The Kindle Test

Posted on November 10, 2009 by rouli

[This post is going to be strange at times, readers should note that I’m the author, not Ori]
According to some estimates, up till now, Amazon sold more than one million units of Kindle.

That’s one million units for a device that is not a phone, doesn’t include a camera, can’t guide you from point A to B, has a grayscale screen, and really doesn’t do much but serving as an e-book reader (don’t get me wrong, I would love to have one).

The point is, e-book readers are far less revolutionary than AR devices. Some would claim (me included) that AR devices are also more useful. Yet, it seems that no one is building a dedicated augmented reality hardware. If AR was really that hot and not a technology that is still a few years away, shouldn’t we see at least a concept AR device? After all, if over a million Kindles were sold, the FlARe™ would sell like cupcakes.
Yes, the HMDs coming next year can be used for augmented reality, but it seems that they primerly target other markets.

Another “AR capable” device that targets other markets is, of course, the iPhone. Instead of complaining about the iPhone’s lack of support of augmented reality, can’t AR enthusiasts take action to their own hands? Isn’t there another Noah Zerkin type of guy that instead of building an amazing glove, would build a rough hand held AR device to prove that augmented reality is not a lot of hype? Sergey Ten has written today a set of features he is looking for in the perfect AR device. If you are a resourceful guy or girl, start from there.

Consider this post as a call for action, or at least for comments. Is augmented reality going to be bigger in 2010 than e-books readers to merit its own dedicated device?

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on November 8, 2009 by rouli

Still waiting for Junaio.

In the meantime the backlash against augmented reality (and the hype bubble surrounding it) has begun, with PSFK’s “Is Augmented Reality The Next Second Life?”, Fast Company’s “Put Your Phone Down: Augmented Reality Is Overblown” and Techdirt’s critique of gimmicky AR applications. Even Zugara has called on bloggers to cool down the hype. The best of its kind is BusinessWeek’s “Augmented Reality: Getting Beyond the Hype” (you should read this article):

The industry could battle the hype and mislabeling by establishing standards the rest of us can understand. Otherwise, augmented reality will quickly meet the same fate as “green” products: Marketers will advertise even the slightest of augments as “augmented reality,” leaving consumers confused and bewildered.

On the other hand there’s Robert Rice’s reply to that Fast Company article.
Well, I don’t think that anyone will deny there’s a lot of of hype around augmented reality at the moment, and I’m sure most believe that augmented reality has a great potential. It is my humble opinion that really exciting AR is still a few years away and in order to get there, we need to keep the hype at bay. As Rice writes, there’s a fine line between evangelizing and hyping, and we should be careful not to cross it. Not that it’s going to help, as many startups are pumping air into the bubble, hoping for an exit before it bursts.

Oh, and in other news:

This week’s video is of an art performance named .txt , that features a tag cloud haunting a dancer. I’m not an art critique, so I can say anything about the performance itself, but technology wise, it’s using YDreams’ YVision for real time interaction between the dancer and words (via @YDreams):

Have a nice week!

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Droid Does Tease

Posted on November 1, 2009 by rouli

If you were living in a cave for the last two weeks, Droid, Motorola’s new Android device is heralded as the new iPhone killer. The campaign created to promote the coming the new phone has focused on what Droid does that the iPhone cannot do. Interestingly, Thomas Carpenter has noticed the following tease on the Droid’s promotion site:

So, are they meaning Layar/Wikitude or something completely different? After all, we do have those on the iPhone, but the iPhone is famous for its lack of support for real video-feed-processing type of AR.
Time will tell …

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on November 1, 2009 by rouli

While reading this week’s linkfest you may find some links are missing – don’t worry, many ISMAR related links and videos will be posted later this week.

Although Halloween was yesterday, and I’ve dedicated a whole post to Halloween related AR, here’s another cute scarry example found by Bruce Sterling. Actually is part of a campaign to promote eco-friendly chargers and power managemant systems, and you can try it yourself here.

Have a nice week!

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Augmented Job Board

Posted on October 31, 2009 by rouli

Looking for a position at a leading AR company?

Metaio’s  is looking for an iPhone developer for its San Francisco offices:

Your tasks include the analysis, the design and the transfer of customer specified Augmented Reality solutions.
Task profile:

  • Application development on iPhone / MacOSX
  • Working on customer projects
  • Requirements analysis / engineering
  • Application design
  • Project communication
  • Collaboration with the core development, research and product development
  • Customer and service orientation

You can find this and many other available positions at Games Alfresco’s Job Board.

