Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

The time has come for another fun-packed linkfest.
But before we begin, a special message to those of you who like beer as much as AR, and live in the vicinity of Munich. Toby of augmented.org is inviting you to the first Munich AR regulars’ table. You can find more details here, and don't forget to take pictures. Feel free to tell me about your own AR event/meetup!

And now, for the links:

• Whimsical infographics on GigaOM portraying mobile AR application that are going to change the world.
• ReadWriteWeb asks whether AR should be open or closed, and the answer is not that clear when comparing Layar and acrossair, each advocating a different practice.
  
• Did you know that Yahoo filed a patent on geo-located social AR? How Apple of them.
• Augmented Planet writes about best practices in augmented reality browsers
• CNBC interviews the guys from QderoPateo we mentioned last week - they aim to build a custom AR device and software, would be interesting to see how successful they'll be.
• Layar is on Europe's top 100 startups, according to Techcrunch.
  
• A Czech AR ad for Peugeot 5008. Yeah, I mention it just in order to put a link to that old post of mine.

There were a couple of other interesting things happening this week, don't you worry, I'll have a dedicated post about them in the very near future. In the meantime, this week's video comes to us via @chrisgrayson. It's very cool, but unfortunately, I don't understand how it was done. Yes, ARToolKit was involved, but how was the robot augmented to fire rockets? What provided the distance readings? If any of you read Japanese and can shed light on those question - please do so in the comments:



Have a great week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Before the linkfest, let me share some exciting news. Starting from tomorrow, and throughout the week, I'll be posting augmented reality predictions for 2010 from top AR luminaries. But wait, there's more - I'm hoping to harness wisdom of the very smart crowds reading this blog, by putting on a survey were you can vote for your favorite predictions. Hope to see you tomorrow!

And now, as usual, the weekly linkfest:

• The first AR DevCamp was held yesterday. Thomas Wrobel (can I say our very own Thomas Wrobel?) had an FAQ prepared for the occasion, about the AR wave initiative.
  
• On the mobile browsers front - Layar 3.0 is out (also see AugmentedPlanet's review). I should have really dedicated a post for it. In a nutshell, this latest version, and the presented use-cases are really making Layar much more than just a "browser". You can create augmented tours, games, and city scapes which is a huge step over just showing the "closest" x.
• Augment Pro review of Presselite's Twitter-360, a browser like app that shows you nearby tweets from your friends
• And AcrossAir is behind "Le Bar Guide" an application created for beer label Stella Artois that lets you find closest bars (serving that beer).
• Sarnoff presents an augmented reality training system for the US military with virtual baddies. I really want to see a video of that.
• Augmented reality via Silverlight (Microsoft response to Adobe's Flash).
• Laboratory4 is offering the joys of a fashion show right in your own home.
• Pandemica is another fast paced pseudo AR shooting game for the iPhone.
  

Weekly quote comes from OneZeroThrice's piece "Who Is, and Who Isn't Augmented Reality"(yeah, I gave you the punchline, but you should read the whole article)

if only we, who know the difference between good and crap AR, can be more vocal - if we can start saying what we mean and not be afraid of pissing off the people who make this garbage ... maybe we'll actually save this industry from what happened to Virtual Reality.

And the weekly video is another "augmented" magic trick from Marco Tempest (see the first one here) (via The Future Digital Life):



Have a nice week, and don't forget to come back tomorrow for a peak at 2010.

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Not going to ISMAR :\. Since going to Florida is not an easy trip for me, I would have like to stay there for more than a couple of days. However, my current workload maje such a vacation impossible. I'm sure Ori and Thomas will do a great work covering it. In the meantime, I'll take the next few days off from blogging, and will be back with my 200th post (woot!). Hope to see you all at ISMAR Korea!
Now, having done with the excuses, here's the weekly linkfest:

Articles & Videos

• YDreams' blog - what's augmented reality added value?
• Fast Company - "Augmented Reality is Both a Fad and the Future"
• If you have a friend that doesn't know a thing about AR, let him watch O'Reilly webcast where Chetan Damani of AcrossAir explains it all.
  

Augmented Reality Browsers:

• Following Wikitude, media favorite Layar is now on the appstore.
• Following Yelp, Urbanspoon adds an augmented reality view.
  
