This linkfest has nothing to do with Justin Bieber, and everything to do with augmented reality news bites from the last week. I’m just checking if the mere inclusion of Mr. Bieber in the title will generate more hits.
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.
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:
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
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?)
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).
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]
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!”:
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.
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:
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.
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:
We have been raving about how Augmented Reality will reinvent reality. Which slices of “reality” will be affected by AR first? Researchers and entrepreneurs worldwide are already plotting its impact on specific industries.
Investors – here’s a chance to educate yourselves.
Here are 11 of my favorite clips depicting industries reinvented with augmented reality: (Credits inside the videos)
1. Advertising
Despite being the first on the ar band wagon, the $600 Trillion ad industry has used AR as a gimmick. It has the potential to literally bring consumers to products and totally reinvent itself.
2. Art
Street art democratized minus the vandalism.
Here is another fantastic example – a free form street art.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
3. Design
Real-collaboration, real-time, real-life design
4. Entertainment
Entertainment content could reach you in every part of your day AND be relevant to your surroundings.
5. Health care
Doctors: you have the information – now use it in context of your patient.
6. Learning
Books reinvented. Gutenberg must be turning in his grave.
7. Maintenance
See through walls, floors and roofs? awesome dude – I wanna be in maintenance!
8. Personal Productivity
No more being glued to a screen. No more screens. No more (visible) hardware.
9. Retail
Stores and products talk to you about themselves (but only when you want…)
And from the consumer perspective – shopping will be reinvented
10. Tourism
Your personal tourist guide, anywhere you go.
11. Training
User manuals are dead. Watch the instructions live in your field of view.
Yesterday, at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco, a small start up from Tokyo stole the show; the name: Technidot, the cool product they unveil: Sekai Camera (World Camera) running on the iPhone.
In their own words, the Sekai Camera is:
…a real-world interface for the iPhone that connects real and virtual worlds, allowing anybody to create, experience and participate in both.
While at your favorite mall, point your iPhone camera at things around you such as food, toys, art, transit maps, and get detailed information about it. More fun for you, more business for retailers.
AirFilter takes care of the customized search to bring you the additional information, based on a database generated by advertizers.
And you’re not on your own; the Sekai Camera is also a social networking environment: leave messages to your friends – in space – so they can see it when they pass by.
Isn’t that a killer augmented reality application?
And Tonchidot’s take on Evolution could become the symbol of the AR revolution…
Games Alfresco 