If you happen to look for the right person to fill an augmented reality related position, why won’t let us publish it over here? There’s nothing to lose, it’s free!

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Freaky Friday – Nude It

Posted on October 30, 2009 by rouli

I’m sure that such an application would be a killer-app for augmented reality. “Augmented reality? I’m only using it for the articles”. Via @u2elan.

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Three More HMDs to Consider

Posted on October 29, 2009 by rouli

Cool NEC is developing a head mounted display named Tele Scouter which it hopes to begin shipping somewhere in 2010. The eyepiece shown in the image below has some really neat features like front facing camera and eye tracker. This enables a remote server to see whatever you’re looking at, and send you some relevant content to be displayed on the little screen. Not so cool- it’s going to cost a small fortune, and NEC is only planning to sell about 1000 of those in the next three years. More details on SlashGear.

Cooler Fellow Japanese company, Brother Industries is not left behind. Apparently they developed a light-weight HMD (by light-weight I mean 350 grams including batteries) that should also hit the stores in 2010. Like in Tele Scout’s case this unnamed HMD superimposes the image it generates over reality, not blocking the user’s view. So why is it cooler than NEC’s device? Well, they use terms like “green diode lasers”, and if that doesn’t make you blind, it’s surely very cool. More details on TechOn.

Coolest Now you can make a HMD right in your own home (though you’ll need an iPhone and some cardboard):

Though none of those devices (certainly not the last one :)) is aimed for the AR crowd, I guess that enthusiasts will find way to harness them for cool demos. Don’t forget to read Tom’s review of more concrete offerings from ISMAR.

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Augmented Reality – Now Comes in Banners

Posted on October 28, 2009 by rouli

For their latest campaign, promoting Burger King’s one dollar menu, ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky chose to break the mold of former AR campaigns. First, there’s no mini-site, the whole experience is neatly contained within a single banner ad. Moreover, there’s no need to print a marker. You simply show this ad a one dollar bill and it shows you an item from BK’s one dollar menu. You flip the bill and it shows you another item. Finally, when you hide the bill from your web cam, your face is covered by a king’s mask.

Apparently it works with other bills and even white sheets of paper, so you can give it a try. The banner is featured over here.

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Augmented Teddy Bear You Can Touch

Posted on October 27, 2009 by rouli

Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Electro-Communications may have created the cutest AR creature to date. In the last SIGGRAPH conference they have presented the following poster, discussing a haptic ring that let you pet virtual creatures (VC) and enable virtual creatures touch you.

We installed models of optical / touch sensation into our VCs. It
enables VCs to react for user’s actions to VCs in various and appropriate
ways. For example, they express attention by looking back
when they are hit from backward. They express happiness when
they are stroked gently, and they step away after a strong hit.

(if embedding does not work for you, video is here)

More details can be found here. Via Development Memo for Ourselves.

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Halloween Augmented Reality Special

Posted on October 26, 2009 by rouli

Following are some AR tricks and treats I’ve collected over the last month, which make me think this Halloween should be declared as the first augmented holiday. Judge for yourself.

First we have the interactive Halloween mirror from Instructables. This little do-it-yourself project will let you and your party guests try out gory and scary masks without spending money or buying makeup. Just remember to turn-off the screen saver before installing it in your living room. (Note, you can stop watching this video after the 1 minute mark, it just repeats itself)

Taking the same face detection approach, Disney lets you become one of the villains from their animated movies. However, their Halloween Time application spice things up by including a mini-game, so kids may find it interesting:

While that Instructables project used OpenCV for face detection, HIT Lab NZ has opted for a simpler solution – just wear a marker on your forehead and turn yourself into a skeleton. On the upside, it’s in 3d. Quite a memento mori moment:

Last but not least, Meijer, an American retail chain from the mid-west bring us what is probably the most attractive Halloween application. Meijer chose to promote its line of products for Halloween by letting visitors to this site try on 3d masks without the need of wearing markers, though you do have to install a plugin from Total Immersion. They even let you record yourself wearing the virtual mask, and make it possible to alter your voice (which according to them is an AR first). Sadly, they don’t let you upload videos to Youtbue, fearing inappropriate videos, and they don’t have a public gallery of user-made videos (which didn’t prevent users to upload about 1300 videos) so I’m left with putting a screenshot:

Here’s a direct link for one of the upload videos, to get a better idea.

Know of any other Halloween related augmented reality project? Tell us about it in the comments.

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