In December of last year, augmented reality (AR) browser makers Layar chose to pull its iPhone app from the App Store due to frequent crashes reported by users. They thought it was better for their brand to remove the application than to promote a faulty product. As we've mentioned in the past, Layar had hinted that a revamped iPhone app would be out near the end of February, and earlier this week they released just that.
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With the relaunch of their iPhone app, Layar rejoins acrossair, Wikitude and others now vying for elbow room in the mobile AR space. Layar boasts one of the largest collections of points-of-interest (POI) data sets and now that library is available again on the iPhone. The usual suspects can be found on Layar, such as Flickr photos, Google search, YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles, but one of the more unique layers on the app is Foursquare integration.
Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare's own app disappointingly doesn't support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act.
"The new Layar Reality Browser has a re-engineered engine under the hood. This new engine makes the application light, stable and very quick," the company said on its blog. "It is ready to handle all the current layers and it is a good base to realize all of our exciting future plans."
Layar's return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company's new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it's use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple's in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that's a whole other argument.
This could be a huge step forward for the mobile AR space. As these applications become more useful, more refined and more popular, companies will be excited to participate in providing branded content in an AR experience. Expect an announcement from Layar in the next few weeks about the launch of this exciting new platform, but in the meantime, iPhone users (3GS only) can go snag Layar's free app (iTunes link) in the App Store.
Your phone can translate foreign language text just by looking at it through Google Goggles. A South Korean telecom has released a product similar to Google Goggles. The social content Augmented Reality mobile browser junaio will have a new version released at SXSW next month and there's now an 8 minute video from TED available detailing Microsoft's plans for Bing, including Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality (AR), the practice of displaying data on top of our view of the world around us, is hot stuff. Below are the top stories on AR from around the web over the past 24 hours, selected with help from OneSpot. Watch this space: ReadWriteWeb will be releasing a research report on the use of AR for marketing very soon.
"We've been able to translate languages with the help of Google Translate for a while now, but this new function within Google Goggles (which I'm already a big fan of) kind of blows my mind."
Metaio will present a whole new version of its social content mobile AR browser junaio at SXSW this year. The company's Unifeye Mobile SDK is also among the finalists of the "Accelerator" competition.
"Korean mobile network provider SK Telecom has revealed a new augmented reality application called Ovjet for Android-platform mobile phones. It seems like quite similar to the concept of Google Goggles. "
Short 8 minute TED Talk from Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas on the company's latest evolution of Bing Maps. Included an Augmented Reality demo. Here's the video.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, digital advertising development studio Inition brought augmented reality (AR) to the games with a promotion they produced for Samsung which gave users a unique look at a new device from the company. With thousands of people flocking to Vancouver for this year's Olympics, the games have again taken to augmented reality for some unique and immersive marketing opportunities.
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Yahoo! and top AR development house Total Immersion have teamed up to provide an interactive information kiosk at the "Yahoo! Fancouver" exhibit. The experience involves a three paneled screen with sections for news, weather and medal counts, along with a camera pointed at the user. Depending on where the user is standing, the AR software will place various hats and accessories on their head; ie: a press hat for the news section, or hats with country logos on them for the medal count section. The weather section places various weather related accessories on the user, such as wool caps, visors, sunglasses, and goofy umbrella hats.
Vancouver-based social media blogger, author and speaker Shane Gibson snapped the video below demonstrating the interactive AR display which is located in Yaletown, a borough within the Canadian city.
The experience, which also supports some brochure tracking features, is an entertaining way to draw the attention of the event's attendees while also providing them with useful information about the games. Facial tracking is nothing new for Total Immersion, who provided similar services for a Transformers promotion that placed a robotic helmet on users' heads. Others AR developers have used facial tracking for applications as well, including metaio's hockey mask promotion at the Xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis, and FittingBox's "virtual mirror" for Ray Ban Sunglasses.
The thing I like about this example of facial tracking AR is that - like the Ray Ban promotion - it provides a practical service along with the entertaining and interactive aspect. Users aren't simply walking up to a screen an having a 2010 Olympics hat stuck on their head, much like the Transformers or hockey mask promotions. Yes, the hats and accessories are a bit silly, but the addition of news, weather and medal count information makes the use more practical. The AR draws the attention of passers-by with its fun and gimmicks, but rewards them with actual useful information to take with them. A user walks away knowing what countries lead the medal count and what the weather will be like based on the AR hats that were placed on them.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a hat manufacturer like NewEra take note of this promotion and provide an interactive way for potential customers to model their various hat styles with either an in-store kiosk or with an at-home web-based solution. Facial and body tracking is an excellent use of augmented reality for fashion retailers, as we have already seen applications for users to try on sun glasses, shoes, clothing, jewelry, make-up and hairstyles. Imagine the private dressing rooms at department stores being replaced by AR "virtual mirrors" for a faster, more social way to try on new outfits. The possibilities are endless, but what or who will be next?
