We do love to create applications for our reality! Heading over to Creators Project Blog, an article by Beckett Mufson,” New Mobile App Lets You Create And Send Custom Digital Avatars”. Pocket Avatars, is an application developed to allow users to send 3D video animations with the help of Intel Lab’s facial recognition software, of avatars where the user can attach a personalize voice message. Now, at first I thought who would use this application and why? If I had to speculate, I would have to say this is another step in augmenting our reality in how we are connecting to others through hand held devices for amusement. However, after going a step further in reviewing Pocket Avatars, there is a section on their website about cookies and how their application uses them. This may be a fun application for users to interact with, however, if you are not mindful and taking the time to read the fine print when using the application, you are agreeing to certain terms and conditions when you install it. We as users need to sometimes need to slow down and read what we are signing up for. So, If you are like me, who is all about the fine print who goes to the actual website via your computer, verses trying to read any TOS via your cell phone. Head on over to Pocket Avatar’s Cookies TOS, (links to Intel Labs) in terms of how cookies work and read the fine print! Pocket Avatar goes on record stating that they “may” use the data collected about you that is personally identifiable. These cookies include those are necessary or strictly enforced for operation of the application , such as functionality for returning user, as well as advertising cookies that record your online activities.
Now, I am all for new technologies that make my augmented reality session an enjoyable one, however, one has to ask oneself if there are other ways to augment a user’s reality without collecting finite information
