SAN FRANCISCO / NEW YORK, June 15th, 2010 – Time Out New York launches its premiere mobile augmented reality editorial for TONY`s “Summer Drinking Special” which hits newsstands June 16. Time Out New York and junaio®, the next generation augmented reality browser, are partnering to provide the first-ever mobile guide to cool drinking destinations in NYC. With just a smartphone and the TONY channel within the junaio® browser, you can unlock summer discounts and deals around town by simply pointing your phone.
“The TONY Summer Drinking Guide features great places to take advantage of drink specials throughout the city, ” says Marci Weisler, Digital Business Director of Time Out North America. “Our readers today are on the go and mobile. By leveraging augmented reality technology, we add another dimension to our print and online content and make it available anywhere they go.”
Users can visit the TONY Summer Drinking channel by downloading the junaio 2.0 app for iPhone and Android devices. After launching the app and selecting the TONY Summer Drinking channel, users can point their smartphones in all directions to reveal details on featured bars offering deals and incentives, browse venue photos, contact numbers, directions, neighborhood maps, as well as a web link to the actual Time Out New York summer drinking page.
The hot “Augmented Reality” Technology behind it
TONY`s “Summer Drinking Special” is made possible through junaio®, the exciting new augmented reality browser designed for camera equipped mobile devices. “junaio® delights mobile users with easy and intuitive access to information presented in ways that provide an instant grasp of essentials through unusual and enjoyable new media experiences. Our partnership with TONY shows the potential of extending and enriching offline content for people on the go,” said Lisa Murphy, junaio® Product Marketing Manager.
How to get the “Summer Drinking Special” on your smartphone
Download junaio® from the Apple App store or from the Android Marketplace. junaio works best for iPhone 3GS. Tune into TONY`s Summer Drinking Channel and point your phone to unlock the nearest discounts around you as part of the June 16th issue of Time Out New York. For more details go to: http://www.timeoutnewyork.com/ar/
SAN FRANCISCO / NEW YORK, June 15th, 2010 – Time Out New York launches its premiere mobile augmented reality editorial for TONY`s “Summer Drinking Special” which hits newsstands June 16. Time Out New York and junaio®, the next generation augmented reality browser, are partnering to provide the first-ever mobile guide to cool drinking destinations in NYC. With just a smartphone and the TONY channel within the junaio® browser, you can unlock summer discounts and deals around town by simply pointing your phone.
“The TONY Summer Drinking Guide features great places to take advantage of drink specials throughout the city, ” says Marci Weisler, Digital Business Director of Time Out North America. “Our readers today are on the go and mobile. By leveraging augmented reality technology, we add another dimension to our print and online content and make it available anywhere they go.”
Users can visit the TONY Summer Drinking channel by downloading the junaio 2.0 app for iPhone and Android devices. After launching the app and selecting the TONY Summer Drinking channel, users can point their smartphones in all directions to reveal details on featured bars offering deals and incentives, browse venue photos, contact numbers, directions, neighborhood maps, as well as a web link to the actual Time Out New York summer drinking page. The hot “Augmented Reality” Technology behind it
TONY`s “Summer Drinking Special” is made possible through junaio®, the exciting new augmented reality browser designed for camera equipped mobile devices. “junaio® delights mobile users with easy and intuitive access to information presented in ways that provide an instant grasp of essentials through unusual and enjoyable new media experiences. Our partnership with TONY shows the potential of extending and enriching offline content for people on the go,” said Lisa Murphy, junaio® Product Marketing Manager. How to get the “Summer Drinking Special” on your smartphone
Download junaio® from the Apple App store or from the Android Marketplace. junaio works best for iPhone 3GS. Tune into TONY`s Summer Drinking Channel and point your phone to unlock the nearest discounts around you as part of the June 16th issue of Time Out New York. For more details go to: http://www.timeoutnewyork.com/ar/
Augmented reality has come a long way in a years time. Last year I got excited by research projects and gimmicky AR webcam advertising, but that quickly faded on the tenth plus iteration. It wasn’t until July that we starting having real AR products in the form of apps. Nearly a year later and still early in the development of the AR ecosystem, we’re seeing a more diverse use of the technology and that has me excited again. So I want to take a moment to go over ten cool things going on right now in augmented reality.