In January, the Austria-based company Mobilizy updated the Android version of its mobile augmented reality browser Wikitude to include a new feature they dubbed "Worlds," which are similar to the layers found in the alternatively popular Layar AR browser. On Thursday Wikitude 2.0 for the iPhone (version 4 on Android) was released on the iTunes App Store, brining these new Worlds to the iPhone.
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Previously, Wikitude only served up geo-tagged Wikipedia articles, or content created on the Wikitude.me online service. With the addition of Worlds, users can now also browse locally for Twitter posts, Flickr photos and YouTube videos - the usual AR suspects. Also, local search points-of-interest (POI) are available through Google Local Search, CitySearch and Qype, but actual search functionality is not included.
This new verison of Wikitude also marks the browser's first commercial entries as users can find the nearest Startbucks, Walmart, Harley Davidson or BestBuy locations using the various World filters found on the applications new "Overview" home screen. Some of the Worlds, such as Last.fm events, Meetup Events and Outside.in content, are unique to Wikitude and are innovative inclusions for AR browsing.
First released for Android phones in October of 2008, Wikitude was the very first mobile augmented reality browser to hit the market. Since then Layar, acrossair and hundreds of other mobile AR apps have upped the ante in the mobile AR space, and the latest iteration of Wikitude is in direct response to this competition.
Wikitude's updated features follow a continuing trend in mobile AR to consolidate a group of applications into a single AR browser-like experience. Mobilizy previously produced the AR application C2 YouTube for the iPhone, but has moved that functionality into Wikitude.
Additionally, acrossair's AR browser now includes features like Twitter and Wikipedia entries, which were previously features in their own independent applications. French iPhone app development house Presselite, which made waves with its Metro Paris Subway app, and other transit applications, has since rolled its applications together into the Bionic Eye application. It's only a matter of time before these companies begin rolling games and entertainment, a growing AR sector, into their browsers for one-stop augmented reality experiences.
Mobilizy, Layar, acrossair, and Presselite now have comparable AR browsing applications with Tonchidot not far behind with its more social app, Sekai Camera, the most popular AR app in Japan. Competition is certainly a good thing when it comes to mobile AR, and the deal-breaker in the coming months and years for most users will likely be the commercial content found on the applications.
Which mobile AR application do you like best? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've discussed the use of third party APIs when building an integrated online product, highlighting the disadvantages such a decision could entail. One topic on the flip side of that is the question of whether providing an open public API versus a closed private one is in your product's best interest. Massively viral services like Twitter have rapidly expanded their capabilities and brand awareness by releasing an open API for third party developers to build on, but for companies in fledgeling industries, like mobile augmented reality, the API decision isn't as clear.
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Along with Mobilizy's Wikitude World Browser, Amsterdam-based company Layar was one of the first mobile AR browsers to market and has since become one of the strongest players in the space. Layar allows users to view geo-tagged points-of-interest (POI) in a 3D "heads-up" display using their mobile phone's camera. We've covered Layar's evolution since its debut last June and eventual launch on Android devices two months later. Since then Layar has released an iPhone version of their application, but due to random crashes the company has temporarily pulled it from the App Store until they can work out the bugs.
Layar has quickly become of the most popular mobile AR browsing applications across the globe thanks to its impressive set of features, but the company's choice to provide an open API may have been the decision which fueled them to success. Companies that wish to jump on the augmented reality bandwagon have several choices for getting their content on Layar quickly and easily. Layar provides documentation on its website for how to use and interpret their API, but those looking for an easier method of geo-data input can use any of a number of third party tools. Thanks in no small part to tools like buildAR, Muzar and Winvolve, Layar's database of geo-data has rapidly expanded to include over 300 content layers including anything from restaurants to Twitter results, to even the locations of nearby heart defibrillators.
On the opposite end the spectrum, the accrossair browser, a similar mobile AR browser available on the iPhone, has decided to keep its API private and helps with the input of geo-data themselves for companies that wish to participate on their platform. Instead of allowing anyone to upload location data onto their platform, acrossair has reached out to corporations like McDonalds and FedEx to provide them with their own POIs in their browser. The one disadvantage this places on their product is a significantly lower number of POI sets that a user can access. With just over a dozen different options, acrossair has a fraction of the curated POI sets that Layar does. Founder Chetan Damani says that while their closed API certainly limits the amount of data on their browser, it enhances the overall stability of the browser - a factor which may play heavily for the company as they expand beyond the iPhone to Android and Symbian devices.
