Another Interview with Ori Inbar

Our own Ori Inbar was interviewed by MetaverseOne a few months ago.  The two part interview is long, but worth the twenty-seven minutes of viewing.  Ori gives his thoughts on AR, the gaming industry and other topics.

Part One:

Part Two:

A Brief Interview with Ori

Have you ever heard of this guy? A brief interview from Geoweb Forum with Ori Inbar.  In it he talks about ARE2010, ARNY, the state of the industry and a gives a brief demonstration of Put A Spell.

Augmented Reality Panel at Web 2.0 Expo and Explosion in AR Meetups

Don’t you love going to conferences that take place in your home town?
And how about being invited to talk about your #1 passion?

Double awesome.

Last November, I was lucky enough to participate in a panel about augmented reality at the Web 2.0 Expo. (In all fairness, it was part of Web2Open co-located with Web 2.0)

The fun actually started the night before at a meetup organized by John Havens which was a great warm up for the real deal.

John also moderated the panel which included the following participants:

Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence delivered as usual a great intro to augmented reality and explained the virtues of the AR Consortium;

Jack Mason (Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media at IBM)
opened our eyes to the possibilities (and concerns) revolving around AR;

Lynne d Johnson, SVP Social Media at the Advertising Research Foundation and host of the NYC Android Developer’s Meetup showed off the latest AR rage embodied in this week’s Esquire Magazine: the augmented reality issue;

Erik Manley: Manager, Digital Media at GE and Michael Eisenreich: Technology Leader for GE’s company-wide Internet presence – proudly presented what I describe as the first high production augmented reality campaign ever. It’s probably one of the key reasons AR went off the charts on Google trends in the first quarter of the year.

Matt Szymczyk, CEO of Zugara, demonstrated Fashionista, a virtual dressing room his company just launched with Rich Relevance. Who says AR is just a novelty? This is a very Cool and practical use of augmented reality on webcams.

Marco Neumann, CEO and Founder of KONA, and the Organizer for New York Semantic web meet up gave the…semantic web back story behind augmented reality. 

All great guys and gals, enthusiastic about augmented reality, and…doing something about it.

Yours truly gave a little schpiel about Ogmento and demonstrated the upcoming (currently in beta) learning game for the iPhone: Put A Spell Learn to Spell with Augmented Reality.

Here is a video of my 100 slides under 5 minutes intro (seriously):

The crowed was not huge but very engaged. In the spirit of the web2Open unconference most of the interesting discussions happened afterwards.

We will be back at Porter Novelli’s office (Thanks John for hosting once again!) for the upcoming Augmented Reality NY (ARNY) meetup this Tuesday, featuring an amazing line up of speakers and demos:
1) John Swords – Circ.us – his latest AR game developed for Cisco Systems

2) Ryan CharlesZagat– New Augmented Reality view integrated into Zagat’s flagship restaurant rating and review app, Zagat To Go

3) Noora GuldemondMetaio – LEGO application and mobile markerless tracking

4) Dana Farbo – President of Acrossair – will present the fresh new Acrossair AR Browser

5) Craig Kapp – NYU – Whisper Deck – will introduce an experimental interface to access information using AR

These days, AR Meetups are all the rage – sprouting like mushrooms around the globe: From Los Angeles, to Palo Alto, Chicago, Raleigh, Toronto,  London, Manchester, Switzerland, and all the way to New Zealand). Here’s a big shout out to all our friends around the world – and thanks to Chris Grayson – we now have a live stream channel for all AR meetups – so you can participate in real time from the comfort of your home!
(though it’s much more fun being there in person)

Another Spoke in the AR Hub

Hello!  Recently, Ori Inbar asked me to join forces with them at Games Alfresco to continue make it the premiere place to get your augmented reality news.  Having been a fan of the site since I became aware of the technology, I jumped at the chance.  If you’re familiar with my site The Future Digital Life, then you’ll know I help the AR community keep up with steady flow of news.  Given that there are now three of us behind the news desk, hopefully we can make sure that nothing goes unnoticed.  I still plan on maintaining my site, but that will be for non-AR related posts.  You can also find me on twitter – @thomaskcarpente

ISMAR 2009: Starts Tomorrow!

Can’t wait for ISMAR 2009, the world’s best augmented reality event, to get started tomorrow.

What are my highlights for the event?

