Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

This week top post at Games Alfresco was the always classic "Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games", if you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and take a look. Lagging far behind, the top post on Augmented Times was "Augmenting Deformable Surfaces".

Here are some more AR related news from around the web:

• If you can't take augmented reality with you for a dive, you may bring augmented fish to your room, with this project from Canon.
• I've missed that last week, but apparently, Microsoft hired interactive design firm INVIVIA to create videos for some group named "Volume Studios". That group goal is to "explore in a poetic narrative way how certain developing technologies could begin to blend and augment our daily lives”. Check out two of the (rather bizarre) video at "i started something".
  
• Drawing in three dimensions, a futuristic design at Yanko Design.
  
• If you always wanted to play an augmented reality game where your goal is to dip chicken nuggets, you need not look any further.
• Wired is joining the AR fun.
  
• It's always great to see amateur programmers' take on AR. This video combined augmented reality with emerging patterns, and I find it lovely
  

Quote of the week comes from this post at Locative Lab, describing the connection between horror movie "They Live" and the state of augmented reality:

“They Live” in my mind is the canonical, defining vision of what any sort of Augmented Reality should start with. Sort of presenting an “anti” world — the world made strange so that we see it in a different way. Reconstructed. No Pink Pony scenarios or anything that makes the engineer-accountants get eager, sweaty palms. Weird stuff to invert things and better see the alternative possibilities beyond way-finding, tour-guiding, and informatic overlays of measured data.

I don't exactly agree with this position, but it is an interesting take on what should our augmented future look like.
And finally, to start off the next week with a good feeling, here's an interesting project, bringing World of Warcraft multiplayer mini games to a desk near you. It's nothing special, but looks very exciting (at least more exciting than playing the same games using a keyboard):