Posts Tagged iPhone
Dell Tablet Mini 5 For Augmented Reality
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on February 27th, 2010
While the Apple iPad Tablet announcement last month was disappointing for augmented reality developers and enthusiasts, the details about the upcoming Dell Tablet will make you salivate.
The Mini 5 will have a five inch touchscreen with both front and user facing cameras allowing full augmented reality capabilities. WiFi and 3G connectivity allow enough bandwidth and the 1.0 GHz Snapdragon Qualcomm processor will give the Mini 5 the juice it needs to power resource-expensive AR apps. It’ll run the latest version of the Android OS which gives it AR credentials right away since there are many apps already made for that system.
The price plan will affect the market that it’s trying to fill, though Dell says they will price it “competitively”. But I don’t think I could have asked for better features from a tablet for augmented reality. The weight of the device might impact AR since holding it up will be harder than a smartphone and since it’s a touchscreen, will you want to hold it with one hand and navigate with the other? I hope some AR developers can incorporate voice commands into their games and products.
And while the screen might be too small in this version, they have eluded to a suite of tablet products so maybe a larger iPad sized version might come out in the future. Personally, I already have a free smartphone from work, so a tablet that does different things on a bigger screen would be appealing to me.
Will this be a killer device for AR? Probably not. But it’ll give developers a bigger landscape to play on and increase the number of AR devices on the market. The front facing camera certainly makes is a no-brainer for video conferencing. Just add some facial recognition and you can talk to your kids while out on the road with bunny ears attached to your head.
[Via Wired]
Popularity: 8% [?]
Augmented Reality Year in Review – 2009
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, Industrial AR, augmented reality on December 27th, 2009
The year 2009 has been an important milestone in the development of augmented reality as an important future technology. While markers and marketing campaigns captured the early interest of the year, the bigger story was the porting of augmented reality to the various smartphones in the second half.
But those two generalities aren’t the only thing that happened in 2009 in regards to augmented reality. I’m going to take a look back at the year, month-by-month, to remember how the year unfolded, so we better understand the direction of the future.
January
Back at the dawn of 2009, all the augmented reality news you needed to know was in one place – Games Alfresco. Hope was high and all the pieces seemed to be clicking into place.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases its Lego AR boxes
* By a long shot, Metaio’s release of the augmented reality Lego box was the biggest news of the month. When you can get Angela Merkel and the Govenator to pose with your product, you’re doing well.
Coolest App/Video – iPhone App Helps Solve Rubix Cube
* This app portents of things to come in the future as products like Google Goggles amp up the possibilities of reality-search. Using specific algorithms (agents) for specific tasks, there will be an app for everything you want to do in the future.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Robert Rice
* Though Robert hasn’t delivered on his promise of a Neogence product by mid-year (though the Apple video API has stymied their progress), the rest of the interview is full of great quotes and nuggets about augmented reality.
* Notable quotes from Robert that show how much he understands the industry:
But yes, I’d say that the next 18 months are going to be very interesting with a lot of money being thrown around, new ventures, and plenty of content/applications. I expect most of this will be centered on single user AR experienced through a mobile device with a screen (iPhone, android, etc.). I expect that there will be a significant boost after Vuzix releases some of their wearable *transparent* displays, putting Microvision back into the “has potential but is too quiet” position.
Remember, one of the biggest risks that AR has, is being branded as “novelty”, which means “cool for five minutes but ultimately a waste of time.” I think we have a ways to go before something is truly useful, but as 2009 progresses we should start seeing some effort here. I’d guess 2010 before something really useful comes out…at least something practical.
Now, having said that, I should say that I expect entertainment and games to take the lead (as usual), although there are a few companies really trying to leverage AR and video/graphics compositing for marketing (brochures) and location based methods (kiosks, large screen projections, etc.)
Other notable things that happened in January – The Augmented Times is born and Rouli Nir begins a great year of chronicling the happenings of AR.
An auspicious quote from Rouli:
This blog is about Augmented Reality (AR). It is my firm belief that AR will be the next web revolution (the so called Web 3.0, and forget about that semantic web nonsense). In the next few years, stronger devices and better algorithms will enable us to merge the real world with cyberspace. Using your mobile phone (at first) or head up display (later on) every real object will be augmented and achieve a web presence. Tourism, shopping, advertisement, entertainment and education are only a few areas that will never be the same.
This blog mission is to document this revolution as it happens. We welcome you, and welcome our augmented future.
