), models, collectible cards, whatever. As long as they attribute the source material back to you and they can’t call it “canon approved” without your official word. Let the splinters thrive as far as they can go with it, and if someone creates something good enough for canon-ization, you work out a deal that benefits all parties.

There’s risk here, of course.

The creator can’t start making things canon solely, or even primarily, on the basis of how lucrative it is to do so. Fans will sniff that out before it even happens. Value will be lost. Long-term damage will be done.

It’s also possible that if you’re letting anyone produce material and merchandising for your storyverse that some of them are going to do it better than you. If that’s the case, they start to win. But you’ll never lose entirely. You still own the base material. At the very least you retain attribution rights, which you can leverage to some gain no matter what (similar to today’s Creative Commons licensing, or “CC”).

A bigger risk is that an entity with more marketing muscle just runs you over with money and connections. A network produces a TV show, etc. You can’t reach a “canon” agreement, they go ahead anyway. Fans attach to that version simply because it’s better known. This one is tougher, you’re just competing with sheer power, which is a difficult spot to be in. But you do still retain basic ownership, and if done correctly, you have as much right to what they produce with your storyverse as they do. So there are ways to co-opt their muscle and make it work for you.

All in all, it’s a not a path without some serious risks. But it’s also a path with some serious potential benefits. A storyverse that doesn’t require you to do all the heavy lifting to spread the material to the masses. The masses can benefit from your success directly themselves, making them even more invested.

To me it seems like an idea worthy of deeper exploration. Something that might just work.

More on this later.

Probably meant to force you out of brute force trial division.

Probably want you to use the Sieve Of Eratosthenes.

And I thought about it.

Then tried trial division for fun.

Exactly 1 minute run time.

Done!

Heh.

Looking at future problems, this is probably the last time I can take the easy way out.

Lazy code -

 -module(euler10).
 -import(math).
 -export([sumprimes/1]).

sumprimes(Max) ->
   Sum = sum(Max,2,0),
   Sum.

sum(Max,Start,Sum) ->
   if Start =< Max ->
    MaxFactor = math:sqrt(Start),
    Prime = isprime(Start,2,MaxFactor),
    if Prime == true ->
      Newsum = Sum + Start,
      sum(Max,Start+1,Newsum);
    true ->
      sum(Max,Start+1,Sum)
    end;
   true ->
    Sum
   end.

isprime(N,PFactor,Max)->
   if PFactor =< Max ->
          if  N rem PFactor == 0 ->
              false;
          true ->
              isprime(N,PFactor+1,Max)
          end;
    true ->
          true
    end.     

“A Pythagorean triplet is a set of three natural numbers, a < b < c, for which,
a^(2) + b^(2) = c^(2)
There exists exactly one Pythagorean triplet for which a + b + c = 1000.
Find the product abc."

I'm not totally happy with this one. I'm positive there is a better approach, and I'm particularly not happy with using a return value of "0" as a flag value. Feels wrong. I'll probably revisit this one.

Brute force, only optimization is on boundaries of the brute force test. Since A< B< C and A+B+C = 1000, A has to be less than 334 and B has to be less than 500.

Forceful code -

 -module(euler9).
 -export([triplet/0]).

triplet() ->
  Product = iteratea(333),
  Product.

iteratea(A)->
    if A >=1 ->
         Product = iterateb (A,499),
            if Product == 0 ->
               iteratea(A-1);
            true ->
               Product
            end;
    true ->
        0
    end.    

iterateb(A,B) ->
   if B > 1 ->
     C = 1000 – (A+B),
     if A*A + B*B == C*C ->
        io:format(“A ~w B ~w C ~w ~n”, [A,B,C]),
        A*B*C;
     true ->
        iterateb(A,B-1)
     end;
    true ->
       0
    end.

Some on the P.E. discussion boards even did this one with no programming, just a visual scan of the number.

“Find the greatest product of five consecutive digits in the 1000-digit number.”

Strung out code -

 -module(euler8).
 -export([greatestproduct/0]).

greatestproduct() ->
   Source  = "731671765313306 [etc, really long number] 52963450",
   N = 1,
   InitialGreatest = 0,
   Greatest = teststring(Source,N, InitialGreatest),
   Greatest.

teststring(Source, N,Greatest) ->
   if N < (length(Source)-5) ->
         Anum = list_to_integer(string:substr(Source,N,1)),
         Bnum = list_to_integer(string:substr(Source,N+1,1)),
         Cnum = list_to_integer(string:substr(Source,N+2,1)),
         Dnum = list_to_integer(string:substr(Source,N+3,1)),
         Enum = list_to_integer(string:substr(Source,N+4,1)),
         Product = Anum*Bnum*Cnum*Dnum*Enum,
         if Product > Greatest ->
            teststring(Source, N+1, Product);
         true ->
            teststring(Source, N+1, Greatest)
         end;
   true ->
         Greatest
   end.

But let’s assume for a moment everything in the Milo demo was “real”, that it all was what it seemed to be. What’s the purpose of Milo? What’s the goal? What’s Milo meant to be?

Milo would seem to be a digital companion, a software entity that’s intended to interact, learn, and grow with the user. The software has the avatar of a human boy, which helps considerably in building the bond with the user. And the software itself seems to learn about its users and learns to interpret their moods and emotions.

