Augmented Planet

mtrip Augmented Reality City Guides

lester — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:22:51 +0000

Over the last month, mtrip augmented reality city guides have been appearing in the iPhone appstore. So last week was a good a time as ever to take the London guide out on a road trip.

Firstly, the mtrip applications are packed with functionality, they are not simple augmented reality browsers but have a variety of useful features. Rather nifty is the itinerary feature which will plan your day by giving you nearby sights that you should see. The itinerary takes into account the length of your stay and breaks down the important sights into days and mornings / afternoons. Ideal if you are a real travel looking to explore the city. Even better, at the click of a button you can send a virtual postcard from the sights either by email or by posting to Facebook. I’m not really the postcard kind of guy but even I would use that feature.

Of course being a city guide you’ll expect the application to come with a list of attractions, shops, bars, restaurants and you wont be disappointed because they are all present, but a rather nice feature is the fact that they all have pictures and ratings so you’ll know if they are worth the effort. If you do decide to visit you can see the entry fee and the local train station so you’ll have no difficultly in finding it.

You can’t doubt the applications pedigree as a travel guide as it does everything you’ll need and more. But since this is a blog about augmented reality, let’s talk about the augmented reality functionality.

The augmented reality view does everything you’d expect but one huge positive is it just works. Press the AR button and your POIs are shown immediately, no messing around wondering what database to select. To give you an example, I got to Downing Street in London, apart from being the address where the British Prime Minister lives; it’s a tiny little street. I used mtrip to see what was around me and I was impressed that the application not only found it in a few seconds, but pin pointed it. I tried several other augmented reality browsers but I needed to select which databases I wanted to use, after 10 minutes I still had no luck.

One thing drove me crazy about the AR functionality however. The AR view is designed to work in landscape which is fine, but hold it the wrong way in landscape and all the POIs disappear, rotate it 180 degrees and they all come back. It took me 20 minutes to figure that out and when I did my finger was constantly over the camera. I’m sure it’s a relatively simple bug to address but it annoyed the hell out of me.

mtrip will set you back $5.99 (about £3.50), which when compared to a free augmented reality browser is a sizeable investment, however compare it to the cost of a guide book and it’s amazingly cheap . The question is, if I was travelling to a new city would I buy an mtrip guide? I think the answer is yes I would.

Even if you are not in the slightest bit interested in augmented reality there is enough functionality to the application to make it extremely useful, it’s a city guide that happens to have augmented reality functionality not the other way around. Coupled with the fact that the augmented reality functionality just works and the application doesn’t rely on network connectivity so you’ll save yourself expensive roaming charges it can only be a winner.

New mtrip city guides are being added so keep an eye on their website for the latest support.

mtrip augmented reality in action

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P2vay9rlEw

Scouting for girls with a Kit Kat

lester — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:44:08 +0000

One of my favourite examples of augmented reality so far is the Lost Valentinos, Nightmoves demo. I think music and augmented reality go hand in hand so well that it’s a surprise artists are not using augmented reality more to promote their CDs. Turning the CD cover into an interactive video would be perfect for building engaging content and trivial using something like junaio glue. But I digress and instead move to chocolate.

Currently appearing on the backs of special promotional wrappers of the chocolate bar Kit Kat is a special augmented reality enabled video single from Scouting for Girls. Simply get hold of a wrapper, visit the www.kitkat.co.uk website and present your wapper to see a special 3D video appear.

For a peak, take a look at the video below with what looks like AR guru James Alliban holding the wrapper.

Scouting for Girls

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ieqVunZg1w

The world’s first mobile Augmented Reality Special Magazine Edition

lester — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:46:22 +0000

Within a few years it will be common to use a mobile phone to interact with magazines in order to gain access to exclusive content. To give us a glimpse on what the future holds, Metaio has been working hard with SZ Magazine to give their readers an augmented reality experience they’ll never forget.

Tomorrow, over 550,000 households in Germany will get the latest edition of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung`s supplement magazine, which when viewed with Metaio’s junaio browser (available free for Android and iPhone) will reveal special content. What makes this project unique is it’s not just the cover or a few pages, but the entire magazine has been devoted to augmented reality.

The cover of the magazine shows Sandra Maischberger, the well known TV personality, hiding behind her raised hands. When viewed through the smartphone`s camera, however, the popular TV host appears smiling cheerfully at the viewer. Inside is a photo “interview without words” with Lena Meyer-Landrut, who recently won the European Song Contest. When looked at through the smartphone little speech bubbles appear with jibes and comments she couldn`t help making during the shooting (see image 1 + 2) . The famous column of Axel Hacke triggers a fantastic 3D animation by the illustrator Dirk Schmidt. Finally the editors and journalists of the SZ Magazine reveal their favourite spots in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg in a virtual city guide. Readers in those cities, who hold up their smartphone will see the camera view augmented with indicators pointing out restaurants, bars, clubs, shops and hotels around them (see image 3), courtesy of SZ Magazine.