February
This month is relatively quiet due to it being handicapped by fewer days than the other months.
Biggest News of the Month – Augmented Reality in Flash Now Commercially Available.
* Making the nuts-and-bolts tools of AR available for commercial use is always a good thing, especially when its paired with flash.
Coolest App / Video – “Sixth Sense” MIT Device.
* Patty Maes unleashed this phenomenon on the web early last year and it still gets links and mentions today. While projection based AR is probably not medium that we’ll all eventually use, the video showed tangible use-cases that help the non-initiated understand the embryonic technology.
Best Article / Interview – This comic from the Abstruse Goose sums up a lot about the future of ubiquitous computing (via Augmented Blog.)
Other notable things that happened in February- I started the Future Digital Life blog, which upon reading my early posts, makes me cringe a little. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also, Rouli starts the Weekly Linkfest, the best place to find the round up of AR news each week.
March
In like a lion, out like a lamb. Augmented reality starts to get rolling in March with lots of goodies and promises.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio and Vuzix Team Up to Create AR Goggles.
* While the year has been mostly disappointing regarding HMDs, this was the one tangible piece of progress in the bunch. The video Ori captured at the GDC portends to greater things. While no companies have released products for the Vuzix+ARCam, we’ve recently seen an impressive project from Craig Kapp with his Whisper Deck.
Coolest App / Video – Blair MacIntryre’s GA Tech team – Zombie Attack and Pit Strategy.
* The videos showed what polished AR games can look like.
Best Article / Interview – I’m going for a two-fer on this one because its hard to choose between Ori’s talk at WARM09 and Robert’s Decade of Ubiquity post.
* If you haven’t watched Ori’s talk, I highly recommend it. Even though I’d seen the video, I made a point of hearing him live at ISMAR09 because I think its such a well thought-out call for human-based technology. Robert’s vision is a bit more expansive and covers the whole of augmented reality. I’ll leave you with another Robert quote:
We will break away from the desk, we will throw away our monitors, and our children will laugh at how large our IPhones are. They will struggle with how we ever managed to get work done with “windows” “webpages” and keyboards. They will be unable to fathom the concept of vinyl disks, typewriters, and landlines. But it all starts, and accelerates, during this next decade. Imagine everything that happened in the last decade, and multiply it. You haven’t seen anything yet. The next decade will make the last one pale in comparison.
Other notable things that happened in March – Topps released augmented baseball cards and ISMAR09 begins calling for papers.
April
Biggest News of the Month- Rouli and Ori team up on Games Alfresco to create the AR hub for all AR related news.
* The move allowed Ori to focus more on his company and gave Rouli the helm on the daily AR newscasting. Looking back at the great job that GA has done, I’d say it was a good move.
Coolest App / Video – Marco Tempest’s AR card trick video.
* The video hit the web in April and showed us how AR can change our perception of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Tim O’Reilly talks Web 2.0
* Augmented Times identified the best quote from the video:
RFID is an evolutionary dead-end … semantic web or RFID is things “wearing name-tags”, and web 2.0 is learning to recognize things … We’re getting to that kind of augmented reality, where our computers will have senses that are as good as ours or better … they are going to recognize faces, they are going to recognize objects, they gonna have immediate recall. If you ask me “what’s the UI in five years”, it’s a pair of glasses … I’m gonna have some kind of little heads up display because I’m gonna look at something, I’m gonna walk around at a meeting and it will go “that’s Joe, you met him three years ago”.
Other notable things that happened in April – Georgia Tech fear of heights video (another peak into the future of augmented reality as a perception changer), Rouli’s call for marketers to stop using AR to sell cars, Lester at the Augmented Planet gets his blog started, Nokia point and find is out and a couple of articles about brain-computer interfaces: Honda controls robot and the brain-twitter breakthrough.
May
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases Unifeye design demo.
Coolest App / Video – Useful AR from the US Postal Service.
* Using FLARToolkit, the US postal service shows us that not all AR applications have to be novelity ones.
Best Article / Interview – Tish interviews Ori Inbar about mobile augmented reality.
Ori: Just like with every emerging technology in history, people never bought the technology, they bought the content, the apps, the benefits that came on top of the technology. Whether it was VHS winning over Beta Max, or BluRay winning over HD. It’s always because of more/better content. Look at the video game console war: Xbox, and Nintendo did better than Sony just because they had more and better games. Even Windows was a success thanks to its applications. People bought it for the applications not the OS. The content is the first to drive demand.
