From Demos to Apps: The Augmented Reality Surge

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Ori Inbar

The side bar on this blog has been getting much attention recently; I have been receiving emails such as: “Hey would add my name to the list of AR people (here’s my cv)?” and “When will we be featured on your demo list?” and “How about adding our organization…?”

The links categories have been defined last year and the Augmented Reality Demo section grew by far to be the most impressive.
But now AR is in a totally different place.
So without further ado – I am delighted to announce: today we are adding a new category to the sidebar: AR applications.

Demos are so 2008.

It’s mind blowing how AR applications have emerged from thin air into an impressive list in just a few months (OK, some are only in Beta). And I am not going to shock you by predicting that this list will only keep growing.

How many AR Apps will we have by the end of 2009?

And how many AR apps will we have by the end of 2010?
Take your bet!

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Augmented Job Board

Posted on August 18, 2009 by rouli

When you look for augmented reality news and insights, Games Alfresco and Augmented Times are there for you, and so for thousands others. Judging from last week’s poll, our readers come from all walks of life, but all share a passion for augmented reality. So, it’s only natural that if your company or your research institute is looking to fill up an AR related position, or even if you are looking for a partner for an AR project, you will look for the right person here.
I was thinking of have a bi-weekly post consisting of open positions sent by our beloved readers. If you thinks it’s a good idea, an have an open position in mind, feel free to email me at rouli.net|at|gmail.com. If on the other hand, you are a loyal reader and hate the idea (since you prefer this blog just as it is), please leave a comment.

To get things started here are some positions I’ve handpicked from around the web. Obviously, that’s not a very long or attractive list, but with some help from you it can become useful.

  • AR integrator at Fake (UK) – Strong programming background in C, Proficient with Total Immersion SDK
  • Augmented reality expert at Harvard Technology Partners (Netherlands) – We are working on a innovative project for image analysis and processing and need knowledge of several domains in 2d analysis
  • Member of Research Staff of User Experiences at Nokia Hollywood – Nokia Research Center Hollywood (NRCH) seeks a researcher in user experiences to join their newly established research center based in Santa Monica, California. This exciting lab is carrying out a range of research activities in the areas of mobile augmented reality experiences; innovative use of sensors; new forms of user interface and interaction; tools for content creation for mobile devices and large-scale mobile internet services, systems and solutions.

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Layar, Layar, Layar

Posted on August 17, 2009 by rouli

If you read this post, you are probably an avid reader of this blog.
If you are an avid reader of this blog, you are probably interested in AR.
If you are interested in AR, you probably know that Layar had a fantastic day, at least PR wise:

As a matter of fact, this day was such a success for Layar, that it seems that layar.com and layar.eu are quite slugish, probably due to a surge in visitors. Is it too late for Mobilizy (Wikitude) and acrossair? (I really hope not).

Even more details, on Layar’s blog.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on August 16, 2009 by rouli

Last week I published a poll, asking how do you define yourself – are you an engineer, an artist or maybe an Entrepreneur? As of writing this post, 75 readers have answered the poll, 34 of them (45%) identified themselves as engineers. I thought there would be more artists among you (15%), and was surprised by the percent of entrepreneurs (15%). The poll is still open, so you can still cast a vote.
Moving on to the weekly linkfest (it gets bigger every week!) –

  • Metaio blitzed the airwaves with two podcasts – Noora Guldemond (head of sales and marketing) interviews here and Peter Meier, Metaio’s CTO is giving an interview here. Sadly, I haven’t found the time last week to hear them, but I plan to do so in the next few days.
  • And it was a good week for SPRXMobile (Layar) as well. Aparently, Layar comes preinstalled on Samsung’s new Android phone, they were featured on The Financial Times, and things are only going to get better, since they are holding their first Layar event.
  • TweetWorld is Gamaray’s attempt to have an augmented tweeter application, joinning the ranks of Layar and TwittAround.
  • The BBC – Mobile phones get cyborg vision: “Not only could this form of rich, intuitive and easy to grasp data be the next killer app for the mobile, some see it changing our world view forever.“
  • ReadWriteWeb – Augmented Reality: A Human Interface for Ambient Intelligence: “Augmented reality (or AR) is fast becoming as ubiquitous a term as Web 2.0. The field is getting noisier by the day, and AR as a field of research now has to co-exist with its status as an industry buzzword“
  • A short introduction to programming AR applications for the Android OS.
  • Is this the first augmented shirt on Threadless?
  • CrashCorp demos a rudimentry AR application for the iPhone.
  • YDreams and Zugara join the AR consortium (can I join too?)
  • And Zugara (covered previously here) also launched what must be the second augmented reality game on Facebook (since last week Total Immersion had the first), CannonBallz (video). Just four years ago, we would have called this kind of games “Eye Toy” like, but today we have new buzzwords. Still, it is a well produced game.

