Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Got a little bit addicted to Google AI Challenge, so I haven't updated as I should have during the last week. Luckily, still have time for a quick linkfest:

• New Scientist has an interesting piece on indoors navigation systems and the battle of methods in this world.
  
• ISMAR is coming soon and the organizing committee has launched two interesting contests - Marker Design & Demo Video.
  
• 'Guerilla' augmented reality art invasion/exhibition in the MoMA New York. You don't really need the curator's approval to get your art into the museum.
  
• And if you are already at the museum, you may want to use OmniAR to gain insight on the art pieces.
  
• Point your iPhone at the sky, see augmented reality info as planes fly (via @kohdspace)
  

Last week I had a video in Dutch, this week we have a video from Lithuania. It seems that in Lithuania the national sport is augmented basketball (or am I making this thing up?). More details, in Lithuanian, here.



Have a splendid week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Layar, Pongr, Lumus, The Artvertiser - and the one linkfest to rule them all:

• After a short summer hiatus, Tish Shute is back with part 2 of her interview with Bruce Sterling: Urban augmented realities and social augmentations that matter.
  
• The Artvertiser, one of my favorite augmented reality projects, gets the main stage at TEDxAmsterdam.
  
• The Sydney Morning Herald: Is there a creepy side to the tech phenomenon they call "augmented reality"?
  
• Hands-on with Lumus' see-through wearable display at TechCrunch
  
• Now you can embed Layar in your own iPhone application
  
• First there were augmented reality cookies, now AR cake, what's next?
  
• Are QR codes killing art? (from the guys at Pongr, who coincidentally make real image recognition engine)

For this week's video, I've got one that is a couple of months old but I've never found the right time to feature it in a post. It's a video demoing the thesis work of one Willem Van den Eynde. I wish I could tell you more, but I don't read Dutch (?) that well. Still cool for a thesis:




Have a great week!

Is There Such a Thing as Pregnancy Induced Stupidity?

Is There Such a Thing as Pregnancy Induced Stupidity?

warning - this is another one of my nasty posts. Reader discretion is advised.

Is there such a thing as pregnancy induced stupidity? If you examine Simubaby's premise you might reach such a conclusion. How else would you justify its business model? Simubaby, the brain child of the Spanish Atlantis Virtual Reality is a commercial product harnessing the power of augmented reality to help pregnant mothers-to-be visualize how their fetus looks like. Unlike a similar solution from Talking Dog Studios, this one comes with a belt.



Nothing to get mad about you say? Well, you haven't heard the price yet.
It's 60 euros (77 US dollars). And that's after a price cut from 80€. But, don't think of it as 60€ for an ugly belt just so you have somewhere to put the AR marker. No, you also get access to some amazing AI:

With the advice of experts, we have recreated the most important stages of your baby’s growth and with the aid of an artificial intelligence system.

In case you still think that's a product worth paying for, then I've got news for you! I've recently secured access to some magic beans, guaranteed to increase your baby's intelligence using the aid of quantum entanglement system. Only 59.99€ for a bag of 10 beans, and shipping is free.

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Kind of slow week, but we still have some tasty links for you:

• Congrats to Layar's Raimo Van Der Klein for being listed as one of TIME's Tech Pioneers! (via
  
• Augmented Planet has an interview about the Legal Aspects of Augmented Reality Development, but frankly I haven't found it very AR specific.
  
• ReadWriteWeb asks whether playtime is the road to bigtime for augmented reality, but they failed to ask Ori about it. (via @DavidFosterAR)
  
• Here's a six months old (but newly discovered) article from PARC on the difference between AR and ubiquitous computing.
  
• New gaming system might bring fun to projector handsets.
  

As for this week's video we've got a little fun game from Total Immersion’s Partner C4M to promote French pasta brand Lustucru. Unlike previous TI games, this one is iPhone based, though there's still a webcam version. It's called Germaine et les Martiens:



Have a great week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Flying drones, electronic musician and virtual girlfriends, all in this week's linkfest:

• 170 years after introducing the first postage stamp, Britain now introduces the first augmented stamp (though it requires German technology from Metaio)
• If you are thinking about taking your AR girlfriend to a real hotel room, consider going to therapy first (unless, of course, you live in Japan).
• BabelFisk is designer Mads Hindhede's vision of speech-to-text glasses.
  
• Ever seen one of Aphex Twin's videos where all the characters have the same grinning face? Now his live audience gets the same treatment.
• Virtual public art comes to Philadelphia (via @TalkingDogAR)
• I'm still mad at the Parrot AR.Drone folks for not giving me a model to play with. For some reason they decided to give one to the a blogger at touchArcade.com which posted a review.
• Apparently Layar are big enough to have a fan site http://www.layarnews.com/

For this week's video we've got yet another futuristic vision, this time by German designer Björn Matthes. In his diploma project, Araproject, Matthes adds an energetic urban twist to augmented reality:

Araproject - Diploma Project 2008 from bmatthes on Vimeo.

Have a beautiful week, happy Eid-ul-Fitr and Rosh Hashanah.

Samsung Galaxy Tab - When AR Becomes a Selling Point, We Won

Samsung Galaxy Tab - When AR Becomes a Selling Point, We Won

Does this ad mark the transformation of augmented reality from being a term used by the tech-elite to one used by the commons?