• Lodestone AR Compass is a browser for the great outdoors. Two bucks and it's on your iPhone.
• CiviCast (from CiviGuard) is an augmented reality browser for civil services with a lofty goal - "To guide & protect global civilian populations in the event of a crisis through authoritative & reliable information delivery over mobile communications networks."
• Can't even call it a browser, 3d Compass is just a floating compass for Android.

Other

• Total Immersion presents markerless tracking on the iPhone
• Columbia University's submission to ISMAR09 - Augmented reality used for maintenance and repair by the US Marine Corps.
• A more detailed video of what the augmented reality experience to promote the Transformers DVD would look like (hope it's better than the movie :).

The weekly video is from the Australian band Lost Valentinos. In order to promote their latest single (Nightmoves) they chose (what a surprise) to use augmented reality. We have seen AR clips before and AR used to promote singles as well (see for example this application for Eminem). However, Lost Valentinos found a simple yet ingenious way to use augmented reality - they shot each band member perform the song on its own, match each one with a marker, and let their fans to compose their own videoclip via AR. As the press release says - "From lead singer Nik performing the song atop a user’s shoulders, to the whole band playing the song at the base of the Eiffel Tower". Try it yourself over here (and btw, don't search for nightmoves on Youtube from work).



Have a great week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

As usual, here's a bunch of links to augmented reality related news bits that have accumulated in my inbox during the week:

• There's no end to the augmented reality browsers phenomenon. Cyclopedia is yet another browser that is based on Wikipedia, Bradesco is helping you find your way around Brazil, and AugmentThis! lets you upload kml files and share them with others.
• Peak.ar on the other hand is a specialized browser from Salzburg Research that only lets you see the names of mountain tops around the world.
• While Wikitude is finally available for the iPhone (but you wouldn't know that if you had visited www.wikitude.org as to the writing of this post).
  
• So, with so many AR browser available, how are they all doing, buisness wise? Gene Becker collected some appstore statistics, that shows that AcrossAir's applications are leading in terms of downloads among the non-free applications available on the American appstore.
• Joe Lamantia on why creating AR content should be accessible to everyone, and how to make it so.
• What's that augmented reality that I mention so much? I guess most of this blog's patrons already know, but here's Scientific American explantion, though I think YDreams' post is far better.
• Campaigns of the week: One for a game named Operation Flashpoint, the other for Fox's Dollhouse (which looks extra sleazy).

This week's video is a lovely tour de force from Oxford's Active Vision Labratory's Robert Castle. Although Ori posted a sneak peak to ISMAR 09, he somehow missed this video. It shows an extension to the PTAMM system that allows "multiple objects to be recognized and localized within multiple maps."



Have a nice week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Let's try to make this week's linkfest as concise as possible:

• Tish Shute interviews Bruno Uzzan, CEO of Total Immersion for UgoTrade.
• Blair Mcintyre: "Has AR taken off? Is it finally here?", check out the quote below.
  
• Augmented reality tested on board the international space station, to help astronauts in maintenance tasks.
• Another pseudo-AR game whose goal is to catch ethereal creatures - Fairy Trails.
• Intel looks into augmented reality devices.
• Total Immersion (those from the first bullet) created a bumping-cars game for Six Flags.
• You know that AR is really hot when (French) politicians start to use it in their press conferences (powered again by Total Immersion).
  

AR Browsers:

• Presselite's application is now named Bionic Eye.
• AcrossAir's Nearest Wiki overlays reality with relevant Wikipedia articles (video).
  
• The NorwegianYellow Pages lets you find a plumber via augmented reality.
  
• Insqribe offers a mobile AR platform for sale
• And RobotVision was featured on TechCrunch.
  

Ad campaigns of the week:

• Healthy Choice
• MTS (a mobile operator in Russia) (video)
• Malwee Brazil uses Augmented Reality to sell clothes, I think (video)
  
• Michael Jackson Opus book comes with augmented reality, I have so many nasty jokes to tell, but I'll spare you (via Augmented Planet)
  

This week's quote comes from Blair's post I've mentioned above (and yes, I took it out of context, because I'm a blogger!):

Now that the time is here, now that the promised AR apps can be published in the iTunes store, will they be able to live up to their claims, or will they (and their claims) fade away? I suspect things will die down for a little while. At least, I hope things die down for a while

And this week's video comes from YDreams, and you have probably seen it before. It's called Flyar, and it's an interactive screen saver that shows you Twitter updates with birds that respond to your hand-gestures, a la EyeToy. Yeah, the video makes it clearer:

Flyar: Augmented Reality Twitter Visualization App from YDreams on Vimeo.

