The Minnesota State Fair has seen data usage on Verizon’s wireless network increase 156 percent compared to the first four days of the 2013 state fair. The State Fair runs through Labor Day and is expected to draw 1.8 million people.
The Minnesota State Fair created a mobile website and a mobile app to help navigate the massive event. In addition, most of the vendors are promoting their booths via social media.
In anticipation of the increased usage, Verizon Wireless boosted its data capacity more than 300 percent by increasing its mobile cell sites from four in 2013 to six and adding more 4G LTE data capacity with the addition of its XLTE network which utilizes Verizon’s AWS spectrum.
State Fair apps for Android and IOS are an obvious application. Crowdsourcing Labor Day Adventures in state and national parks is helped with Crowdflower mapping. Visualized on Mode Analytics, the map lets you sort by activity and links to official websites, Wikipedia, TripAdvisor and Yelp pages.
Fifty years ago, at the 1964 World’s Fair, plans for industrial farming on the seafloor and a machine for cutting down the rain forest to build roads were exhibited.
A world’s fair today would be different, says Paul Saffo, on NPR. Now the new and innovative is just a mouse click away.
Digital Life in 2025, from Pew Research, predicted state control, reduced public trust, and increased commercialisation of every aspect of web culture. Saffo says today’s fair would be about questions. Instead of showcasing ways to build roads through the rain forest, the fair would ask: How do we save the forest? How can we preserve the oceans? Are we, as a species, capable of understanding how our minds work?
One way to get people to go to a world’s fair today, Saffo says, would be to crowdsource it. Make it like a real-world version of Wikipedia. Today’s fair might be a lot like Burning Man.
Expo 2010, in Shanghai China was a major World Expo, the first since 1992, with over 73 million people attending – a world record. China Mobile exhibited LTE-Advanced at the fair for the first time.
Computational photography chips like the Movidius Myriad 2 may enable Streetview video with fast, efficient OpenVX computer vision algorithms for body and gesture tracking, object and scene reconstruction, and augmented reality. Sounds of Street View lets you create 3D sound experiences in a street view environment.
A virtualized World’s Fair may be an idea whose time has come. Stargates might provide free gateways though a Twitch stream. Local VR headsets could provide full immersion.
Spacemaker VR was an (unsuccessful) Kickstarter project for Oculus Rift walk-throughs. 3D modeling programs like 3dS Max, Blender, LightWave, Sketchup, Revit, Autocad and many others can create and export 3D models.
Unity is a cross-platform game creation system used to develop video games for web sites, desktops, consoles, and mobile devices. Unity3D and similar products such as the Unreal Engine and CryEngine helped democratize game development, making the kinds of tools used by the world’s largest game companies available to developers at little or no cost.
There are lots of free tools for Android App Design. Google’s Material Design provides a framework for responsive (crossplatform) design.
Google Cardboard is here today. Essentially, it’s a cardboard housing for a smartphone. You get a $10 lens kit, about $7 in off-the-shelf magnets, $3 worth of velcro, a rubber band, and an easily programmable $1.50 Near-Field Communication sticker tag for launching the companion mobile app. It lets you cruise through a landscape or city street in Google Earth, watch YouTube videos in a virtual theater or Chrome Experiments, visiting the Great Barrier Reef in a helicopter, or riding a roller coaster.
Screw the World’s Fair. Let’s travel along the Champs-Élysées tonight!
