Sorry for the silence, I have been ill for the last few days with a touch of flu.

Augmented Planet turned 6 months old this week. Initially when I started the blog the first few days we had a readership of around 5 people. I remember the day traffic went through the roof and reached 10, I thought wow 10 readers. We have come a long way since then and are only just a tad short of 10,000 readers a month which just goes to show how much the excitement around augmented reality has grown. Speaking of growing, all the tickets for the Augmented Planet event on the 11th November (London) have almost gone. I need to speak to the venue to see if they are happy for us to have more people in the space but best register now if you are interested.

During the week I managed to get to the Symbian Exchange and Exposition event, or SEE09 as it’s now called. At the show the augmented reality browser heavy weight Layar announced that they plan to release their browser on the Symbian platform next year, March if I remember correctly.

VentureBeat have an interesting write up about Layar for Symbian which you can read here.

Layar’s van der Klein said that moving to Nokia-Symbian was one of the toughest decisions his company has yet to make. There are still questions about whether Nokia users are accessing applications to the extent they are on other smart phones. Android and the iPhone are like two full-speed trains, he said, while Symbian’s train is still stalled “in a gutter.” (source VentureBeat)

I’d say that’s a bit harsh since Symbian are not responsible for the appstores or lack thereof on Symbian OS. The OEMs and Operator need to take a slice of that blame.

Metaio are launching their new augmented reality browser for the iPhone imminently. It was due Tuesday next week but the website now says coming soon so one wonders if it’s caught in that famous iTunes publishing queue.

Random Junaio screen shots

I have to admit I’m looking forward to Junaio. I didn’t like the first Junaio video that Metaio released, it was too arty for my liking, but they have since released a real teaser video that gives us a good look at the product. I must say it looks intriguing. What’s caught my attention is the ability to put animation into the picture. Take a look at the dinosaur at the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s definitely different. It has similar features to their iLiving product currently in the iPhone store and is an augmented reality browser to boot.

The new Junaio teaser

Finally I sent my brother-in-law who is a London Taxi driver, out on a field trip to test Wikitude and Layar around London to see what gets the best verdict from average Joe. Let’s say his results are interesting but we’ll leave that till next week when we’ll also launch the first Augmented Planet competition to win a Chumby. More on that very soon.

Related posts you may like:

1. Junaio Hits The iPhone
2. Metaio change the game with junaio glue
3. junaio and Augmented Reality Revolutionize Print Advertising
4. ScavengAR and Junaio
5. junaio 3.0: The next step in mobile AR