With Easter just around the corner, we are undoubtedly facing a round of festive augmented reality applications. While last year saw the creation of GPS based applications such as “AR Easter Egg Hunt“, this year brings computer-vision based applications, and leading the pack is Irregular Apps’ “Talking Augmented Easter Egg“.
Using what seems to be a unique algorithm to identify and track eggs, Talking Augmented Easter Egg enables iPhone and iPad users to virtually decorate plain white eggs, poke them until they (again, virtually) break and even talk to them. People may think you are crazy, pulling an egg from the refrigerator, looking at it through your iPhone and then starting to talk to it, so maybe you should let your kids play with this one.
When I tested the application on my iPhone 3GS, it surprisingly worked well. The tracking was a bit jumpy (as you might expect), but it did identify my “test egg”, even with a few decoys around (like a white charger). True, it’s a gimmick, that will lose its attraction in a few weeks (unless you are an angry bird, using the app to track your stolen eggs), but it’s probably make your kids quite happy for those few days.
* A year ago we were scanning the heavens waiting for VC manna. Now it seems we have a blizzard.
NEW YORK NY April 11- GoldRun, a leading mobile augmented reality platform, has raised $1.1 million in angel funding. Participants in the round include Ed Mathias (The Carlyle Group), financier Jon Ledecky, Jeremy Zimmer (Founding Partner of United Talent Agency), Jim Hauslein (Former Chairman and CEO of Sunglass Hut), and Mark Ein (CEO of Venturehouse Group).
New York-based GoldRun will use the funding to develop a series of new user and client side feature sets that will greatly expand the range of programming and AR interactions on their platform. The funds will also support increased sales activities and accelerate the deployment of services across the U.S. and international markets. 2011 will see the introduction of GoldRun-hosted gaming, v-commerce and user generated content.
Comprised of a mobile app coupled with a dynamic content delivery system, GoldRun uses augmented reality to bring the visually-driven, content rich experiences of the web into the offline world. By GPS-linking 2D and 3D virtual goods to physical locations such as retail stores, airports and events, GoldRun enables users to locate, interact with and take pictures alongside virtual objects, and earn immediate, relevant real world rewards for every one of these interactions.
GoldRun launched November 1st, 2010 and has since worked with H&M, Airwalk, Young & Rubicam, Esquire, Barnes & Noble, Marc Ecko, Universal Pictures, A&E Network, Sorel, Interscope Records and Oklahoma University among others.
“GoldRun allows for a new form of communication where our digital and physical lives meet,” says founder/CEO Vivian Rosenthal. “We’ve already evolved beyond check-ins, making them visually-driven and image-based. With the integration of location and context, along with photo taking and sharing, we’ve set ourselves apart by creating a new virtual goods economy mapped onto the real world.”
As part of the financing, Ed Mathias and Jeremy Zimmer will join GoldRun’s board of directors; Greg Golkin and Evan Morgan will serve as board observers.
If you are a user of one the mobile AR applications, such as Layar, Junaio, Wikitude, Google Goggles (or any of the many others), and would like to help the (academic) research of augmented reality, boy do Markus Salo and Thomas Olsson have an offer for you.
The two researchers from Finland ask you to think about your most satisfying and unsatisfying experiences using AR application, and for your view on the usefulness of such applications and take the following survey. I must say that imho, mobile AR has not yet created a really satisfying moment, and the enjoyable moments it did create, didn’t last for long (though, some of the creative things people do with mobile AR are really mind boggling).
Best of all, by participating in this survey, you enter a raffle to win one of 10 Amazon-vouchers, 50 euros of worth each. Considering that AR is still a niche, you have pretty good chances to win it. Even better, Salo has promised to share the results, so we’ll can all learn from this survey.
Wow, what a busy week. I’ve listed below only a few of this week’s AR related news stories, just to protect you from an information overload. I hope to blog about the other stories in the coming days.
