Weekly Linkfest
In the meantime the backlash against augmented reality (and the hype bubble surrounding it) has begun, with PSFK's "Is Augmented Reality The Next Second Life?", Fast Company's "Put Your Phone Down: Augmented Reality Is Overblown" and Techdirt's critique of gimmicky AR applications. Even Zugara has called on bloggers to cool down the hype. The best of its kind is BusinessWeek's "Augmented Reality: Getting Beyond the Hype" (you should read this article):
The industry could battle the hype and mislabeling by establishing standards the rest of us can understand. Otherwise, augmented reality will quickly meet the same fate as "green" products: Marketers will advertise even the slightest of augments as "augmented reality," leaving consumers confused and bewildered.On the other hand there's Robert Rice's reply to that Fast Company article.
Well, I don't think that anyone will deny there's a lot of of hype around augmented reality at the moment, and I'm sure most believe that augmented reality has a great potential. It is my humble opinion that really exciting AR is still a few years away and in order to get there, we need to keep the hype at bay. As Rice writes, there's a fine line between evangelizing and hyping, and we should be careful not to cross it. Not that it's going to help, as many startups are pumping air into the bubble, hoping for an exit before it bursts.
Oh, and in other news:
- YDreams's Antão Almada's impressions from ISMAR.
- Mobile application (videos for your pleasure): Browser for parks, finding your car with Car Finder, inserting UFOs and witches to photograph with MagiCam, and LocFinder a well designed "AR" version of a compass.
- And yet another augmented reality business card (YAARBC?), even two.
- Novelty, Gimmicky, AR app for the San Antonio Spurs, whatever.
This week's video is of an art performance named .txt , that features a tag cloud haunting a dancer. I'm not an art critique, so I can say anything about the performance itself, but technology wise, it's using YDreams' YVision for real time interaction between the dancer and words (via @YDreams):
.txt interactive digital performance - excerpt#1 from ponto txt on Vimeo.
Have a nice week!
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3 comments:
I don't think it's being overhyped, I think every day we're realizing the real potential in AR. It can revolutionize video games, toys, the way we interact with computer operating systems, a new film viewing experience, etc. AR is going to be huge, and the technology is available, we just need to develope it.
Yes, it's going to be huge. If I hadn't believe in that I wouldn't have started this blog.
However, it's not going to be huge tomorrow, next month, or next year. There's still a lot of problems to be solved for AR to evolve to something bigger than mobile browsers. Hype has killed quite a few bright ideas, I hope AR will not fall into this category.
Okay, yes I see what you mean, for the consumer they're gonna have to wait a bit, but for the developer there's so many novel applications to be claimed so they need to jump on the ball. Awesome blog BTW, thanks for starting it!
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