Other notable things that happened in May – My post about the Path to Augmented Vision, Programmer Joe talks AR at LOGIN, and 11 Industries to be Reinvented with Augmented Reality.
June
Biggest News of the Month – Layar is online.
* The biggest news of the month by far. Layar was the first big product release that got a buzz bump.
Coolest App / Video – Zugara Social Shopper.
* The video showcased the use of motion capture to help eliminate the burdensome need for keyboards and mouses when you’re using augmented reality. Zugara later put the technique into practice for their Cannonballz and Fashionista products.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Blair MacIntyre
* No surprise here. Tish Shute continues to get great interviews with everyone important in the AR field.
The problem with the mobile phone as a AR device is that problem of awareness. If I have a head mount on and I walk down the street and there is bunch of probably-not-useful-but-potentially-useful information floating by me, that’s a good thing, because I may see something that is useful or makes me think of something else. But if I have to hold up my phone to see if something might be interesting nearby, I will never hold up my phone because at the time there is a high probability that there won’t be anything particularly important there. You might imagine you can get around this by using alerts or something like that, but then you overload whatever alert channel you use.
Other notable things that happened in June- Ori asks us all about our favorite AR games of all time, Noah breaks onto the scene with his Touchless Glove Interface, and Goggle presents their paper on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (which later becomes Goggles).
July
Biggest News of the Month – The AR Consortium Announced.
* While its still unknown if the consortium has accomplished anything through cooperation, the intention of cooperation is a start. Here’s to hoping we’ll see more fruit from this vine in 2010.
Coolest App / Video – AcrossAir Tube Finder.
* At the time it was released we weren’t sure if it was a real product, but eventually we learned the truth and for a time, AcrossAir became the top selling AR app on the iPhone appstore.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Ori Inbar “Reality Reinvented”
Ori:You are so right. It’s multiple elements in the industry that have to come together. You have the technology companies like Imagination and Metaio, then you have content companies like what we’re trying to do; the hardware vendors and the large content providers. Those brands that we’re trying to go after and educate them about the potential of AR. All these pieces need to come together for this market to ignite.
Other notable things that happened in July – James Alliban’s business card goes viral and AR Avatar toys are released at Comic Con.
August
Biggest News of the Month – Yelp Introduces AR Monocle via Easter Egg
Coolest App / Video – Bruce Sterling’s Layar Keynote – At the Dawn of the AR Industry
* Bruce released an AR-infused novel Catyadids in 2009, so it was only natural that Layar asked him to speak about the fledgling industry. The speech is memorable with too many great lines to pick from for quoting here.
Best Article / Interview – Thomas Wrobel’s Proposal for an Open AR Network
* Easily Tish’s best interview because it turned into more than a reflection of past events or hopes for the future. Tish and Thomas have since rallied AR professionals and amateurs to join the AR Wave collaborative effort. They seek to use Wave as the platform for an open AR network and have recently been testing code.
Other notable things that happened in August – AR Strippers!
September
Biggest News of the Month – Vuzix 920Wrap Will Not be See-Through
* The biggest disappointment of the year was the news from Vuzix. Good see-through AR glasses are supposed to release us from the tyranny of the “magic lens”. Hoping 2010 brings better news, but I’m really waiting until 2011.
Coolest App / Video – Augmenting Aerial Maps with Dynamic Information
Best Article / Interview – Gene Becker’s Design Strategies for Magic Lens.
Other notable things that happened in September – No more Gamaray - Death of a Browser, Int13 and Total Immersion getting into bed, and the augmented reality reading list.
October
Biggest News of the Month – News from ISMAR09, News from ISMAR09 #2 and UgoTrade ISMAR09 Coverage.
* I was lucky enough to attend and speak at ISMAR09. The energy of the participants was exceptional and I came away from it more jazzed about AR than I was going in. Hopefully the ISMAR committee will be releasing the videos from the event soon.
Coolest App / Video - 2D sketches become 3D reality.
Best Article / Interview – ISMAR09 HMD Review
* I think I summed up the current state of HMDs for AR pretty well. I’m hoping 2010 brings a suprise for AR HMDs.
Other notable things that happened in October – AR Wave discussion on UgoTrade, Wikitude for the iPhone first look and Giant Hand Torments City
November
Biggest News of the Month – Junaio hits the app store.
Coolest App / Video – Interactive Entertainment Using AR
* The videos about the Disney experiences were similar to what Mark Mine showed us at ISMAR. They really show us how technology can transcend our perceptions of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Planet’s Head-to-head browser test (and part 2)
* Lester broke down the various browsers in this excellent hands-on challenge. Read both parts to find out the winner.
