Augmented Reality Pop-Up Book

Posted on June 29, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

Helen Papagiannis is a designer specializing in augmented reality.  She’s spoken at TEDx about the creative side of AR, which was highlighted as one of the top talks about AR and the gamification of life and worked for the internationally renown Bruce Mau Design.

And now she’s putting out a Augmented Reality Pop-Up Book for mobile devices using image recognition.  The book can be enjoyed alone or with the enhanced graphics using an iPad2 or iPhone4.

What I like most about her Pop-Up book is that Helen gets what AR is all about.  Or really what it is–a medium to transfer information.  If you handed the book and the iPad2 to a child and told them to play around, you wouldn’t have to worry that they wouldn’t “get” augmented reality.  They wouldn’t require an explanation or that “AR is that thing on the first down line in football.”  They would just play.

Helen is a natural storyteller, as seen by TEDx talk.  Even her twitter account is called @ARStories (I wish I’d thought of that one.)  She gets that AR is all about telling stories in new and interesting ways, whatever the level of technology.  She used the tools at hand, in this case the AR browser Junaio, to make her Pop-Up book.

And as the technology advances, so too will the level of stories being told.  I expect from this simple Pop-Up book, that we’ll be seeing more of Helen for quite some time.

You can find Helen at her blog – Augmented Stories.

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GoldRun and Flavorpill Partner for Internet Week Secret Party Hunt

Posted on June 14, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

NEW YORK, NEW YORK June 9, 2011– Flavorpill, known for curating the best cultural events in cities across the country, will launch their New York City Culture Hunt during the culmination of Internet Week New York. Part of Flavorpill’s social mission is to get people away from their computers and out exploring their city, and that’s precisely the intention behind their collaboration with GoldRun.

To participate in the NYC Culture Hunt campaign, users download the free GoldRun application from the Apple iTunes Store, and select the NYC Culture Hunt “run” to follow it.

The GoldRun campaign challenges Flavorpill readers to find and visit 10 of the most influential venues in New York City’s entertainment, arts, and education scene. Participants will visit each location, in teams of five, where they will capture an interactive virtual object using the GoldRun app. Capturing all 10 objects will lead players to a secret Flavorpill party, followed by an afterparty conceived by local artist collective, CHERYL.

“GoldRun was able to seamlessly tie into their promotion, adding a unique layer of engagement so participants could experience the event on a deeper level,” says Alex Poole, GoldRun’s Director of Strategy & Engagement. “We worked closely with Flavorpill to creatively integrate their partners into GoldRun’s built-in technology and create this dynamic experience.”

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Marco Tempest – iPod Magic – Deceptions

Posted on June 10, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

The brilliance of Marco Tempest is not his magic or the technology he uses but his story telling.  Art is a medium for communication and magic (especially the way he does it) is an art form that’s too often lost on gimmicks.  Marco shows us how AR in its best form is forgotten as the audience falls into the story.

Its about the message, not the medium.

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Raving Rabbids Alive & Kicking (Some AR)

Posted on June 6, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

Yes, I still exist.  Sorry, I’ve been out of the country for the last few weeks.  But my travels did give me a glimpse into a fantastic game sporting the A and the R — Raving Rabbids.  If you’re not familiar with the series, Raving Rabbids are the insanity pills of the gaming industry.  Nothing like jerking your carrot juice in front of a bar full of people, laughing and pointing the whole time (yes, this is a game, not an obscene act.)

The game is for the Microsoft Kinect only and utilizes the characters to immerse you into their insanity.  What I love about the Rabbids and AR is that it gets you out of the gimmick and into AR.  Right now what holds most applications of AR back is that they’re focused on the trick and not telling a good story.  Rabbids are weird and at times, unexplainable, but playing their games helps you forget there’s a thing called AR at all.  And that’s a good thing.

Looking forward to when this game comes out.

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Virtual Fitting Room for Topshop

Posted on May 10, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

** Nice to see the Kinect out in the working world, rather than just slaving away in hacker space.  The video is instructive as it shows real customers using the product.  Personally, I wouldn’t look good in any of those dresses, but that’s just me.  *cough*

Virtual Fitting Room for Topshop

AR Door, a Russian agency specialized in Augmented Reality solutions, teamed up with Topshop, a woman and man clothes retailer, to create a virtual fitting room for a new collection of dresses Dress up.

A special kiosk for the fitting room was installed at the flagman Topshop store in Moscow at the shopping centre European, 5-8 May 2011.