This computer vision and augmented reality mind map found by Etsuji, is a bit lacking on the commercial side (for example, Metaio is not listed under companies), but seems ok on the research side of things.
Pipe dream or a dream just waiting to come true? Gotham Eyewear: “What are we building? We are building augmented reality glasses for the masses.
This week’s video is magnificent in its simplicity. Nothing more than a demo of Qualcomm’s AR platform, featuring virtual domino bricks, it made me think what would happen if they’ll scale this game. Anyone in the world could place bricks, and anyone could push a brick and start a world-wide chain reaction, but of the playful kind. A simple game that will cross borders and cultures, or maybe I’m a walking cliche?
It seemed like only last week we were clamoring for more games to showcase the power of augmented reality. Now I find it hard enough just to keep up with them all. Instead of trying to create a list, I’m going to just brain dump them into the Internet and let you all decide which ones you want to try. I’m sure I’ll miss some, so if I have, just add ’em to the comments section.
Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary
I covered this one a month back on the Future Digital Life. Great game and I loved that it got the kids and I out of the house on late night adventures and using our imaginations. Nice work, Ogmento.
Let’s count the whole suite of them from AR Shot to Fishing. The game system takes card based AR to a whole new place. Well, actually, it’s the same place you’re in, but with cool graphics overlain.
AR Soccer
Short and simple but can be addicting for at least as long as it takes your calves to cramp up.
The point of the game is to snap as many pictures as possible before the Star gets to pissed and decides to go Lindsey Lohan on your camera. Thankfully, the cracked screen is only part of the game. Will a Charlie Sheen edition be coming soon?
Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner
Epic space battles on your iPhone. New York City sold separately.
AR Basketball
Sorry, but swiping the screen on this game just makes me want to play a version of AR Angry Birds.
AR Pirates!
Created by Optricks Media to get you to say “ARrrr Matey!” for the rest of the day after you’ve played it.
AR Defender
Tower defense by Int13.
The AR Drone
Like having a quad-rotor hovercraft wasn’t cool enough, they had to go and add augmented reality.
Pringles Game
There’s a whole host of these product placement games out there. I’ll summarize them by posting just this one video. Fill in any number of other products that have jumped on the product as AR game bandwagon.
Sander Veenhof created the first one-dimensional art piece using Layar, aptly named 1px (math geeks, calm down! a pixel is indeed not 1 dimensional, but as close as one can get). You can also see an interview with Veenhof about art in AR.
If you have any programming in the last year, you surely know of StackOverflow.com. Now there’s an attempt to create a similar Q&A site for augmented reality. If you think this idea has any merit then show your support.
April fools: AdBlock Freedom – augmented reality eyewear that detects and removes ads from the world in realtime. Probably the guys at AdBlock never heard of Artvertiser.
I love videos done by students to show off their work. This week we are lucky to have Predator, a very impressive video (though I haven’t tried it myself) tracking algorithm resulting from Zdenek Kalal’s phd thesis at the University of Surrey, UK. You can try it yourself by downloading a compiled application to your pc, and read more about it here. Though desktop bound right now, Kalal claims that “implementation for mobile devices is feasible”.
I’m a complete fumble fingers when it comes to drawing, so letting my whistle do the drawing sounds like a “Winning!” to me.
Konstruct is brought you by James Alliban, the same guy who made AR business cards and AR Ribbons.
It is a sound reactive AR experience for the iPhone that allows the user to create a virtual sculpture by speaking, whistling or blowing into the device’s microphone. A variety of 3D shapes, colour palettes and settings can be combined to build an endless collection of structures. Compositions can be saved to the device’s image gallery.
Konstruct is a free app available on iPhone 3GS and 4 running iOS 4+. A version for the iPad 2 is planned in the coming months.
Straight outta the box this one seems pretty boring until you think about how well Groupon is doing. Plus, the people *behind* the person with the Junaio based coupons will be happy. No more waiting for the lady in front of you to dig through her purse for twenty minutes to find all the right coupons. Presto. Magic. Coupons on your smartphone.