Other notable things that happened in November – Business Week’s Article about: Getting Beyond the Hype and Robert Rice’s reply.
December
Biggest News of the Month – Goggle Googles is released.
* The giant has awoken. Goggles has many implications for Googles ideas on the AR market. This won’t be the last time we’ll hear from them about this technology.
Coolest App / Video – Layer 3.0.
* While Layar has since pulled the app from the app store and had to issue and apology, the version 3.0 still holds lots of promise.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Reality in 2010: Predictions (10 part series)
* A wide swath of the AR blogosphere had the opportunity to participate in the predictions series from Games Alfresco run by Rouli Nir. More interesting, snarky, and possibly-true predictions that you can shake an augmented stick at.
Other notable things that happened in December – AR Wave FAQ on UgoTrade, Enkin acquired by Google, ARDevCamp, Wikitude Teams Up with Lonely Planet, 10 Worse Uses of AR in 2009, and Nexus One News and Implications of AR.
What It All Means
Whew. After reviewing hundreds of articles and videos, I’m sure I’ve missed a number of important happenings from the year 2009. If I have, please make sure to comment and I’ll add it if I have overlooked it.
What does it all mean? That is entirely up to you. The year has brought many advances to augmented reality and the ceiling is sky-high for 2010. There will be surprises, excuses, apologies, releases, re-releases and more. Money will be pumped in, not all where it should go, and progress will be made. We’ll laugh at the videos, smile at our favorite products and complain when it does work as expected. Either way, it will be a year more interesting than the last and I’ll be here to watch it all unfold.
Popularity: 87% [?]
10 Worst Uses of Augmented Reality in 2009
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, augmented reality on December 20th, 2009
Tis the season to reflect and review the year that’s about the scuttle its caboose into 2010. It’s been a huge year for augmented reality after decades of R&D, finally hitting the public’s awareness. Unfortunately, not all applications of the nascent technology showcased its possibilities. Instead, some slapped it into use without careful forethought and understanding of why augmented reality will be one of the most important technological aspects of our collective futures.
So I present what I believe are the 10 worst uses of augmented reality in 2009. I’m only looking at the commercial applications of AR, because R&D should be given the freedom to test code without stringent use-cases to guide its development. And often the commercial AR was bad because it was rushed onto market in a lame attempt to cash in on growing hype.
10. Hangman
While I never found an actual release of this game, the demo alone at the Tampa Internet and Technology Summit 2009 made me grimace in pain. Hopefully HD Interactive scuttled their AR plans after this demo and redrew their strategy. When I first saw this video, it inspired me to write this post.
9. Firefighter 360
The “360″ in the name is appropriate because you’ll be spinning in circles putting out fires. This app is similar to many others released that have a live camera feed, but don’t actually connect to any real world objects. The fires and firetrucks are reached through a console controller style interface. To really be AR, I would expect players to have to move around.
8. Mosquitoes
The description for the game reads — “This fun game uses the compass and accelerometer for a super realistic ‘augmented reality’ effect.” If you have to use the word super for your game, then you’re probably not going to be successful. If the mosquitoes actually landed on me or I had to move around the room to attack them, that would be cool, but once again the only thing I’m getting out of this game is dizziness.
7. Arcade Reality
Another AR shooter that could be played in a virtual environment for the same effect as the augmented one. They at least get points for multiple game play modes.
6. Dodge Avenger AR Campaign
As Rouli has been chronicling, augmented reality for selling cars jumped the shark last spring. Dodge didn’t get the memo and released this PC based campaign last month.
5. Virtual Makeup
Games Alfresco found this scary gem of an AR video in its Not Ready for Primetime post. We’ve seen lots of compelling try-on kiosks for other products like shirts, hats and jewelry, but turning your customers into scary clowns probably isn’t a great idea.
4. Avon Perfume
I’ll be the first to admit I could be missing something in the translation, but didn’t anyone tell Avon that perfumes smell and augmented reality is primarily about vision? And how many people sit around posing pictures with their perfume bottles.
3. Twitter 360
This one is more about timing and scope than anything. The Twitter 360 app received much press including this spot on the Augmented Planet, but that same week, Layar came out with its 3.0 version which made Twitter layers possible within its browser. The lifespan of these narrowly focused apps are going to become shorter and shorter as the reality browsers and big name companies like Google get into the game.
