Happy Weekly Linkfest Day!

Happy Weekly Linkfest Day!

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the links of this week:

• Synchronize your markers - the second Augmented Reality Event to take place in May. Maybe this time my flight won't be canceled by Delta at the very last minute.
• Google Goggles enters the print ads recognition space (and now also solves Sudokus). There are a couple of very cool European companies that should be worried right now.
• Joe Ludwig on 7 requirements for an AR positioning system, and don't miss my lengthy comment (unless you want to get it as a whole blog post :)).
• Augmented reality is the 'trend for the future' at adult entertainment exhibition(via @AugmentedManc)
• Play golf with an augmented caddy (you still need to carry the cart yourself).

Augmented reality t-shirts are cool. Star Wars is cool (as determined by a poll of 500 AR fands). Thus, augmented reality t-shirts, featuring Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker fighting each other must be the epitome of coolness. I don't have a clue who made those or where can you get them, but you may enjoy the video:



have a great week!

Post Christmas Linkfest

Post Christmas Linkfest

I hope you've all have been nice kids during the last year, because here's a bag of links for you:

• Congrats to Thomas for getting his first book, "The Digital Sea", published!
  
• AR over hyped? Most augmented reality companies not doing augmented reality? Yes, according to Forrester, but there's some hope for the future.
• You might have heard that there's a hidden AR mode in mobile Safari. I called BS on that, and I believe I was right - having access to the accelerometer doesn't constitute AR capabilities.
  
• Did Google reveal a top secret AR application coming in Android 3.0, in a conference in Jordan, of all places? (via the excellent, but French based augmented-reality.fr)
  
• A bit too late with this one, but you can use it next year - prove your kids that Santa exists using augmented reality. Any one wants a similar app featuring the tooth fairy?
• While I was away, Mobilizy (Wikitude) has appointed a new CEO.
  

I have frequently lashed out at gimmicky usage of augmented reality in ad campaigns. However, the next campaign by German agency brand.david powered by Junaio gets only praises from me. First, it's for a good cause - bringing the subject of domestic violence to light. It also seems to use AR very effectively:





happy new year!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

No doubt about it, this week was under the sign of Kinect. Dozens of amateur programers used the OpenKinect drivers to create wonderful, many times AR related, demos. These and more in this week's linkfest:

• Kinect hacking is nice, but the biggest news of the week is coming from Layar which raised another $14M. Follow the link to read a letter from Layar's CEO Raimo van der Klein, on what it means and what's next for Layar.
• Ebay's iPhone app will let users try on virtual sunglasses (via Development memo for ourselves)
• Google testing Goggles enhanced advertisements. can't say I'm surprised
• A look Inside the $2000 Vuzix's Wrap920AR glasses
• Real time lightsaber tracking and rendering on the Kinect. And here's another video showing object recognition with Kinect.
  
• ARBasketball - shoot some hoops in the office without wasting paper (except for printing the marker)
• Last week we had a QR code in cross-stitch. This week, it's a QR coded pancake (because you need to quickly identify those).
• To infinity and beyond! Buzz Lightyear augmented reality game.

And here's yet another video showing the power of Kinect. Created by Theo Watson in a single day, this is a very impressive skeleton tracker. How long will we have to wait till someone finds a way to combile AR glasses with Kinect?

Interactive Puppet Prototype with Xbox Kinect from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

Have a great week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

ISMAR 2010 is just a couple of days away, and in the meantime, here's this week's linkfest:

• Google Goggles is finally available for the iPhone. To be frank, I haven't tried it yet (what kind of AR reporter am I), and I'm rooting for the underdogs.
• LightSpace from Microsoft Research - augmenting a room with projectors and 3d cameras. As I've said earlier, it's amazing how a technology that would have looked like magic just four years ago, is quite banal these days.
• Layar awarded Most Disruptive Innovator at Deloitte Fast50.
• Zugara's Jack Benoff ponders whether mobile AR is not just sexy, but also practical.
• Now Total Immersion are having a one day AR event. It's November the 9th in LA. Sadly, it's an invitations only event. They should learn something from their beer loving competitors from Germany.
• A British company wants to augment your curriculum vitae. Cheesy or acceptable?

Today's video is coming to us straight from ISMAR 2010. It's a presentation of the results achieved in the paper "Build Your World and Play In It: Interacting with Surface Particles on Complex Objects" by Brett Jones and other researchers from the University of Illinois. The paper presents a way to map virtual content on 3d physical constructions and "play" with them. For more details check out Jones' website. I think that Angry Birds would be prefect on such a platform:

Build Your World and Play In It: Interacting with Surface Particles on Complex Objects (ISMAR 2010) from Brett Jones on Vimeo.

Have a great week, and the lucky of you who get to be in ISMAR, take some videos, please!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

For me, this week's highlight was seeing Natal demoed live (cool!) and some more advanced features Microsoft is pushing into Photosynth (even cooler!).
Here some other interesting things that happened this week:

• The most exciting bit of news came from Google this week - they plan to open up Goggles for third party developers. It would be interesting to see what that entails.
• Which reminds me that they also bought visual search startup Plink this week, which specializes in identifying artworks.
  