The virtual fitting room is built on the most sophisticated technologies: augmented reality and Microsoft Kinect. Augmented reality allows the customers to select a garment off the rack without having to try it on physically.  As a customer, you see yourself onscreen with a 3D copy of a dress. Kinect allows the user to control the program by simple gestures pushing virtual buttons right in the air.

To activate the program you don’t need special markers: the built-in camera tracks a person’s body and superimposes over it a 3D model of the dress.

A unique feature that allows the customers to watch both the front and the back parts of the dress was deployed in the Topshop fitting room for the first time in the world practice.

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Doodle War – AR Game

Posted on May 4, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

The inevitable infantile drawings aside, this game is a wonderful display of augmented reality.  Honestly, I could easily see myself sitting around a display table, drinking beers and betting on our ships as they blasted each other off the map.

Each combatant is drawn by the player on a game card that is scanned into the game by a camera, and the stats of your ship are determined by the shape, size and colours used to create it.

It was nominated for the ‘Award for Technical Excellence’ at the 2011 FITC Awards, and won the award for ‘Best Experimental Flash’

Doodle War gets my vote.

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A New Look At Vuzix’s AR Glasses

Posted on May 3, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

Paul Travers, the CEO of Vuzix, has been busy these days.  Selling AR glasses to the military for one million a pop sounds like a good deal to me.  Especially when that DARPA money helps fund a commercial version.

May 3 (Bloomberg) — Augmented-reality glasses made by Vuzix Corp. may allow soldiers on the ground to coordinate with unmanned drones in the air. Vuzix signed a one-year, $1 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop glasses to work with military drones. Bloomberg’s Megan Hughes reports the technology may also have potential civilian applications. (Source: Bloomberg)

Go here to see the video and get a first person POV of the AR glasses in action.

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How Will You Protect Your Customer’s Data Exhaust?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

Last week on The Future Digital Life, I posted about the Dangers of Computer Vision.  The post garnered a fair amount of interest but it is a question that’s a tad ahead of its time.  We don’t have cameras greedily sucking up information by the bucketfuls right now.

But we do have GPS for our augmented reality apps.

Cue the Imperial March soundtrack and bring out Apple’s turtlenecked front man in role of Darth Jobs.  A recent “bug” was uncovered in iPhone’s software that allowed tracking of the phone user’s location.

Apple claims the data is not the actual smartphone location:

“The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone.”

Either way, it’s a perception that a breech of trust has occurred.  Rather than ramble on about the dangers of this data, and since many of the readers of Games Alfresco are software designers, I thought I would pose a question.  One that won’t be that surprising if you read the title of my post.

Sound off, software developers of the rabid interwebs…

How will you protect your customer’s data exhaust?

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Google Map Maker Will Help Annotate AR World

Posted on April 20, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

Google is finally allowing us to edit and add to the map of the United States.  Google Map Maker accepts user contributions and map edits which will, after being checked by a small verification group, be added to the map.  This information can now be seen in Google Street View along with searchable content.  I added a point to my local map and it was added within minutes.

Now local areas can be filled in with detail that will help users manage their every day world.  You could add a shortcut through a campus or a favorite hot dog vendor location that doesn’t show up on the normal map.  It’s possible this information could be used for an AR world.

This is huge news for future AR browsers (or current ones if they can draw from this data.)  Augmented reality is essentially information overlain the life sized map of our world.  Maps are just less detailed versions of our world and Google Map Maker helps transition between the two.

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Interactive Billboard with Feelings

Posted on April 13, 2011 by thomaskcarpenter

My favorite part of the billboard is that it’s made for when you’re stuck in traffic.  I’m thinking the billboard is going to be mostly sad.

Partnering with Tronic the billboard sits near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel and reads, ‘Today I’m Feeling _____’. Using a the GoldRun GPS augmented reality app, passerbys or drivers stuck in traffic can see if the billboard is happy or sad or, whether it feels like dancing or cheering on its favorite team.

Because the billboard is GPS tagged, a number of images can appear at the same site making it more interactive than typical augmented reality applications, essentially, taking a traditional billboard and making it digital. For example, users can change the feelings themselves using large-scale emoticons, and then post them to Facebook or Twitter.

This billboard is part of ADstruc’s ‘Billboards for Everyone’ campaign that partners with artists and designers to help promote creativity and innovation in the outdoor space.

ADstruc Interactive Billboard from TronicStudio on Vimeo.

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