2. Best Buy Campaign
I could have picked from any number of paper marker based augmented reality campaigns, there were a ton of them this year, but I chose Best Buy from last spring as the unlucky example.
1. Always Feminine Hygiene Ad
An epic fail for so many reasons. Besides being a typical paper-based marker campaign, the use of augmented reality had no tie-in with the feminine hygiene product. The usage was so bad I had to rant about it in July.
There we have it, ten of the worst uses of augmented reality in 2009. While augmented reality is on the rise and many applications are impressive uses of the technology, we still have quite a few stinkers in the bunch. Usually the culprit is misunderstanding of the technology or rushing it to the public without deciding if its actually fixing anything. Blake Collins from OneZeroThrice expanded on this trend in his post about Who is, and Who Isn’t Augmented Reality.
And because I’m a nice guy, if you made it to my 10 worst list or you want to stay off of it for next year, I’m offering up my post about the 10 Things Your AR App Must Have to Succeed to help you mend your errant ways. I wrote it in anticipation of the over-hyped iPhone 3.1 OS, but it can be applied to any usage of the technology. While its certain there are misguided plans hatching at corporate conference rooms all over the world right now that will make us groan and roll our eyes at their attempts at augmented reality, I’m buoyed by the knowledge that it only takes a few proper applications to change the world.
Popularity: 46% [?]
Nexus One Will Take Augmented Reality To The Next Level
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on December 15th, 2009
The details about the recently “dogfooded” smartphone from Google called the Nexus One have been surfacing more rapidly than a fart in the bathtub. For most the buzz centers around the Nexus One’s rumoured untethered bachelor lifestyle or potential $99 price, but I found the more interesting nugget of information to be the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm.
The Snapdragon processor has 1GHz processor and onboard graphics and claims to produce 22 million triangles per second. Compare this to the iPhone which only produces 7 million triangles per second (see this comparison chart for more details.) Now we’re still way outside the realms of the desktop processors which light up screens at 60 million to 300 million triangles per second, but we’ve passed the old GameCube which ran at 12 million triangles per second
The Nexus One will also sport a 5 Megapixel flash camera with 720p HD recording possible. With the Android OS2.1 open API access to video, augmented reality will look better on the Nexus One than the sorry old iPhone and do so without all the annoying limitations from the Apple app store.
While the Nexus One is still a smartphone and limited by its small screen (aka “Magic Lens”); its better graphics, higher processing speeds, open OS and improved camera will make augmented reality work and look better. The real breakthroughs will come with a cheap HMD, but until then I think the Nexus One with the Snapdragon processor will help augmented reality take another step toward wide usage.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Twitter 360 – Augmented Reality App
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on December 1st, 2009
The newly released Twitter 360 app is sure to make a big splash. The app allows you to see your friends tweets and also track them through your camera view or map view.
As far as I know, this is the first iPhone app to utilize the geotagging feature of Twitter.
Would be nice to see this integrated into a Twitter client, but I imagine that won’t be far behind.
Popularity: 5% [?]
My Experiences with Junaio
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on November 15th, 2009
Last week I downloaded Junaio the new 3D augmented reality app from Metaio on my wife’s 3G iPhone. Unfortunately, its not the newer iPhone so I couldn’t test the full capabilities of the app, but its nice that I can use the older model.
When I explained that the app, “added 3D models into pictures connected to a place,” to my eight-year-old daughter, she immediately wanted to help me test it. The app was easy to load and figure out how to use and in a few short minutes we made this picture.
Nothing spectacular but now my daughter wanted to try. She decided I was her subject and this is the result:
That’s a nice mustache jamboree I have going there. She thought it was hilarious and wanted to take more pictures, but the fun came to a screeching halt because the app faulted out the camera and subsequent pictures got turned to blank screens. Turning on and off the iPhone got the camera to work again, but one picture using Junaio and it went blank again.
The website adds more functionality to the service, because you can go in and touch up photos using your mouse instead of a fat finger on the iPhone screen. Beyond that, the website is rather sparse.
To improve the app, I suggest the following changes:
1) Add an option to store the graphics on the iPhone. Waiting for them to load took too long each time.
2) Allow graphics to be moved along the full range of the iPhone screen. I could only use the middle 50%.
3) Add search functions to the scenes beyond the map.
4) More graphics (which is another reason for #2, so you don’t wait forever for them all to load.)