Dr. Dominik Wichmann, editor in chief of the SZ Magazine, comments about the AR special issue: “The SZ Magazine always tries to extend journalistic frontiers. We don`t just write about new cultural or technical developments, we practise them. Instead of just reporting on Augmented Reality (AR), we have developed with the help of metaio a magazine issue which for the first time allows our readers to actually experience this new technology within a journalistic format.”

Jan Schlink of metaio adds: “Our technology leads to new opportunities for combining and displaying information from different sources. With imagination and creative applications Augmented Reality can not only be fun, but become a real opportunity for news organisations to present interesting content in unusual ways.”

If you don’t live in Germany and want to try out some of the natural feature tracking technology (along with lots of other great functionality), then install the junaio browser from either the Android Marketplace or Apple AppStore and follow the link here for junaio glue.

See the magazine in action

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRceOYbrVzc

ARGirl Dance fun for the iPhone

lester — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:46:49 +0000

Marker based applications for the iPhone are surprisingly few and far between at the moment, so if you are looking for some maker based augmented reality fun, take a look at ARGirl for some dance action.

ARGirl has been around since April but has recently had a face lift with some new features such as the ability to change the models clothing and to automatically detect the song genre.

ARGirl is a simple concept, print or draw a marker to make the model appear, and then select some music to watch her dance. It’s simple but strangely fun.

I couldn’t find a more recent video, but the clip below shows ARGirl in action.

ARGirl

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyAhn_q714c

Augmented Reality glasses are at least 20 years away

lester — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:50:57 +0000

I get asked the question about augmented reality glasses from time to time. The question is when will we see them? Of course you can pick up a pair of augmented reality glasses from companies like Vuzix who provide systems that connect to your home PC and act as a webcam, enabling you to view content, but that not what people are asking about. When people ask me the ‘how far away’ question, they are asking about standalone augmented reality glasses that will enable us to interact with our surroundings and get real-time contextual information. i.e the Iron Man HUD view of the world.

My answer is it will take up to 20 years before augmented reality glasses are part of our every day lives. I’m not saying that companies are not working on producing mainstream glasses for release in the short term, I’m sure in the next five years we’ll start to see standalone units being made available, but like most technologies, augmented reality hardware will need to evolve into something that becomes part of our every day lives.

In the short term, augmented reality OEMs could build a glasses system that uses Bluetooth to communicate with a mobile device such as a phone. Since phones are already equipped with GPS, network connectivity, and a CPU this will free up the processing enabling early augmented reality glasses just to be the eyes. For the long term however, there are a number of challenges that hardware manufactures will need to overcome. Some are obvious, some not so obvious:

Battery life: When we get to the stage where we rely on augmented reality glasses as part of our daily lives, battery life is going to be key. No one is going to want to have to charge their glasses up three times a day. Always on, always connected and always charged up will be essential.

Connectivity: In the future, everywhere and everything will have context that will need to be downloaded to your glasses. Long term 3G, even 4G is going to be too slow to deliver information as any kind of delay will impact the usefulness of a device. My eyes work in real time, if I look at a Starbucks I want immediate contextual information delivered, anything less than instantaneous will be too late to be relevant. Consider that 4G technology supports x uses in a given cell, in a populated area where you have thousands of users all making calls, and using AR glasses that are constantly connected and retrieving data, the delay could be significant.

Vision: The heart of any augmented reality glasses system is going to be the glasses that provide the augmented vision of our surroundings. In thinking of such a system you are probably thinking of walking down the street during the day, but what happens if it’s a really sunny day, will the screen tint to provide me with sunglasses functionality? React to light glass exists and is widely used but the technology takes a few minutes to adjust. We’ll need technology that is able to instantly adjust, adapting to both daytime and night time situations. We won’t want to carry around daytime and night time pairs.

Services: For any augmented reality glasses system to succeed, it will need to provide users with access to a wide range of services. Any company thinking about developing augmented reality glasses should take note. If you are thinking about releasing augmented reality glasses, even in the short term, then you had better start thinking about your developer community. You will need launch services and the developer community to embrace your technology. I would go as far as saying that the success of your developer community will make or break your product.

Accuracy: GPS accuracy sucks. Point your favourite augmented reality browser at a landmark and the information bubble won’t pin point your target exactly. I have seen the accuracy vary by as much as 150 meters which is not particularly useful in locating objects. The new Galileo satellite system will improve accuracy to around 1 meter, but ultimately you’ll want any augmented reality glasses system to display information on top of the target, not around, not nearby but pin pointed.