1. Battle of the AR Browsers
Wikitude, Layar, Tonchidot, Junaio, TagWhat and others hope to be the standard for the AR browser market. Layar has recently upped the ante with an AR content store and TagWhat takes it in a new direction by combining lessons learned with Foursquare and Twitter. I suspect one of the big boys like Google, Twitter or Facebook will eventually either create their own or co-opt the ideas from these early browsers into their current products. I’m not sure which horse to bet on in this race, but in the end we customers are the winners.
Using an Eye-Trek video headset, the guy at Tailormadetoys made a pair of AR glasses. I love the DIY culture and while they’re not see-through, I think all the right parts to make one are out there. This post from Team Hack-a-Day proves that the DIY makers are getting close, so why can’t one of the big makers get it done?
3. The AR phone – Ouidoo
The specs on this Ouidoo QderoPateo smartphone are in the WTF!? zone. While the phone won’t be out until the fall, the company claims it’ll have a 26-core CPU capable of 8-gigaflop floating point operations and include 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen. Whew.
While I’m not completely believing the hype, and it could end up being vaporware, it certainly looks promising. Though it’ll have to work hard to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Droid.
Bionic eyes and augmented reality. It’s like peanut better and chocolate! Rob Spence is putting a camera into his eye to make movies with (and because its just plain cool.) And he’s also interested in combining augmented reality with his eye camera. They’ve come up with a promotional AR eyeborg t-shirt in the meantime.
Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Marco Tempest, and the list goes on. It pains me to say that I won’t be able to make the inaugural event. I had a work conflict with that week, so I have to bow out of hosting the panel on AR glasses. But for the rest of you, I hope you’ll be able to make it. With AR on the rise and viable business options a-plenty, it’s a good time to network and see what everyone is doing with the nascent technology. This is the “can’t miss” AR event of the year.
Our favorite interviewer Tish Shute and longtime commenter Thomas Wrobel have been sheparding the AR Wave project and collaborating with people all over the globe. While it’s still too early to tell, this could end up being one of the most important AR developments out there if they can truly create an open source way of using AR. As they’ve been telling everyone, they’re trying to make a system that:
* Anyone can make content
* Anyone can make a browser
* Anyone can run a server
7. iPhone OS4.0
It almost pains me to get excited about an iPhone update that promises video access to make real AR work on that smartphone. We got fooled last September with the OS3.1. I’m hoping we don’t get fooled again (unless you’re the Who.)
I’m not even entirely sure if haptic floors fit into the augmented reality spectrum, but it’s so crazy weird and true, that I had to include it. I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing a commercial product anytime soon though (or ever.)
9. AR Drone
While the news on the AR drone is a stale few months old, I still think it warrants inclusion because it was a great product. The hovercraft alone was worth the price of admission, but the AR added a creative twist to it. I have no idea if it sold well, but it sure did capture the imaginations of a lot of geeks.
10. You choose!
Let us know what you think is the coolest thing going in augmented reality right now. Whether it’s a product only hinted at or one currently residing on your smartphone, we’d like to hear it. So let us know here at Games Alfresco in the comment section!
This week’s video is of a kid playing air AR guitar, a promotion to some Disney product, I think. On the bright side, it’s the first time I see augmentation of the torso (and not the head). Via Development Memo For Ourselves
It was only a matter of time. Virtual goods make up a $1.4 Billion (that’s with a ‘B’ folks) business and the demand is growing. We have Chinese gold farmers and Farmville exclusive goods, so augmented goods can’t be far behind.
Right now augmented goods are tied to purchased toys as an “add-on.” Metaio has teamed up with Bandai Co. to create AR extensions to their real world collectible cards.