Too many to list, but here are my top 10 highlights including my contributions among other attractions at ISMAR:

1) Monday 2:30 pm – Magic Mobile Wand Workshop
Co-leading a workshop with Robert Rice: Roadmap for Success in the Augmented Reality Industry

2) Tuesday 9 am – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Presentation: Augmented Reality Today (based on my talk from WARM)

3) Tuesday 11 am – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Panel with Brian Selzer (Ogmento), Tish Shute (UgoTrade), Alistair Jeffs (Eyeply), Greg Davis (Total Immersion): AR in Sports, Entertainment and advertising

4) Tuesday 1:30 pm – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Blair MacIntyre – AR Game Design

5) Tuesday 4 pm – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Co-presenting with Robert Rice: The 6 Elements of the Augmented Reality Universe

6) Tuesday,Wednesday evenings – At the demo gallery
Ogmento Presents the upcoming AR game – Put a Spell: Learn to Spell with Augmented Reality

7) Wednesday 6:30 – The Award Banquet

8) Thursday 11am – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Christopher Stapleton – Imagination, the Third Reality

9) Thursday 2 pm – Art, Media and Humanities Track
Joe Tankersley – Science meets Fiction: Imagining the Future

10) And in between – Blogging…as much as I can…

See all the excitement at the Event Schedule

What are your highlights for ISMAR 2009?

Open Letter to Apple: Let us Augment Reality with the iPhone!

A letter sent to Apple Developer Relations.

Dear Apple,

We are a collection of augmented reality (AR) enthusiasts and professionals (from business and academia), who have been working on a multitude of AR apps for the iPhone. These apps are poised to change the way people interact with the real world.

But here is the rub: we are currently unable to publish these apps on the app store because the iPhone SDK lacks public APIs for manipulating live video.

We are asking Apple to provide a public API to access live video in real time, on the iPhone.
We will be happy to offer additional technical details.

The impact of augmented reality (AR) on our lives could be as significant as the introduction of the PC.
In 10 years, we believe augmented reality will change the way everyone experiences travel, design, training, personal productivity, health care, entertainment, games, art, and advertising (videos).

Looking back just a few years, AR pioneers had to hack a slew of components into ridiculously large backpacks and HUDs, and be confined to rigged environments. Nowadays, it comes in friendly, affordable packages and the iPhone is one of the first devices to have it all – except for a public API.

The battle to determine the winning device has already begun; a public API to access live video will give the iPhone a lucrative ticket to compete.
We believe Apple has a window of opportunity of about 3 months before developers start looking elsewhere. If Apple decides to publish the API in that time frame – in the next 10 years, everyone might be using the iPhone as the preferred device to interact with the real world.

Here is how augmented reality could open up new opportunities for the iPhone this year:

Arf (Georgia Tech)

a virtual pet you take anywhere

ARghhhh (Georgia Tech)

first person table-top action game

Sekai Camera (Tonchidot)

AirTag the real world

Kweekies (int13)

a portal to creatures in a parallel world

Layar (SPRXmobile)

Browse the world with an AR browserDetails

Artoolkit for the iPhone (Artoolworks)

the most popular AR kit now on the iPhone

StudierStube ES (Imagination, Graz TU)

the only AR engine designed for mobile devices, now on iPhoneDetails

PTAM on the iPhone (Oxford University)

next generation AR tracking with no markers or images

Wikitude (Mobilizy)

a travel guide that “tells you what you see”

Virtual Santa (Metaio)

interactive Christmas application using the augmented reality

Augmented Reality Sightseeing (Fraunhofer IGD)

Historic photographs overlaid on your field of view while strolling in a street

These are apps that are practically ready to go. There is a whole bunch of apps and games that are just waiting for the API to be available.

…And Apple, we know you can’t share your plans…so please surprise us soon!

Many many thanks for your consideration –
Sincerely,

Signed:
Michael Gervautz – Managing Director Imagination GesmbH
Robert Rice – CEO Neogence
Georg Klein – PhD PTAM creator from Oxford University
Stephane Cocquereaumont –  President & Lead Developer Int13 (Kweekies)
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald – Founder & Partner SPRXmobile, developer of Layar
Ori Inbar – Author of GamesAlfresco.com and CEO and founder – Ogmento (formerly Pookatak Games)
Philippe Breuss – Lead developer, Mobilizy
Philip R. Lamb – CTO, Artoolworks
Noora Guldemond – Metaio
Takahito Iguchi – CEO, Tonchidot
Blair MacIntyre – Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

Bruno Uzzan – CEO, Total Immersion
Michael Zoellner
Fraunhofer IGD
Andrea Carignano – CEO,  Seac02

If you are developing an AR app for the iPhone and wish to join this effort – just let us know.

Augmented Reality Today – Ori Inbar Speaks at WARM 2009

Games Alfresco is celebrating the first year on the air.

Among the festivities, I am sharing a talk I gave at the Winter Augmented Reality Event (WARM ’09) at Graz University (Austria) this February.

It makes the case for unleashing Augmented Reality into the mass market – Today.

The best part was the post talk conversation with a group of AR enthusiasts at the University. I guess I managed to get their juices flowing.

Hope it will have a similar effect on you.

Here it is: a year of research distilled into 16 minutes of uncut, fast-paced presentation – with a twisted voice over.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Many thanks to the augmented reality community for your contribution. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Are you in?