"We are keeping [the API] closed right now because we will be in a period of evolution and multiple iteration," Damani told ReadWriteWeb. "We want to move to Android, and we want to make sure that the APIs are the right APIs and that they won't limit our development. We only get one opportunity to get this right."
Damani and acrossair are playing it safe until they are able to expand their presence to more platforms before opening their API - a step Damani says they do plan on taking. When acrossair moves their browser to Android, Symbian and possibly even Windows Mobile devices, having a closed API will make the transition much smoother. Opening the API after they set up shop on each mobile OS will be a lot easier without loads of independently developed geo-data on their system.
So is it better to limit one's API early on for the sake of stability while simultaneously hampering the possible reach of one's product? The acrossair browser seems to be taking that chance, while Layar, on the other hand, is welcoming third party developers with open arms. However, acrossair has one thing going for them that Layar currently doesn't - a working iPhone application.
How much of a role Layar's open API played in the demise of their iPhone application is unknown, but all that could be moot when Layar relaunches on the iPhone "by the end of February". However, if augmented reality is the supposed "future of web browsing" as some believe it to be, having closed browsing platforms is not a viable long-term solution.
"The hologram of a DNA spiral that I'm holding in my hand," your professor might say, "can be turned, twisted or expanded at-will and everyone on this video call will be able to see me do it." Is that the distant future of education, sales and casual communication online? Not if Augmented Reality company Zugara has its way.
The company announced today that it is working on fast and easy shared webcam Augmented Reality and its first prototype is already available.
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Though hundreds or thousands of Augmented Reality products hit the market last year and a handful have been widely seen - many people still doubt the utility of this technology. Zugara's approach seems to be one of the most clearly useful. If the company can pull-off making this kind of service fast, cheap and easy - we might find it in use in many different sectors. The webcam social shopper technology you see in the video is available now as a B2B service for apparel and shopping company partners.
Some AR proponents believe that in addition to the web browser and the mobile browser, the ability to view and interact with information placed on top of the world around us represents an important way that the internet will be interacted with in the future.
It's exciting to look forward to a web that lives between our eyes and the physical world. The AR industry faces challenges but it's one we're watching closely.
You're walking down the street. Your phone buzzes, a map or a screen overlay pops up and you're shown a note left in that location by one of your friends - along with an ad for your favorite pizza. Walk into the pizza place and your phone buzzes again - your friends have something to say about the guy behind the counter. That might have sounded far-fetched a few years ago, but it doesn't so much anymore, does it?
18 months ago Yahoo! filed a sophisticated patent on VIRTUAL NOTES IN A REALITY OVERLAY and that patent was published last week. Check out the patent sketches below.
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The technology envisioned by the team of senior researchers who filed the application is reminiscent of now-available apps like Loopt, BlockChalk, Junaio and others. The whole vision of location, social and advertising features put together, however, may be quite unique. The patent also goes beyond location to include notes tied to mobile objects like cars and people.
Update: This report at first mistakenly claimed that the patent in question had been granted. In fact it has merely been filed and published. The US Patent Office customarily publishes patents 18 months after they have been filed, then evaluates them as soon as it is able to afterwords. (Usually not very soon.) Given the pace of web technology these days, that process sounds absurd, but I apologize for reporting on it incorrectly anyway.
Yahoo's patent was filed in July of 2008, published after the customary 18 months last Thursday and first blogged about by upstart tech news site GoRumors this morning. The same team of inventors had another related patent application published at the end of last year on an augmented reality device that would discover audio, video and other information that's pertinent to a user's physical surroundings and display that information on a screen overlay.
The technology described in this latest patent isn't just location-based social networking, or Augmented Reality "air tagging" - it includes social graph analysis, permissioning, expiration dates, contextual advertising and more. It's not just text notes, it includes methods of augmented reality with photos, videos and more. While the most popular mobile augmented reality apps on the market today focus on text on top of locations - there's no reason why reality can't be augmented in other ways as well.
There's no indication that the technology exists yet outside of the patent application and sketches below, but if Yahoo! could put together such an integrated vision of location-based features then it would have a very interesting service on its hands.
This vision puts emphasis on limited visibility of public notes based on the social connections of people doing the reading and writing, on the use of the tool for communication between people more than for public graffiti, on notes tied to entities and not just to places and on advertising based on a reader's past expressed interests. That sounds like the kind of thing Facebook might do with its inevitably forthcoming location services.