Style: If you are going to be wearing augmented reality glasses as part of your daily life then they’ll have to look good. They also have to cope with users who wear glasses all the time or just some of the time. Unless the hardware gets so cheap that it becomes normal for users to own several pairs, any system will need to automatically adjust for any users eye sight.

Intrusiveness: Face it, you can’t trust users not to use their phone while driving. Imaging for a second the potential chaos of driving while being bombarded with irrelevant or intrusive content. Does a user really need to know about that Starbucks when he is driving at 55 miles an hour? Therefore, there would need to be some kind of in built awareness that could automatically give users contextual information and adapt to changes in conditions accordingly.

Data: Any successful augmented reality glasses system would no doubt feature face recognition and user location data. Everyone around you could be identified by their information bubble, and like in Star Trek you’ll be able to location anyone and see their current location on a map. All that data has to be held somewhere, who will you trust to store it?
Standards: All systems will need to comply with a worldwide standard. If the future is a place where augmented reality glasses are prevalent, then we’ll need to have standards on how the data is exposed so any augmented reality glasses system, regardless of country can read and interact with the data.

None of these problems are beyond solving, but overcoming all these problems and getting consumer buy-in is why I think we are still around 20 years away before augmented reality glasses become part of our everyday lives.

In the future, everywhere and everything will have context that will need to be downloaded to your glasses.

The worlds largest augmented reality project

lester — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:50:10 +0000

If you want to use augmented reality to visualize what that new sofa will look like in your living room you simply print a marker, place it on the floor and point your webcam.

André Fogaça who works in marketing for a construction company called Rossi based out in Brazil liked the idea of using augmented reality to help potential customers visualize their product, the only problem was the product is the latest city skyscraper development.

An A4 sized marker viewed through an iPhone clearly wasn’t going to be enough to help potential buyers see what the Fibrasa Connection development will look like before its even built, so they created the worlds largest augmented reality marker, laid it out where the tower will be located, and then hired a helicopter equipped with a notebook and camera to fly over the site.

The result is a life sized tower and a place in the Guiness Book of Records for the worlds largest example of augmented reality. Fantastic stuff!

The Fibrasa Connection project

London Cycle Hire – Augmented Reality Application

lester — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:16:23 +0000

Recently the Mayor of London and Barclays (bank) launched a cycle rental scheme to enable Londoners to get around the city. The scheme enables Londoners to register to borrow cycles from the various docking stations located around the capital. Insert your card in to the machine, take the bike, and once you reach your destination, you leave the bike in the nearest free docking station, sign out and away you go.

Presselite, the ever helpful French company who specialise in building mobile augmented reality applications to help users find nearby transport links like busses and train stations have extended their London Tube application to support the locations of the docking stations.

The London Tube app includes an augmented reality view that enables users to visualize the nearest cycle docking station as well as nearby tube stations by holding the iPhones camera and panning around their surroundings, or find locations by viewing on a map. Once you have found your destination, the application will even help you with the navigation helping you arrive safely.

The application will even notify you about disruptions affecting the tube, so for the £0.59 asking price it’s a great little application for Londoners. (Look here for more info about)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXuD3nCBW2I

www.augmentedplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cycle.jpg

Augmented Reality iPhone – July Stats

lester — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:29:38 +0000

The number of new augmented reality iPhone applications published in July was 54. That brings the total to 605 augmented reality applications available for the iPhone. Of the 605 applications, at least 100 of them have dubious at best claims to be augmented reality applications. Next month I’ll look at hiding those.

It’s also worth mentioning, included in the 54 new applications this month, is the new Augmented Planet mobile app which you’ll find a link to on the right.

For those tracking the growth of the iPhone AR market, this chart represents the total number of augmented reality applications published by month. As you can see the number of applications being released on a monthly basis is holding steady.

In addition to the new applications published, 80 applications were updated in July. None of these updates seem to have taken advantage of the new camera APIs. They just seem to be updates to fix any iOS4 compatibility issues.

We look at each application and create our own publishing category so we can keep track of the number of browsers, games, shopping applications etc. The following chart represents the distribution of applications.

As you can see, browsers still remain the most popular type of augmented reality application.

Looking at July applications specifically, the following chart represents the applications claim to being an AR application.

Using the camera is still the primary reason for augmentedness.

I am surprised that we have only had 2 natural feature tracking applications released so far. I though there would be a lot more. I am predicting that by the end of August we’ll have 10.

If you’re thinking about quitting your day job and investing all your money developing augmented reality applications, this is a break down of the asking price for the applications published in July. (Please note price is in US Dollars)

The free price point is still very much the norm.