I believe the next step will be adding augmented only items that exist in certain locations as a reward. Combine foursquare and Pokemon and you have a potent combination. Hit all fifteen Starbucks in your area and you unlock a “Coffee Critter” that shows up on your smartphone when you’re in the store (and you get a discount on the Double Latte Supreme.) Are you listening TagWhat, Layar, Junaio and the rest?
And keep in mind augmented goods as status symbols don’t count unless other people can see them. Other patrons should be able to see your critter following you or floating above your head just like a non-combat pet in World of Warcraft. Trust me, people will go to unbelievable lengths to earn a baby dragon or talking penguin. Value is all about scarcity and that works even in the virtual or augmented world.
I’m usually not in the habit of posting press releases, but I imagine that some of our readers will find the next news byte from Metaio interesting:
Attention Developers: win $5,000!
With junaio’s open API, developers can create state of the art augmented reality applications. You don’t need any experience in programming for embedded systems. Challenge your imagination and contribute to junaio’s exciting world with AR Mashups, multiplayer games and scavenger hunts, interactive, indoor and outdoor exhibitions, tours with animated 3D characters or location independent gaming. All you need to do as a developer is to register for an API key and start challenging your creativity.
You can not only win $5,000 but we will also invite the winner to our metaio Technology Fair to visit with us and to attend the world-famous Oktoberfest in Munich.
I made it! (though I’ve cheated with that second bullet point, and left Total Immersion’s AR Luke Skywalker out (oh, I’ve cheated again!). Anyway, here’s a nice interview with Robert Scoble about Junaio and AR in general. Apparently Scoble doesn’t think AR is disruptive but fancy it a lot.
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, Inc. is proud to announce that junaio – the world’s first social augmented reality platform is now available in the App Store. The application is free and available globally on all iPhones. Users without an iPhone can also edit and share 3D augmented reality images via the online platform on http://www.junaio.com.
junaio is a mobile and online platform that lets users create, explore and share information in a completely new way using augmented reality and location-based content. Users can place 3D objects, Twitter messages or websites into the real world and then share their creations with friends through social networks such as Facebook.
I took pictures of interesting things in and around my house, and in a few minutes – folks from around the world (mostly Germany…) added creative fun stuff to it.
I like Junaio’s concept of You (stuff you created), Here (stuff people around you created), Now (stuff being created right now). However, it was a bit weak on the Here. I guess no one else in NYC participated in the beta. Hopefully that will change now that it’s on the store.
What I am missing in Junaio is the ability to see my creation (and others) truly overlaid on reality. That is quiet hard to achieve on the iPhone with just GPS and compass. This will get much more interesting when computer vision is used and objects are aligned with your real time view of reality.
In the meantime – congratulations to Metaio and all the best!
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.
“There will be at least one terrorist attack that has used mobile augmented reality for planning, practice, and execution.”, this is just one of many predicitons by Robert Rice for the augmented world of 2012.
Read Write Web theorize on why VCs aren’t backing AR startups, and Robert Rice shares his experience. Well, according to ABI Research augmented reality will be a 350$ million market in 2014. That’s actually a pretty small figure (especially for a technology that aims to change the world), so maybe VCs just don’t see the next Youtube in it.
Of course, this coming week will see the appearance of the highly anticipated Junaio from Metaio. Metaio has realeased a new video for the occasion and we get to read Gene Becker’s impressions.
It always looks like the guys at YDreams are having lots of fun. This time they are playing soccer. Without a real ball.
Campaigns: Esquire made Robert Downey Junior sit on a very big marker, SAP shows its line of products with an augmented rubik cube (warning! a very annoying narrator), there’s a street fighter like augmented reality game to promote the G.I.Joe DVD (what’s a summer blockbuster without some augmented love) and you can become an elephant in this British campaign to ban the use of wild animals from circuses.
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.
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!”:
Games Alfresco 