Will anything come of this patent? It's hard to say, since it's Yahoo, where genius flowers but then too often gets left out in the cold to die. Just two months before this innovative patent was filed, were were heralding Yahoo's brand new Location Database API as a would-be fountain of location-aware apps. Almost two years later, though geo is hotter than ever, it seems that nothing much has come of that effort. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong about that.) Six months ago we ran an article titled Yahoo! Launches Major Challenge to Facebook Connect. That doesn't seem like such a hot topic anymore, either. We asked Yahoo! for comment this morning about this latest patent and haven't been put in touch with anyone yet.
None the less, these are some very interesting ideas. Someone is sure to build something like this very soon. Maybe it will be Yahoo.
Watch this space for ReadWriteWeb's next public event and future research reports on Augmented Reality and geolocation.
Been living under a rock these days? There's this hip new tablet device from Apple called the iPad. Most are in agreement that the new toy is pretty slick, but they also agree on where the iPad fails - there's no camera. iPod Touch fans were disappointed last year when Apple announced that the iPod Nano would be getting the much coveted camera, and now fans of a different sort are feeling the same dejected feelings.
Augmented reality is a technology that allows 2D and 3D objects to be placed onto a live video feed, creating unique user experiences. AR applications entered the mainstream with a few advertisements and installations for automobiles in 2008. Since then the technology has found its way onto our home computers with things like the GE Smart Grid campaign, and onto our cell phones with mobile AR browsers like Layar and Wikitude.
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Have you seen those videos of people holding their iPhones up in London or New York to find the nearest subway station? That's augmented reality, and developers and followers of the technology (myself included) were hoping a camera on the iPad would open the door to a larger and more immersive AR experience. No such luck.
Augmented reality has already gained traction on the iPhone and Android platforms with dozens of AR apps available for download today. Mark Billinghurst, one of AR's "founding fathers" and a leading AR researcher since 1994, reached out to me yesterday to express his feelings about the iPad - a device with which he says Apple has missed an opportunity.
"The form factor, CPU and graphics capability make it an ideal platform for a handheld AR experience," said Billinghurst. "A camera on the back of the iPad would have enabled the development of vision based AR applications and created a whole new class of AR
applications on the App store."
Billinghurst also points out that his company ARToolworks has already provided over 100 iPhone app developers with their ARToolKit SDK, a clear sign of the growing interest in mobile AR. However, one hurdle in the way of these developers is Apple's reluctance to open the video API on the iPhone to real-time image processing - an impedance which AR proponents have gone as far to petition Apple to overturn.
Right now, applications can grab a few frames every couple of seconds to process, but the kind of accuracy needed for AR applications requires real-time frame-by-frame processing of the video feed. This would allow applications to track objects and motion seen through the camera's lens, greatly increasing the chances for accurate placement of 2D and 3D objects as well as the interpretation of real-world items.
In the grand scheme of things, augmented reality represents a drop in the ocean of iPhone app development, and Apple would need more than some petitions and disappointed developers to add a camera or change their API. However, hope may be on the horizon, as MacRumors.com reported this morning on the discovery of the option to take photos in the iPad simulator.
While disappointed, AR fans are still optimistic about the iPad's future. Claire Boonstra and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, co-founders of Layar, one of the most popular mobile AR applications to date, expressed their sentiments on Twitter Wednesday when they heard the news about the iPad. Boonstra noted that we may have to wait for version 2.0 to see Layar on the iPad, while Lens-FitzGerald added that they have plenty of mobile phones to work on for the time being.
Thomas Carpenter at Games Alfresco, the leading augmented reality news blog, may have said it best when he noted Wednesday that Steve Jobs didn't make the iPad for AR fans - he made it to give Amazon's Jeff Bezos nightmares.
Either way, for those of us eager to have our realities augmented, perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised next year when AR developers like Boonstra and Lens-FitzGerald are the ones on stage with Jobs showing off the next iteration of the iPad.
The best thing AR fans can do for now is create and promote amazing AR applications that will captivate the masses and launch AR further into the public eye. We can only hope that Steve Jobs is watching.
Be sure to keep your eye out in the next few weeks, as ReadWriteWeb will be presenting our next premium report focusing this time on the use of augmented reality in marketing.
Out of the labs and into the marketplace, Augmented Reality (AR) became a hot topic in 2009. Technology that places data and images on top of our view of the world around us is increasingly common in media and marketing, but the bulk of the promise appears to be in the future.
