Weekly Linkfest - The Lady Gaga Edition

Weekly Linkfest - The Lady Gaga Edition

This linkfest has nothing to do with Lady Gaga, and everything to do with augmented reality news bites from the last week. I'm just checking if the mere inclusion of miss Gaga in the title will generate more hits.

• Christopher Mitchell hacked together a Vuzix VR920 HUD and eeePC to create a basic facial recognition AR device for his master thesis.
• Augmented Planet posted their monthly report on AR application for the iPhone.
• I'm terribly late on this, but apparently on ARE 2010, Georgia Tech previewed their open source and open standards Kamra Mobile AR Browser. Have to thank Chris Grayson for bringing it to my attention.
• Twenty five of Lonely Planet’s travel guides get a dose of augmented reality, powered by Wikitude.
• Samsung's Bada mobile OS seems to be the hip place for AR games development. This time it's our pals at int13 with their release of ARDefender game.
• Metaio is holding a one day long conference called insideAR. I usually don't promote such events, but they got me when they bundled it with Oktoberfest. Augmented reality and Beer, a match made in heaven?
  

This week's video is a promotion video for Sekai Camera. Tonchidot, the company behind this veteran AR browser recently got a $5M from Japan's telecom giant KDDI (though some claim that KDDI actually bought Tonchidot). And if that's not enough, Tonchidot announced the creation of social AR game. The future looks bright for those guys:


Have a great (and cool) week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

This is the last linkfest for this year. Though there were many more Christmas spectacles this week, I'm going to keep this linkfest holiday-spirit free (broke my nose, not feeling very festive).

• Robert Rice on 2010, the first year in the decade of ubiquity - "The point though, is that all of these things calling themselves augmented reality now are just the start. Everyone is getting their feet wet, experimenting, exploring, and beginning to innovate. We can argue about what is or isn’t augmented reality, but it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the continual push for advancing the technology, the industry, and getting people to start using it".
• On the same theme, Edo Segal writes for Techcrunch about the dawn of ambient streams - "Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world. Going back to the point made earlier, the watershed event is when we will be experiencing this “ambient sense" without being in a retrieval mode (i.e. not when we go to the computer or our mobile device"
• Whisper Deck is a cool voice operated AR interface
  
• Jack Benoff of Zugara on what to do in case you are pitched an AR campaign.
• ReadWriteWeb on the Brightkite's new feature - AR ads.
  
• Augmented Planet on Toozla, self-claimed world's first audio AR browser (I believe Gamaray had audio support as well).
• EyePly wants to augment your sports events.
  
• And Tonchidot released its Sekai Camera browser worldwide.
  
• It's a couple of weeks old, but I finally got to read it - Wired on AR accelerated by Earthmine's 3d city-maps.
• Point your sneakers to your webcam in order to feel silly. Which should be on Mashable's 10 awesome uses of AR in marketing list (what, only one car campaign? seriously, where's that GE ad that started the fad?)
  
• Denno Coil (AR fans number one anime) gets a mobile AR campaign (via @thomaskcarpente)
  

This week's video is of a projected AR system coming to us from the University of Magdeburg, Germany. Though we have seen quite a few systems like that over the past years (even one coming out from Microsoft), I don't think we have seen any as slick as that. You can read how it works (magic! infra-red markers) at New Scientist (via Augmented Engineering).



Have a great week!

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!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

It's time again for the weekly linkfest. Let's see what else happened this week in the world of augmented reality:

• Tish Shute interviews Ken Inoue, CFO of Tonchidot, on Sekai Camera and AR commons, the organization Tonchidot helped to create.
• New Scientist: "Augmented reality gets off to a wobbly start". If I may quote Tim Sears: "Seriously, though, what technology doesn't?"
• VentureBeat: "Which augmented reality startups will dominate? We rank them". Pity there's no similar ranking for tech news sites.
• Gary Hayes writes about "16 Top Augmented Reality Business Models", an article that went viral in the ARSphere.

In the realm of mobile browsers:

• SREngine has a new video out showing its slick user interface.
• Hong Kong's Leisure Guide - yet another AR browser (YAARB™)
• Metaio announces the coming release of Junaio, but doesn't give much information about what Junaio really is.
  

And in other news:

• Total Immersion now enters the world of soccer trading cards, at least in Italy.
  
• You can get pregnant without the morning sickness via the wonders of Flash based AR.
• The Virtec project is a thesis project using AR to teach about Aztec culture by means of a book and a head mounted display.

This week's video revisits one of this blog's reoccurring themes, the Transformers (previously here and here). This application comes with the Transformers coming DVD, or as this trailer puts it "Prepare for Augmented Reality! An exclusive 3D Holographic Experience!":

Augmented Reality on the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen DVD/Blu-Ray from PPC Interactive on Vimeo.

Have a nice week!

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Actually, it was a relatively quiet week in the ARSphere. Here are some links to news bits that I haven't had the time to cover over here:

In the mobile AR front:

• Kooaba is an iPhone application that much like Snaptell (or Nokia's "Point and Find") lets you take a picture of a product and get information about it. Now they venture into the realm of AR browsers, but since they fail to show their image-based browser working on a real iPhone, I'll remain skeptic for now.
• Cyborg is an AR application that helps you find the cheapest gas station around. Yes, they could do that with a simple map, but that's like having a web 2.0 site without rounded corners.
• And if you live in Hong Kong, forget about gas prices, just use this application to find the nearest train.