• Layar had some very exciting news on their own, announcing 1.5m downloads and 500 layers.
• Layar also posted about this interesting layer that virtually recreates the Berlin Wall.
  
• Chris Grayson is narrating his Augmented Reality & Emerging Technologies presentation
  
• Directions Magazine on the trivialization of augmented reality and why AR should do more than helping you locate the closest starbucks.

This post was slightly delayed because I couldn't find any appropriate video to put here. So here's an old one that I find pretty cool and never have posted over here before. I thought of dedicating a whole post for it, but since it's been lying in my inbox since January, it will have to do with being the weekly video. From the University of Adelaide, magic:




Have a good week and stay away from erupting volcanoes!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Yes, the moment you were all waiting for, it's time for another weekly linkfest -

Google Goggles Galore:

• Google Goggles review at Augmented Planet. Nice overview, and a good video showing some of Goggles capabilities.
• Google Goggles is the real thing, or so claims Blake Callens of Zugara. Nice video showing it identifying a dart board.
  
• The Enkin guys announce that they were acquired by Google and hint about their involvement in Goggles. (I'm just a bit skeptic).

And in other mobile browsers news:

• Wikitude teams up with Lonely Planet to offer augmented city guides. Currently only 10 American cities are included, but more are to come.
• Wikitude is also now available for Symbian.
  
• Junaio opens up its API for developers.
• And Tonchidot, makers of the Sekai Camera, raised a whopping four million dollars.
  

And finally:

• AR Dev Camp New York Recap at 'sproke.
• Scout a portable pedestrian navigation device - a conceptual AR device.
• Zugara shares some stats about augmented reality, cannonballz and the popularity of webcams.
• And Mazda teamed up with Total Immersion to create augmented reality kiosks at the LA Auto Show for Mazda 2. What a bright idea!

This week's video is of Ogmento's Brian Selzer evangelistic talk at the Humanity+ conference "Reinventing Reality with AR" . Though most of his examples should be familiar to this blog's patrons, he is a really good talker, and I've enjoyed the whole 15 minutes of his presentation (via GigantiCo):



[Games Alfresco readers, go to Gigantico to see the clip if it doesn't work for you]

Have a nice week!

Google Newsflash

Google Newsflash

So, no point of guessing whether Google is to make a major AR move in 2010. It is going to do it in 2009:

• Google Goggles has just launched, and can be downloaded from the Andorid Marketplace.
• Google sponsors a mobile QR reader and want store owners to put QR codes on their windows.

Indeed, the Google has awoken.

Watch Out, Google has Awaken

Watch Out, Google has Awaken

Amazon (SnapTell), Nokia (Point and Find) and many others better watch out, Google is making its play for mobile visual search, as revealed in CNBC's "Inside the Mind of Google". Harnessing technology bought when acquiring the startup Neven Vision back in 2006, Google is developing an android application that will identify locations and items captured in photos taken by the app's users.

Tech lead Hartmut Neven:

Imagine you are on travel in Paris and you visit a museum. If a picture catches your attention you can simply take a photo and send it to the VMS [Visual Mobile Search] service. Within seconds you will receive an audio-visual narrative explaining the image to you. If you happen to be connected to a 3G network the response time would be below a second. After the museum visit you might step outside and see a coffeehouse. Just taking another snapshot from within the VMS client application is all you have to do in order to retrieve travel guide information. In this case location information is available through triangulation or inbuilt GPS it can assist the recognition process. Inside the coffeehouse you study the menu but your French happens to be a bit rusty. Your image based search engine supports you in translating words from the menu so that you have at least an idea of what you can order. (source)

At the moment, the visual mobile search application, internally known as Google Goggles, is going through a long battery of tests:

Back in California, the visual search team anxiously watched by video link as first time users tested the product. After some initial reviews were less than enthusiastic, Google engineers decided the new technology just wasn’t ready for prime time. So team members were dispatched to fix any remaining problems. (source)

So although not an immediate threat to leading Snaptell, we can be sure that Google will not rest till they will create a user friendly product that will use your photos to serve useful information and, naturally, more ads. In the meantime, if Google is looking for enthusiastic beta tester, my email is on the right :)

Read more at eWeek.com and CNBC. Via Steve Rubel.

Gamaray's AR Explorer is Online

Gamaray's AR Explorer is Online

Since one augmented reality framework per week is not enough, here comes another one for Google's Android. While other Android AR applications provide information about landmarks seen through your mobile's camera, Gamaray's AR Explorer shows virtual 3d objects not seen with the naked eye. Obviously, the technology is in its infancy, and it's quite a bold move on Gamaray's part to release its application in such an early stage:



Right now, Gamaray is focusing on utilizing their framework for building multiplayer games, the first one being a tank combat game. Founder Clayton Lilly, admits that "For a while we thought of creating a more general purpose AR platform, but I'm concerned that Google may already be developing a first person AR viewer for KML data and 3D models". I for one root for the smaller companies in this new ecosystem, so good luck guys!

(link)