In-person multilingual conversations mediated by novel hardware
2018 — now
Our work on enabling live translation in everyday glasses was the
closing feature at the Google I/O 2022 keynote: Let's see what happens when we take our advances in
translation and transcription, and deliver them in your line-of-sight. — Sundar Pichai, CEO (video)
When the web's VR ecosystem was still nascent, I helped to bootstrap it and make the WebVR API available even
on
low
end devices like Google Cardboard. I built and maintained libraries like the WebVR Polyfill
to provide head tracking and lens distortion in vanilla JavaScript. I created VR View to help webmasters embed
interactive stereo 360 imagery. WebVR
Boilerplate helped me build numerous creative VR experiences to inspire and help novices get started with VR on the web.
Google Tone
Transmit the URL of the current browser tab to computers within earshot, over audio.
2015 - 2019
When you press the blue megaphone button in your browser bar, the computer's speakers emit a combination of
audible and inaudible sounds that any nearby machine with a microphone can pick up. The signal triggers a
Chrome notification. Clicking it opens the transmitted URL in a new browser tab.
An award-winning, inexpensive virtual reality viewer for smartphones.
2014 - 2017
I invented, prototyped, and built the magnetic input method for the Cardboard
headset. The initial run was 10,000 units. There are now more than 20 million viewers out there.
US11,269,022 Magnetic controller for device control. Smus B., Plagemann C. 2019
US D750074 Virtual Reality Headset. Coz D., Henry D., Plagemann C., Smus B. 2015
I could write an ode to the web platform and to the power of the web
Audio API. When I worked with Chrome Developer Relations, I had the
opportunity to write a number of articles on the Web Audio API, which
came together in an O'Reilly Book. Since then, I have been an avid user
of the API, which came together in a number of open source projects.
US2022/014570 Synchronized performances for remotely located performers. Goldstein M., McNabb M., Smus B. 2021
I like creating things with my hands. It's a nice remedy to staring at screens all day long. Here are some projects that require more than fingers typing on a keyboard.
Developed software architecture for significant portions of iWork.com and implemented new features for iWeb
and
the iWork suite in Objective-C. Also:
Created a text and object selection engine in JavaScript.
Built a cross-browser graphics library using SVG, Canvas and VML.
Prototyped new product ideas using JavaScript and Ruby on Rails.
Wrote parts of the Microsoft Office document viewer for iPhone Mail.
US2010/0095198 Shared comments for online document collaboration. Bultrowicz M., Smus B. 2008
Social Computing
Crowdsourcing and visualization projects
2011 — now
My Crowdforge research at CMU showed that Microtask markets like MTurk can be used to accomplish complex tasks. I then got a taste for the wisdom of the crowds, as well as their foolishness. Could random people on the internet be corralled to create a tech tree? Could they be asked to tinker with an evolutionary origami art system? Could people with opposing viewpoints be brought together to participate in friendlier debates?