Our weekly video is of a game created by Circ.us, to promote Chris Angel’s new show, “The five lives of Chris Angel”. Since it’s a puzzle game, and this summer turned me into a brain-dead blogger, I haven’t tried it myself to give an educated review. You, on other hand, can play it here, or just watch the embedded video below:

As always, have a nice week!

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ISMAR 2009: Switching Into High Gear

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Ori Inbar

ISMAR, the world’s best Augmented Reality Event, is just 2 months away!

As a member of the review committee I have seen some amazing submissions. Thank you all submitters for the tremendous effort and enthusiasm. By now, you should have received feedback from the organizers. If you haven’t – contact your respective track chair (go to ISMAR – and click on Contact on the left) .

This year, marking the 10th anniversary of ISMAR, will be a land mark year for the event, expanding for the first time beyond pure research into applicative domains such as interactive media, humanities, and education.

In addition, the first day of the event will feature a set of very interesting workshops. I can’t choose which to attend.

Letsgoout

One of my favorite workshops is dubbed “Let’s Go Out“, or as I like to call it: Alfresco…

A crew of AR research veterans have joined forces to generate a leap with Outdoor Augmented Reality: Christian Sandor (University of South Australia), Itaru Kitahara (University of Tsukuba), Gerhard Reitmayr (Graz University of Technology), Steven Feiner (Columbia University), and Yuichi Ohta (University of Tsukuba).

From the workshop organizers:

The outdoors presents enormous challenges for mixed and augmented reality. Outdoor environments encompass extreme weather and illumination conditions, and mobile systems must deal with technological constraints, including low-resolution cameras and displays, inaccurate and fragile tracking systems, limited system and network resources, and cumbersome interaction devices.  This workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss research issues related to outdoor mixed and augmented reality. Researchers are invited to submit two-page position statements for presentation in a morning session. The following sessions will address specific areas, including a review of the state-of-the-art and a discussion of current issues and research directions.

So don’t wait. Get your thoughts on paper and send it to outdoor_ar@icg.tugraz.at.

It’s your opportunity to make an impact, games alfresco style.

Stay tuned for details about the other exciting workshops.

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Two More AR Browsers to Join the Party

Posted on August 14, 2009 by rouli

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).

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Whatchoo Augmentin’ ’bout, Willis?

Posted on August 13, 2009 by rouli


Obviously the end of the world came, and no one told me. The signs are all here:
1. Canadian based New York Fries is celebrating 25 years of selling, well, fries.
2. To commemorate the occasion, they looked for an eighties icon.
3. They chose Gary Coleman.
4. And made an augmented reality application, on Facebook, were you shake Gary Coleman by shaking a marker, making him drop his fries, and tell you your fortune.

You can try it yourself, here, and find more details at AdFreak, while I’m looking for the nearest nuclear shelter*.

* Yeah, I’m mean, no point commenting about it. I don’t have anything against Mr. Coleman, my sarcasm is targeted solely at the novelty AR application.

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Pseudo AR Games FTW!

Posted on August 11, 2009 by rouli

A short post to keep you warm while I’m working on a longer series of posts I hope you all find interesting. Anyway, just two days ago I wrote about Acrossair new shooting game, Virus Killer 360:

And I also mentioned iPhone ARKit, an interesting open source project to facilitate augmented reality development for the iPhone. What happens when you merge the two together? this –

It was created by a Japaneses developer going by the nickname mswar, by forking the iPhone ARKit source code and adding OpenGL and GPS geo-positioning. I don’t call it augmented reality, because it has nothing to do with our reality, but I do think it has a potential to supply some moments of fun.
More details here (in Japanese).

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Behind the Scenes of Best Buy’s AR Campaign

Posted on August 10, 2009 by rouli

Yesterday I mentioned Best Buy’s AR campaign in the weekly linkfest. The campaign itself is not that exciting, just your typical marker based advertisement. Here’s the obligatory video of some guys on Youtube playing around with it:

However, this time around we get to peek behind the scenes of the campaign thanks to Advertising Age, which held an interview with Spencer Knisely, director-brand identity, print and design at Best Buy. It turns out that while the print ad pushing the site had a circulation of about 43 million people, only 6500 of them have tried the AR application on its first day. Surprisingly, that’s double the number Best Buy have predicted.

Ad Age: Can you tell what the real business result — or conversion — of this was?

Mr. Knisely: We don’t know that yet. We saw comparatively high click-through — 12% — to other pages: the Twelpforce page, the Next Class computing page or to the dot-com site for the Toshiba computer itself. But aggregated, a 12% click-through on an experience like that is fairly decent.

More here.

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Augmented Reality has Gained Gravity

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Ori Inbar

Here’s the latest AR dish from Ohan Oda and Steve Feiner at Columbia University‘s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab: an augmented reality marble game that uses gravity as a game controller. No iPhone required.

See the video and recipe after the jump.

Continue reading →

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