JOVRNALISM

Meta’s quest to put a computer that sees and hears everything onto everyone’s face spun a run of public losses into a win this week. The social networking, metaverse and AI giant demonstrated at its annual developer conference yesterday:
▪ Project Orion mixed-reality glasses
▪ Quest 3S entry-level virtual reality headset
▪ new functions for its Ray-Ban glasses’ AI agent
▪ added features for Meta AI
▪ the latest version of its Llama large language model


The Project Orion kit — very chunky wireless glasses, a computing “puck” about the size of a standard phone-charging external battery, and a gesture-sensing “neural” wristband, using hardware custom-built in a decade-long effort — was originally intended for release as a consumer product by now but was shelved in 2022 amid cutbacks and high production costs that remain, relegating it to internal prototype status.


Even so, the company — whose stock price stumbled along with its odd but opportunistic rebranding from Facebook to Meta three years ago, a poorly received $1,500 Pro headset two years ago and underwhelming original VR social experiences to date — managed to spark new excitement with the planned-product turned prototype Orion demonstration.


Meta showed a functioning vision of a future inching ever closer in which the digital world is not a mere display or overlay of data on the physical world, but an integrated one where people can interact with so-called “hologram” objects, avatars and each other almost naturally.


While a consumer version of Orion glasses optimistically remains at least two to three years away, Meta is bringing pieces of the larger vision into the world today:
▪ The new Quest 3S headset is priced to make virtual reality a little more accessible, with $300 and $400 versions, and a $150 price drop on last year’s Quest 3 to $500
▪ Ray-Ban Meta glasses hardware unchanged, but the fashion-first voice-controlled photo and video device gains an upgraded AI agent that offers instant language translation and improved search capabilities
▪ Meta AI search adds a voice to respond to queries, enhanced visual search and contextual image editing
▪ an expanded open-source Llama LLM powers the Ray-Ban and Meta AI features, along with improved text-based versions for mobile and edge devices, while vision and voice functions enable it to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI.


The gradual march to reaching that future world slowly seeping into ours offers all an extended opportunity to rethink and reinvent themselves for the convergent AI, immersive and spatial era I've been talking about for over a decade.


For journalists and news organizations, the new suite of products, tools, features and glimpse of the future signal areas to explore and experiment, with an eye to developing experiences and products that capitalize on the unique features and contexts they enable. Imagine novel and better ways to help people stay well-informed, apply that knowledge in meaningful ways, and establish new lines of business and revenue along the way..


If the past 25 years have taught us anything, it should be to invest in innovation, our audiences and ourselves instead of waiting for someone else to figure things out and reap the rewards while we play the costly game of catching up.


https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/everything-announced-at-meta-connect-2024-202733568.html

LIVE Apple is unveiling its Vision Pro AR/VR headset, which needs no controllers and doubles as a 3D camera.

WWDC 2023 — June 5 | Apple Join the worldwide developer community for WWDC23 on June 5 at 10 a.m. PT. Set a reminder now, and we’ll send you an update before showtime.Welcome to the of...

Apple unveils Vision Pro AR/VR headset.

WWDC 2023 — June 5 | Apple Join the worldwide developer community for WWDC23 on June 5 at 10 a.m. PT. Set a reminder now, and we’ll send you an update before showtime.Welcome to the of...

May the 4th be with you! Remembering that time we were at a hidden fortress... And we still can't tell you where it was.

New VR trooper spotted at hidden fortress. (Seriously, can't say where this is.)

Will Sony reveal the next version of its virtual reality headset today for its forthcoming PlayStation 5 console?

https://vrfocus.com/2020/06/playstation-5-specifications-what-they-mean-for-playstation-vr/

The uprisings over anti-Black racism and its harmful, often deadly impact demand attention from all people, organizations, institutions. The immersive and spatial sector is no exception.

The immersive and spatial industry shapes realities. We are obliged to do so responsibly, inclusively. Too often in conferences, events, meetings, discussions, that message falls on deaf ears.

Diversity, inclusion and equity have been at the core of JOVRNALISM's work since we began in 2014, and for many years prior.

JOVRNALISM is accelerating work on our diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives.

As always, we will advance, amplify, and elevate marginalized voices.

We hope you will join us.

Our original Twitter account is temporarily unreachable due to algorithmic lockout, so we're moving over to twitter.com/JOVRNALISMxr until it's sorted out. Please give us a follow there for more of the immersive and spatial journalism news and updates for which you've relied on us over the last five years.

Welcome to the future. It's now. Let's go.

https://twitter.com/JOVRNALISMxr/status/1266450246185504770

JOVRNALISM XR by Saleem Khan @ #AWE2020 on Twitter “Welcome to the future… … five years on. We're launching while Twitter sorts out technical issues that submerged our original account. The future is now. Let's go. ”

Martin Luther King, Jr., virtual reality experience "The March" ticket sales open ahead of February debut

https://time.com/longform/about-the-march/

https://chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-museums-chicago-winter-guide-ttd-0109-20200108-qwz7q27gt5d33ejfaa45lx3xea-story.html

Here's What to Know About TIME's March on Washington VR Project The March is a traveling exhibit that takes visitors on a groundbreaking virtual-reality journey

JOVRNALISM is not at any conferences in September.

We've received reports from friends and partners of individuals fraudulently claiming to be us (among them, those who stole our original Instagram account).

In reality, we're here: In the future.

Inquiries: Contact our founder Saleem Khan or get in touch via the posted contact information.