Valpak Launches Location Based Coupons with junaio Augmented Reality Partner
Consumers have a fun, easy way to save money, find coupons on the go through the augmented reality application
LARGO, FL and SAN FRANCISCO – March 29, 2011 – Valpak Direct Marketing Systems / Cox Target Media and junaio today announced the Valpak coupons will now be available on the junaio app, allowing consumers to save money at nearby businesses with geo-targeted coupons that pop up on their smartphones.
With the Valpak coupons on the junaio app, consumers don’t wait to receive coupons, the geo-location coupons are available whenever they want them. The app launches the smartphone’s camera and GPS to overlay a set of 3D icons in real-time, showing the available Valpak coupons in the vicinity as the user scans the surroundings, with a radius varying from 5 feet to 20 miles away. The coupons and offers literally “pop up” on the screen.
Users can view local coupons, savings and deal offers from the convenience of smartphones anywhere and anytime, and find deals from thousands of local and national brands using the app. Consumers can view and redeem Valpak mobile coupon offers for their favorite businesses in the area by showing the local merchant the Valpak coupon(s) displayed on their smartphone.
The Valpak coupon channel puts the consumer at the center focus, delivering content based on the consumer’s location, or geo-location. The app uses the innovative technology of augmented reality, which combines real and virtual, making the experience interactive and 3D.
The Valpak coupon channel on the junaio app is the world’s largest augmented reality mobile coupon application. To experience this feature, users can download the free junaio application, created by metaio, the leader in AR technology, from either the iTunes Store or Android Market and select the “Local Coupons by Valpak” channel.
“Providing Valpak content on the junaio platform extends the reach our advertisers achieve when they purchase Valpak advertising,” according to Nancy Cook, Vice President of New Media Business Development for Valpak/Cox Target Media. “Our content distribution strategy is to be everywhere consumers look for savings. Valpak content appears on many different apps and platforms. That’s good for consumers and good for our advertisers.”
“Partnering with junaio gives us access to a new audience and gives them a fun, interactive way to see which local businesses are offering savings, and then connect to the offer,” said Cook. “Now consumers can find discounts on their favorite nearby businesses as they are walking by them or discover new favorites in the neighborhood.
”In addition to this augmented reality, app, the familiar Blue Envelope and Valpak.com, Valpak offers available via apps for the five major mobile platforms, recently launched Valpak Deals daily deals site, and offers SMS texting for advertisers.
The spring is here (unless you live below the equator, and somehow don’t fall off the face of the earth), and it brings some great links (and allergens) :
Librarian’s dream app – researchers from Miami University created an augmented reality meets mobile application to help keep books ordered on libraries’ shelves.
Beats me why the need the money, I always assumed they make millions, but Total Immersion gets USD $5,5M in funding led by Intel Capital (which, interestingly, also funded Layar).
Quimo from the University of South Australia, is like play-doh for augmented reality. This “deformable material” supports “freeform modeling in spatial AR environments” by embedding almost invisible AR markers.
“The Witness” is a German half-movie-half alternative reality game that uses AR (or pseudo-AR) to move the plot forward (via @GaryPHayes).
This week’s featured video is coming to us from Microsoft, a company that develops stunning technologies just to see them later made into products and sold by the likes of Apple. Here they develop a “Photosynth Lite”, enabling users to create 3d models by taking a few pictures with their cellphones. I wonder where this technology can be applied:
I’m not sure when I’ll tire of concept videos. As long as they keep upping the ante, I’m in.
This one treats AR as a private little wonderland without intrusion from a world trying to get you to buy stuff. I’m all for the Utopian vision, but I expect the corporate spam-mongers to find ways into our idyllic little islands.
Quote from the makers, Mattias Wozniak and Bjorn Svensson:
Our objective was to focus on how to interact with an AR system in the near future. Main focus was to keep it socially acceptable, non-obtrusive and intuitive.
Games Alfresco 