Metaviews Media Management Ltd.

A rapid convergence is taking place between the web and reality. The artificial division between the virtual and the real is starting to dissolve, as various applications and technologies combine to stitch together interfaces and activities that together dissolve the barriers between the web and our material world.

Augmented Reality is a vivid depiction of how this may manifest a few months from now, however in the present, services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Google Buzz are helping to make it a reality. In contrast to AR, which I suspect most people still find a bit terrifying, the current batch of location based services have basic interfaces, usually connected to maps, which we're all relatively familiar with.

In fact there's something kind of seductive to using maps as an interface to this emerging convergent world where our location and surroundings are rich with information and social ties.

Is it an indication that we're lost and looking to find our way? Or the inverse, that we know where we are, and we wish everyone else to know as well?

The motivations for using social media and sharing one's location are not always as obvious as they may seem. Critics often slip into absolute terms when assessing how location based services can and will be used, however to fully understand their impact and potential, it is important to immerse oneself in the experience.

Augmented Reality is the newest frontier in car technology and General Motors is trying to bring it to the masses.

What is Augmented Reality you ask? It's a rapidly emerging field that combines information gleaned from the web and super-imposes it on top of "reality". From a technical perspective it employs GPS technology to determine where you are, and then uses cameras and software to engage in pattern recognition using the objects or landmarks around you.

Augmented Reality is largely being driven by the mobile industry, and the proliferation of smart phones, but as a concept is finding traction in all sorts of areas, whether they be at home with your web cam, or with glasses, or contact lenses.

As you drive your car, the AR system would be constantly scanning your surroundings, and co-relating that info with the GPS, to create a new kind of interface via your windshield.

This might be used for safety purposes, like recognizing when a hazard approaches, or anticipating an accident, or detecting a speed trap ahead, and gives you instructions on the windshield to slow down or stop, or maybe avert that nasty pot hole ahead.

Last week the Google Apps Marketplace opened for business. It is a facility for third party developers to add functionality and features to Google Apps, which is a service the web giant offers to business that allow said organizations to harness the power of cloud computing.

Cloud computing is an emerging concept that encourages people to do all their work on the web, instead of desktop computers, and in this case instead of corporate servers or expensive Microsoft Outlook/Exchange/Office systems.

Google Apps combines a number of different services, like gmail for web, google docs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, calendar, web site publishing, basically all the informational/software needs you would require to run the basics of the company.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics were the first games that took place "in the cloud." While it would be too easy to say that they were "The Social Media Olympics", that does not describe the breadth and comprehensiveness by which technology dramatically changed the way everyone interacted with the games.

Social media is for many people already old news, and what's novel about these Olympics, what made it possible, was the pervasiveness of cloud computing, the concept that frees us from our personal computer, frees us from a single television channel, to be able to interact with the games anywhere, anytime, and anyway we choose.

There's really no division between official broadcaster and even official sponsors, the olympics are so transcendent they permeate our society for two weeks, kind of like a cloud.

One of the impacts of the rise of cloud computing is the dominance of real-time media. The way in which compelling moments flash through the cloud like lightning with echoes that roar like Thunder.

Sidney Crosby's gold medal winning goal was a great example of this. The moment the puck when into the net an electric current surged across the country (across the world) firing human bodies up with emotion. The thundering echo produced by this strike could be heard by those not directly connected.