Have a nice week!

Two More AR Browsers to Join the Party

Two More AR Browsers to Join the Party

Are you a Wikitude or Layar supporter? Maybe Sekai Camera fan? The battle for supremacy at the augmented reality browsers market is getting more complicated by the minute, with two new contenders joining the fight.
First, acrossair which brought us the Tube Finder, is now showing off a very slick "general purpose" AR browser for the iPhone 3GS:



Next, GraffitiGeo, a fresh new startup that wants to create a Digg like service for real places is working on an AR version of their application, also for the iPhone:



(more details about GraffitiGeo here).

So, now we are at five AR browsers. Anyone wants to bet how many browsers there will be by this time next year? (my guess - only three serious contenders, and one of them will be owned by Google).

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Another week passed by, and I was especially lazy this week. Sorry, but apart from those augmented strippers from Monday, nothing excited me enough (or annoyed me enough) to write a post about. Which means, we have an extra long linkfest today.

However before we start, I would like to learn a thing or two about our dedicated readers. The next poll asks you to define yourself, and you may select more than one answer. Are you more the creative kind of person, or a problem solver? Please vote, and I'll post the results on next week's linkfest:




And now, for the links:

• Tish Shute's second interview with Robert Rice really makes you think, with some great quotes talking about Neogence and the AR consortium (see below), and a great comment by our regular patron DarkFlame.
• According to Gartner, AR is on its way to the peak of the inflated expectations mountain in their hype cycle model. ReadWriteWeb also takes a look at it, and they link to my strippers post.
• AcrossAir is working on an interesting augmented reality game named Virus Killer 360, but it doesn't really look like augmented reality, even under my low standards.
  
• iPhone ARKit is a new open source augmented reality tool kit for the iPhone (very new, not really useful at the moment). Not many details are known and Thomas reports on those that are.
  
• SPRXMobile envies Twittaround, joins forces with Tweetmondo to show tweets on Layar.
• CNN: "New phone apps seek to 'augment' reality" (but what a 'funny' title)
  interviews Blair MacIntyre and SPRXMobile.
• Speeking of Blair, he invites you to experiement with AR.
  
• Boing Boing Gadgets had a day dedicated to augmented reality, featuring a visit to Geisha Tokyo Entertainment, "It's the end of the non-augmented world as we know it" (the usual rundown of AR videos) and "What do pirates call augmented reality".
  
• AR Campaigns of the week:
  
• Best buy goes augmented, with BestBuyin3d.com. More on this, tomorrow (credits go to Modern Climate). (via dvice.com)
• A new site to promote Sony Pictures’ District 9 (credits go to Trigger).
• The Australian Navy lets you fire torpedos out of an augmented submarine (credits go to Visual Jazz and Boffswana)
  

The quote of the week comes from Tish Shute's interview with Robert Rice:

This is part of the problem right now though…no one seems to be thinking about the bigger picture much. All of the effort is either on making the next cool ad campaign for a car or a movie, or creating a tool to tell you where the nearest thingamajig is, but in a really cool fashion on a mobile device.

No one is talking much about filtering data, privilege systems, standards, third party tools, interoperability, and so on. There is also little conversation about where hardware is going. Right now everyone is developing software based on what hardware is available. This needs to change where hardware is being developed to take advantage of new software coming out (this happened in the PC industry a while back and growth accelerated dramatically).

And finally, the next video is of GeoBeagle, an application for Android that adds an augmented reality twist to geo-caching (which is an idea I first encountered here). Interestingly, it uses Wikitude's API, showing off some of the power of that platform.



Have a nice week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Here are just some of the things that happened this week in the realm of Augmented Reality, which I didn't have the time to write a whole post about. It's going to be a long post, you may want to prepare a snack before you go ahead.

• Ori gave another interview to Tish Shute, this time talking a bit about Ogmento.
  
• A nice hands on review of ARound, the "AR browser" for Nokia we previously covered.
• The guys from Gamaray, the only AR browser I'm aware of that tries to incorporate 3d models in the real world, have released a new video.
  
• After London and Newyork, AcrossAir is augmenting San Francisco's public transit.
  
• Total Immersion brings us the first augmented reality game for Facebook, and yes, it was created to sell cars (one more app to my growing list). (via @TishShute)
• If you were looking for a video of DoCoMo's AR application we mentioned last week, here you go. (via Asiajin)
• Gizmodo: Are Augmented Reality Sites Now Mandatory For All Sci-Fi Films?
  