For those of you that want more details about the iPhone competitive landscape, we compile the data into a variety of reports while you can find here: www.augmentedplanet.com/resources/reports

Marketing tips for augmented reality developers

lester — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:06:15 +0000

For those that don’t know me, my career has been spent building developer relations programs and working with 3^rd party developers to build applications. I have worked at brands such as Microsoft, Skype, Symbian and Nokia working with the developer community for marketing and application generation.

Since developers don’t necessary make the best marketers, today I thought I would offer up some quick start marketing tips for developers who have created their augmented reality application and want a head start with the marketing.

Firstly the obvious, it goes without saying that you should create a blog to engage with your potential customers. You don’t need to blog every day, but putting out content once a week will reap rewards. The web has a long memory so any blogs you post will get indexed by search engines and continue to drive users to your website for years to come. You should also use twitter. Don’t tweet every 30 seconds about your application being available, but a few ‘relevant’ tweets a day will help you get users. Be sure to include a URL to drive traffic to your download page to make it easy for your customers. To make life even easier, if you use Wordpress use one of the free plugin’s that automatically tweet when you post.

Hashtags.
Hashtags are essential in making sure your tweet gets to the right audience. Some good tags to use are #augmentedreality #ar and depending on your platform #iphoneapps or #androidapps. If you have written a Layar, Wikitude World or Junaio channel, make sure you tweet at the relevant platform provider as well so it can be re-tweeted easy.

YouTube
I search YouTube almost daily to see what has been tagged as ‘augmented reality’. Putting together a 1 minute video might take you a couple of hours, but you’ll be surprised at how quickly it can go viral.

Bloggers
The hardest thing about blogging is finding something to blog about. Sometimes there is an abundance of news, other times it’s a struggle. I’m sure I speak for every blogger that writes about augmented reality when I say this, but if you have a cool app, tells us about it. By telling bloggers about your application it will get picked up by the widest possible audience. We don’t bite, and I for one really like to hear what people are building. (Our email is on the contacts page).

Competitions
You want users to install your app, bloggers want traffic to read their blog. So offering a blogger a few promo codes to give away on their blog is a win – win and before you know it you’ll be re-tweeted all over twitter.

Events
If you’re a small company then running your own event and getting it well attended will be pretty difficult. But do look out on websites like Eventbright and Meetup and see what relevant events are running. Once you find something of interest contact the organiser to see if you can get a 5 minute speaking slot to launch/talk about your app. Lookout for Augmented Planet events as we always like to have the community talk about new applications.

Advertising
Look at advertising on a relevant blog. Having your advert appear on a blog with relevant content is far better than paying for a Google ad campaign where you have no control over where you banner appears. Don’t be afraid to haggle with the blogger over the cost. Most bloggers would be more than happy to give you a discount as they’ll be looking to keep you as an advertiser long term.

Newsletters
Like blogging regularly, newsletters are hard work putting together. Authors are often looking for content so make it easy for them by asking if you can submit a article. Even big companies like Forum Nokia and Orange struggle for unique, relevant content so a well timed email could give you access to an audience of hundreds of thousands of potential customers.

Social Networks
LinkedIn in particular has numerous groups for augmented reality enthusiast, so ensure you post your news there as well.

Like most things with marketing, a lot of it is fairly straight forward. Make sure you use a stats program like Google Analytics so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully these tips will help even the most marketingothobic developer out there get off to a good start with telling the world about their creations.

Code may be poetry, but marketing is art.

Augmented Planet on the BBC

lester — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:25:37 +0000

On Monday I received a call from the BBC here in the UK, asking if I was interested in taking part in a program about augmented reality and mobile gaming. Yesterday I found myself at the BBC studios in London being plied with makeup and taking part in a short interview on what augmented reality is and what it means to game developers. After that it was a trip down to the Blue Peter Gardens to so some filming of demos.

I was asked to explain the history of augmented reality and the types of applications available on mobile devices, and how the technology can be used in mobile games. I manage to squeeze in some demos, since the news segment will be limited to only a minute or two, it will be interesting to see what they use.

I focused my demos on the various aspects of AR:

Image recognition

oMoby – object recognition
Snaptell – image recognition/shopping
Sudoku Solver – OCR and entertainment

Camera view / location

GetLondonReading – educational location application
Gigaputt – location based gaming
TagDis – location based gaming
Wikitude – classic AR browser

Natural feature recogntion

Junaio – Junaio Glue
Upsies – Football game

The program also features Tim Kring who is talking about Change For Good (the Nokia location based augmented reality game), and a demo of the Parrot AR Drone (the flying helicopter you control with your iPhone). We were there as independent augmented reality experts giving an overview. A special thanks to our friends over at the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) for nominating us for the opportunity.

The program goes out on Saturday and will be shown all day on BBC News 24 as well as part of the news on various BBC channels. It will also be available online. I have to admit, I’m both nervous and excited, I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring myself to watch it.