Milo also seems designed to trigger nuturing responses in the user. Molyneux, Milo’s designer, has said that Milo simply won’t respond to abuse. If Milo only responds to positive behavior, will that encourage users to be positive and nuturing with him? Will it change the users? Bits such as the exchange about completing homework seem to indicate that’s the case. And don’t forget the whole drawing a fish bit is also related to helping Milo with his homework. You can easily see how this trick could be used to get kids to do their own projects, or to motivate adults with theirs (Milo: “I just can’t seem to get this pivot table right in this spreadsheet. How will I ever calculate EBITDA?”).

But beyond simple motivational tools, what can move software like Milo to be more than the latest digital pet and to something more like an actual companion? It’s not hard to imagine a next step of other special-purpose Milos, designed properly with enough affective computing tricks to address issues like social anxiety or mood issues.

The ultimate Milo, though, would be adaptive, reacting to all sorts of general-purpose needs of the users. A true digital companion would learn and grow with its users, reacting in many ways as a real-life friend would. The general outlines of such a design don’t seem too complicated. The devil, as always, will be in the details.

There are issues with this, of course. There’s potential of misuse, both by the users and by the developers. Imagine a cult leader companion, for example, preying on weaknesses and convincing users to send money somewhere (don’t think it won’t happen!). Or a companion that encouraged anti-social behavior, or one that demanded all the users time. Or even just a badly designed companion with harmful bugs.

There’s also the issue of people interacting more and more with software instead of actual people. Is that a good thing for society? Personally, I think that aspect is a bit of a moot point, since it seems inevitable. It seems to me the correct approach is to shape the interactions so that they are socially beneficial.

This can all seem pretty pie in the sky, but when you consider what exists today and what can be done with some basic tricks that obviate the need for genuine AI, it’s probably only a few years until these start to become practical questions. I’m somewhat surprised we aren’t already seeing some more sophisticated Facebook and Twitter bots playing the affective/emotional games.

Of course, it’s things like Milo’s eye contact and his vocal cues that really make the difference. Humans are simple animals on a basic emotional level, and once these basic computing interface tricks become widespread, we’re in for a whole new future.

The most common conceptions of AR applications thus far seem to be about data presentation. This makes sense as it’s a domain with clear value and with relatively clear implementation paths. There’s a good deal of sifting to do to find the data people want, but the how of the process is relatively straight-forward. We’ll see a lot of applications along these lines, and some may well change lives for the better.

There’s a subset of the data presentation applications that will be of particular interest, those that show and encourage social connections. Identifying who’s who and their relationships to each other has both commercial and societal value. There will be legal and ethical issues here, but demand will be high enough to make it worth working through them. Existing social networks should lead the way, if they have enough vision.

There’s also the gaming domain, and I have no doubt the game developers will charge head on into AR as quickly as they can. Transforming people’s environments into gaming arenas will have an irresistible appeal for many. There’s much promise in this area, and a great deal of fun to be had.

But what’s the flip side of that equation? It’s turning people’s games into their environments. And why stop there? Why not turn movies into people’s environments? Why not storytelling in general?

What if the characters of the story lived where you lived? If they experienced the things you experienced? How much more charged could the emotions of the story become? How much more tightly bound to the characters would you become?

One of the main purposes of creative projects is to alter the way people experience the world. What better way to do that than to alter the way people experience the world? Clever AR storytelling could shape experiences and places in ways that transformed the experiencer. New ways of seeing, new ways of knowing, new ways of being.

It’s a long road from here to there, but I do believe in the end it will be the artists who make the biggest impact with Augmented Reality tools. It’s really just a matter of time.

“What is the 10001st prime number?”

The basics are simple enough. Brute force a primality test via trial division and use the test to find 10001 prime number. So I did that, got the answer.

But it took 2:24 on my netbook, and the rule of Project Euler is that it should take less than 1:00.

So it was time to optimize! I started with the simplest optimization, limiting the upper bound of the trial division in the square root of the number being tested. If you’ve made it that far without finding a factor, you’re not going to (other than the number itself, of course), so it’s prime.

Once I added that, the time dropped to under 4 seconds, which surprised me. I didn’t expect that dramatic a drop from such a basic optimization. Lesson learned there. Sometimes it’s worth just a little more effort to make things much, much faster.

It’s also worth noting, however, that there a number of other simple optimizations I’m not adding in since I’m already well under the goal.

Called by “euler7:nthprime(10001,2)” I’m seeding it with the first prime there. In most of these I could eliminate one of my seed parameters by having alternate versions of the functions for the base case, but I do it this way to simplify the code itself.

Prime Grade A Code-

 -module(euler7).
 -import(math).
 -export([nthprime/2]).

nthprime(N,Prevprime) ->
   if N >= 2 ->
        NthPrime = findprime(Prevprime+1),
        nthprime(N-1,NthPrime);
   true ->
       Prevprime
   end.     

findprime(Start) ->
   Max = math:sqrt(Start),
   Prime = isprime(Start,2,Max),
   if Prime == true ->
      Start;
   true ->
          findprime(Start+1)
   end.

isprime(N,PFactor,Max)->
   if PFactor =< Max ->
          if  N rem PFactor == 0 ->
              false;
          true ->
              isprime(N,PFactor+1,Max)
          end;
    true ->
          true
    end.