• Some AR campaigns from this week:
• Adidas thinks that augmented reality can sell shoes (videos here and here). I think they should try to use AR in a more original than that. (via DMFO).
• Same goes to Intel, using AR to celebrate their chip technology.
• And Nickelodeon's augmented 3d version of SpongeBob SquarePants gives me the creeps (look at his menacing smile!). Here's the app itself.
• On the other hand, this 7-Eleven application from Taiwan is cute. It helps that I don't understand a word in there.

This week's video comes from Metaio, which launched an ambitious initiative named "metaio World". There haven't given much information about it, but here's a short quote -

You can view, create, upload, modify, navigate, share, rate or play games with real 3D content anywhere in the real world. Add your 3D and post interactive elements, your favourite photos, twitter messages or anything you can imagine.

An ambitious project deserves an ambitious video, but can they deliver?



Have a nice week!

Updates from the Frontline

Updates from the Frontline

Continuing my coverage of the augmented reality browser wars, here are the latest news (well, some of them are a few days old, excuse me for procrastinating a bit):

AcrossAir is not satisfied with letting you find the closest subway station in London (where it's called The Tube), it also has its sights on the NY subway system:



If you remember correctly, Mobilizy, makers of Wikitude, claimed AcrossAir's application demo is nothing but a mock-up. Seems real to me.
Anyway, Mobilizy is working hard to remind people that Wikitude augmented the world way before SPRXMobile's Layar. Moreover, one of their tweets suggests that Layar was based on Wikitude's technology. Indeed, SPRXMobile did cooperate with Mobilizy once, when creating their ATM finder, but it doesn't prove that Layar is Wikitude in disguise.
Mobilizy also released this video demoing their Wikitude API, and did not miss the opportunity to include some sarcastic remark towards its end:



And in the Eastern front, TechCrunch reports on the almost final version of Tonchidot's Sekai Camera. Compared this video -



With what we have been promised a year ago:



Well, at least they still have something to aspire to.

Battle of the AR Browsers

Battle of the AR Browsers

See update at the end of this post (if only I've waited ten more minutes!)

Three weeks after its launch, SPRXMobile's Layar partially opens up its layer creation API to developers. It's not freely available online (bad decision?), however, interested developers can register here, and may be among the lucky 50 to get access keys to the API. The press release is here.
Meanwhile, Mobilizy (creator of Wikitude) is not keeping silent. They congratulated SPRXMobile on their twitter account, and placed a comment on Layar's press release:

On behalf of Mobilizy GmbH the developers of the original Wikitude AR Travel Guide we would like to congratulate SPRX Mobile in their efforts to help shape the Mobile augmented reality landscape.

Good Job!

Mobilizy also put this picture depicting Wikitude on the iPhone 3GS, and released the following advertisement video



and commented about AcrossAir's Tube Locator application, saying "you can tell it is fake if you look closely".

All this while both SPRXMobile and Mobilizy are founding members in the new AR Consortium. So, am I making a lot of noise out of nothing? Probably, after all I'm a blogger!

Update: Mobilizy just announced that they will let user add their own tags to the world via Wikitude.me and that they open up their API in a closed beta. And thus begins the battle to control the mobile AR world!

AR Goes Underground

AR Goes Underground

That is, to London's subway system. Most tourist facing augmented reality applications are focused on landmarks. But, there's an even more important issue affecting a tourist's visit to an unknown city - how to get around. The city's residents know perfectly well where's the closest subway station that will serve their needs, but a tourist needs to constantly look at maps and look around herself.
To the rescue comes AcrossAir, a British mobile application development company. They have created a simple, yet useful, iPhone application, that shows you where's the nearest tube station. When held horizontally, the application behaves quite like a map, but when the phone is tilted upwards, bubbles signifying stations' presence are overlayed on the video feed. Obviously, this only works on the new iPhone 3GS, since it requires a compass reading.



Here's some obvious further directions from the top of my head, this kind of app could follow:

• Add more cities around the world, New York should probably be the first.
• Add more public transportation options, such as buses and regular overground trains.
  
• Add route planning, so the application will also recommend which station best suits your needs.
• Some real time info will be great, like knowing when the next train is due.
• Make it work underground (using cellular tower triangulation in lieu of GPS read), so commuters can be advised where to get off a train, and which line should they take next.

So there's much room to innovate, even in such a niche application.