And in other news:

• Sony lets you put a virtual animal mask on your head (if you have a Playstation, of course). That's quite similar to this application from Ubisoft that do the same with MSN messenger.
• First augmented book in Britain is about dragons, and powered by Total Immersion tech.
• Augmented reality wiki - what a fab idea! (especially considering the dire state of the "augmented reality" article at Wikipedia).
• AdoptMe.com offers you to adopt augmented pets. Haven't tested it, but seems quite shabby (it's like the site's design was taken from 1996).
  

This week video comes from Techcrunch's favorite Tonchidot, makers of the Sekai Camera. Apparently their application was finally submitted to the iPhone's appstore, and we may soon compare it to other AR browsers. The next video is indeed in Japanese, but starting from 0:45 you can easily understand what's going on, even if you are not a native Japanese speaker. It certainly has some Japanese flair to it:



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.

Two New Videos of Sekai Camera Surface

Two New Videos of Sekai Camera Surface

One of this blogger's favorite things is being critical of Tonchidot's Sekai Camera. After all, their so called revolutionary technology is nothing more than GPS based augmented reality. Problem is, there is not much information about them, so I had only a small number of opportunities to mock them (here and here).
Now I've found two new videos starring Takahito Iguchi, Tonchidot's CEO, on Dailymotion.com. Both originate from what seems to be a european tour held last month by Iguchi. The first video is a short interview, looking for Iguchi's sources of inspiration, which you can see here.
More interesting is the second video, where Iguchi demos Sekai Camera on the Marketing 2.0 conference held in France. He stops reading from his papers and starts demoing at about 7 minutes in, and I think it's the best overview on how the Sekai Camera works we've seen till now:

CulturePod.ch Seka Caméra presentation @ Marketing 2.0 conf.
Uploaded by thierryweber

I believe it's the first time we see that one can use this application to leave vocal notes. Even better, one can use it to hit on girls. Two other things to notice is the Air Pocket service, that lets you save to your device notes of a specific location, and the Air Filter service that lets you filter the notes visible to you according to several parameters. Still, I don't think that Air Filter alone is going to be enough in order to fight the spam that will plague this application if it ever becomes popular.

Sekai Camera for Android - Still Looks Terrible

Sekai Camera for Android - Still Looks Terrible

Once again Techcrunch (or rather MobileCrunch) has an exclusive on Tonchidot's Sekai Camera (here's last time). This time, the news are coming from an Android event held by Nikkei, apparently Japan's leading business newspaper, where the first version of Sekai Camera for Google's Android was exposed. Unlike the iPhone version, this one utilizes the built-in compass to narrow the number of items displayed on the screen. The result is still far from impressive



Yes, I know this is only the first version, and things will look better when the application is released. However, I still suspect that without any image recognition, the usefulness of Sekai camera will be limited to the outdoors (where it would compete with Wikitude), whilst it would need a way to filter spam in indoors environments.

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Other news from around the web:

• I'm not the only one thinking that Tonchidot's Sekai Camera is a big disappointment. Robert Rice : Tonchidot has real demo...I'm still not impressed.
  


• ARToolWorks Forums: The FLARToolKit and NyARToolKit libraries are now available for commercial developers (via Games Alfresco).
  


• Abstruse Goose: A funny piece on the augmented future for dating (via Mirror Image).
  


• The New York Times: The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives. A piece on maps, cellphones, and the coming merger between the two.
  

Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera Spotted in Tokyo

Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera Spotted in Tokyo

Tonchidot, the Japanese company that created quite a buzz half a year ago when presenting its "Sekai Camera" at Techcrunch50 is at it again. The Sekai Camera is an iPhone application which enables the user to add tags to any place (be it a store or a tourist attraction) and see how other users previously tagged the same place by looking at it through the iPhone's camera. All that, without any image recognition and keeping in mind that the iPhone does not have a built-in compass to detect the direction the user is looking to. No wonder some have thought the following video was contrived and the Sekai Camera is too good to be true :



Guess what, it is too good to be true (but at least it's not vaporware). Techcrunch now reports about a private demo that Tonchidot arranged in Tokyo. Apparently, the Sekai Camera really doesn't know at what the user looks through her iPhone, and she has to pick from the available options:

Many people speculated how Sekai Camera works technically. The answer is simple: The user’s location is identified through GPS (no cell-tower triangulation or image recognition technology is being used). As the iPhone doesn’t have an internal compass, the direction of where the viewfinder is pointed at can’t be measured: Users need to flick fingers left or right to find relevant tags that are around them (as demonstrated in the video I took below). Tap a tag and the information it contains appears in the form of a window, for example a picture with a comment box below it or a voice message someone left earlier.

It can still work and become a great success, but I'll go with Wikitude for now. Anyway, here's how it looks now, you may compare it in your spare time against the previous one




(link)