Merry Weekly Linkfest

Merry Weekly Linkfest

Two important events are coming this week -

1. The conclusion of our little project, collecting augmented reality predictions for the new year.
2. Christmas

Although the former event is much more important, for some strange reason, I was swamped this week with links relating to the latter. A short list of holiday related AR application that caught my eye since my last post "it's the season to be augmented":

• Rosetta wants you to catch virtual snow flakes with your (real) tongue. Augmented planet reviewed that application.
• Layar lets you place a virtual Santa wherever you want.
• Metaio has a skiing Santa game.
• Blair MacIntyre's newly formed company Aura Interactive released Santa Vision, an iPhone app that lets you create Christmas scenes via AR.
  
• Singing card from Kidovate
• And one from Epson Japan
  
• Damashek Consulting, True Digital, Chameleon Net, Rancon, GriDD, Der Punkt, re-lounge, The Gary Group and Pancentric Digital had the original idea of sending their clients augmented reality holiday cards (AR is the new "Social Networks")

Whoof!
Oh right, there were other news this week. Augmented Planet published their results for the first AR people-choice awards. Wikitude won the browsers category, but which participitant won the Chumby? Layar had to withdraw Layar 3.0 from the appstore. Thomas Carpenter has a listing of the worst AR uses this year. A good use is to encourage people to donate blood, like they do in Japan. Total Immersion created Avatar related AR apps for McDonalds and Coke. Wallpaper magazine fancies an AR edition. And another week, another car gets an AR campaign (though it's technically from June).

The weekly video shows Total Immersion's implementation of a haunted house in Japan. Thomas wrote a full post about it, while I just tweeted that it looks really scarry:



Have a great week and merry augmented Christmas, if that concerns you!