A group of AR industry leaders have announced the first-ever Augmented Reality industry event on June 2nd and 3rd in Santa Clara, California and ReadWriteWeb intends on being a big part of it. Event organizer Ori Inbar is a supporter of the ISMAR (International Symposium on Mixed & Augmented Reality) conferences but says those are more focused on research and this event will focus on industry and practice.
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Above: AcrossAir released a new version of its Augmented Reality mobile browser last week.
The keynote speaker at the event will be award-winning speculative fiction writer and leading AR thinker Bruce Sterling. ReadWriteWeb will also have team members present and will be publishing an in-depth research report on the use of Augmented Reality for marketing prior to the event.
There's still 142 days, 18 hours and a few minutes until the 2010 World Cup launches in South Africa but the first use of cutting-edge promotional technology is already making an appearance. Sports have been where a lot of technology in the new Augmented Reality category first went mainstream - from Sportvision's down-line TV overlays to IBM's Wimbeldon Seer.
Augmented Reality (AR) is technology that places data on top of our view of the world around us. The first World Cup 2010 AR made an appearance at a small event in London last week.
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This screenshot is of a prototype of a system that will be found in public spaces around the world in the months leading up to this year's tournament. Passers-by will see video reflections of their own faces but with the flags of randomly selected World Cup competing countries overlayed on top of their faces. When they see that image, the country's national anthem will play.
It's not terribly interactive, but it is a fascinating experiment in trying to build international camaraderie by making fans imagine themselves as if they were fans of another country's team. How would they feel if they had that other country's flag painted on their faces and heard its national anthem? Were they from that country, they would probably feel proud. How does the AR make them feel? Perhaps like a more worldly, sympathetic person. That sounds like a positive World Cup experience.
We're told that the system was built by long-time Augmented Reality market leader Total Immersion, in partnership with CrossPlatform.tv. The face being augmented is Simon Grice, founder of MashupEvent. The screenshot was sent to us by "an anonymous source, who was very impressed."
Who's World Cup AR will we see next and what will it do? We look forward to seeing the world's most popular sport become an experience all the richer.
In December of last year, augmented reality (AR) browser makers Layar chose to pull its iPhone app from the App Store due to frequent crashes reported by users. They thought it was better for their brand to remove the application than to promote a faulty product. As we've mentioned in the past, Layar had hinted that a revamped iPhone app would be out near the end of February, and earlier this week they released just that.
Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare's own app disappointingly doesn't support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act.
Layar's return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company's new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it's use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple's in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that's a whole other argument.
Your phone can translate foreign language text just by looking at it through Google Goggles. A South Korean telecom has released a product similar to Google Goggles. The social content Augmented Reality mobile browser junaio will have a new version released at SXSW next month and there's now an 8 minute video from TED available detailing Microsoft's plans for Bing, including Augmented Reality.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, digital advertising development studio Inition brought augmented reality (AR) to the games with 
The thing I like about this example of facial tracking AR is that - like the Ray Ban promotion - it provides a practical service along with the entertaining and interactive aspect. Users aren't simply walking up to a screen an having a 2010 Olympics hat stuck on their head, much like the Transformers or hockey mask promotions. Yes, the hats and accessories are a bit silly, but the addition of news, weather and medal count information makes the use more practical. The AR draws the attention of passers-by with its fun and gimmicks, but rewards them with actual useful information to take with them. A user walks away knowing what countries lead the medal count and what the weather will be like based on the AR hats that were placed on them.
In January, the Austria-based company 
First released for Android phones in October of 2008, Wikitude was the very first mobile augmented reality browser to hit the market. Since then 
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've discussed
Along with 
On the opposite end the spectrum, the 
"The hologram of a DNA spiral that I'm holding in my hand," your professor might say, "can be turned, twisted or expanded at-will and everyone on this video call will be able to see me do it." Is that the distant future of education, sales and casual communication online? Not if Augmented Reality company 
You're walking down the street. Your phone buzzes, a map or a screen overlay pops up and you're shown a note left in that location by one of your friends - along with an ad for your favorite pizza. Walk into the pizza place and your phone buzzes again - your friends have something to say about the guy behind the counter. That might have sounded far-fetched a few years ago, but it doesn't so much anymore, does it?
Yahoo's patent was filed in July of 2008, published after the customary 18 months last Thursday and first blogged about by upstart tech news site 
Been living under a rock these days? There's this 
There's still 142 days, 18 hours and a few minutes until the 
This screenshot is of a prototype of a system that will be found in public spaces around the world in the months leading up to this year's tournament. Passers-by will see video reflections of their own faces but with the flags of randomly selected World Cup competing countries overlayed on top of their faces. When they see that image, the country's national anthem will play.