Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

That was quite a week, and we have plenty of augmented reality related links from all over the web:

• The next hardware version of the iPhone comes with a digital compass, or so the rumor goes, which, I suspect, will give a major push to augmented reality applications.
• "Introduction to augmented reality", this video teaches the basics of programming with FLARToolKit
  
• "Assassin's Creed 2", which is a game by Ubisoft to be released next winter, uses augmented reality in its promotional site. Pointing specific markers at your web-cam, unlocks secret content about the game. If you are interested, you can read the full story here (which I didn't), or you can just see how it looks like in the following Youtube clip. For another usage of AR as a locking mechanism, look at the video below.
  
• Yet another company using AR for its promotional campaign is Doritos. It's a month old, and I've missed it when it was fresh. Nothing more than novelty AR.
• Hotolag is a french service that let you leave a message to your friends, exposed when they present a marker at their web-cam. We saw a better service, similar to this one, last valentine. (via Le5emeP.fr).
• Replace your head with an "Hello Kitty" character, I know you want to. This is a bit more sophisticated than your usual marker based AR, as the character is chosen according to the marker you hold in your hands (and not placed near your head itself). (via development memo for ourselves)

And since it's Easter, two videos this time -
This smart fellow used FLARToolKit to create a combination lock:


And Ori pointed to the next clip from 2004 (if I recall correctly), preceding int13's April fool's hoax by a couple of years, and doing that feat for real.