I hope my experience with the camera is a limited one, because the application holds promise. Its a kind of social-video-Photoshop hybrid that will work better the more people that use it. Even without the ability to add graphics into the scene, the geolocative pictures can spice up a social hotspot by capturing moments for the future. Think of Junaio as a Polaroid picture with goofy sketches overtop you leave where you took it.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Mr. Jobs, Tear Down This AR Wall!
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on November 8th, 2009
Reagan famously said, “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!”
While arguments can be made whether Reagan’s challenge had any affect on the end of the Soviet Union, it still marked an important time in history. In that same speech, Reagan referenced some crudely spray painted words on the wall–”The wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.” These were probably the more important words that he said on that fateful day.
These words hold true for the current problem facing augmented reality smartphone app developers. Beliefs have become reality for the VCs that any important AR apps must be made for the iPhone. As Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence Enterprises, paraphrased what he’s heard, “We are only interested in deals that are… running on the iPhone….”
The problem with this is that Apple isn’t giving up access to the video stream from the camera. Current AR apps are either using the non-visual sensors like the GPS and accelerometer, or using single frames as a reference which make apps laggy and unreliable. Once again, Robert Rice opines about this problem in his post–The Candy Apple Conundrum:
But I am continually perplexed by Apple’s refusal to open up the undocumented APIs in their SDK to allow augmented reality researchers and developers access to the video stream from the camera. This is a critical element for any type of visual tracking (markers, feature tracking, and markerless tracking). Some people figured some work arounds to make it work with the 2.x version of the SDK which is nice, except that this automatically disqualifies any applications from distribution in the app store. What really kills me though, is that on one hand, Apple made a play for welcoming AR applications with the 3.x version of the SDK, but only provided access to the overlay, while at the same time completely changing where the undocumented API calls were located, further obfuscating things and handicapping all R&D.
It’s clear that there is a high level of frustration within developers and Robert’s not the only one to notice. Kim-Mai Cutler from Venture Beat talks about how, “[apps are] still being held back because they don’t have the right application programming interfaces for manipulating live video.” And back in July, Ori Inbar posted an Open Letter to Apple.
Why isn’t Apple opening up the video stream to developers? Is it for the Machiavellian reason that they are developing their own secret AR master take-over as hinted by their patent filings? Does any of this matter?
If we look at the Q2 2009 smartphone sales by Canalys, we see that the iPhone only holds 13.7% of the market. While Symbian dominates with a whopping 50.3%. What gives?
The iPhone has done a wonderful job of controlling the branding space of future smartphones, but the reality is that they are only number three. In this case, beliefs have become reality. While I’ll be the first person to crow about augmented reality on the iPhone if they do ever release the video stream, I also don’t think we should be holding our breath any longer. I find it sadly ironic that their iconic TV commercial from 1984 can be applied to them now.
Mr. Jobs, I am a small press blogger, but I sense the slow churn of animosity towards the iPhone. The apps are what make the iPhone sell, and if AR takes off while you’re still sitting behind your wall, hype will drive them to a Symbian or Android smartphone that does support augmented reality.
So tear down that wall, Mr. Jobs. Or we’ll find someplace else to go that doesn’t have any walls.
Popularity: 12% [?]
The Augmented Reality Pop Quiz
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on November 2nd, 2009
Think you know everything there is to know about augmented reality? Well, prove it and take the augmented reality pop quiz.
If you’re proud of your score, post the results on twitter with the hashtag #arpopquiz or in the comment section if you don’t use Twitter. Thanks to Rouli who helped me with some of the questions. The answers are further down the page, so you’ll have to scroll down to see them. No peaking! And if you quibble with the answer, just give yourself the points because this quiz is on the honor system.
One point per correct answer.
The AR Pop Quiz
1) Who coined the term augmented reality?
2) Name three “reality browsers”?
3) Name four companies in the AR consortium.
4) What three components does AR need to function?
5) Within how many meters is GPS accurate on an iPhone?
6) Who created the ARToolKit?
7) Who’s augmented reality magic trick created tons of buzz?
8 ) What was the first iPhone AR app to be available on the app store with OS3.1?
9) What types of companies have used AR in marketing the most?
10) What is the yearly AR conference?
11) How many years has it been happening under its current name?
12) Where will it be next year?
13) Name a fictional book that used AR?
14) What article of clothing should you wear when making an AR video?
15) Who developed the first AR interface?
16) What well known anime show features AR?
17) Who owns the patent on AR?
18) Which company did the AR consortium write an open letter to?
19) Name three HMD companies?
20) What’s the name of the AR game from Georgia Tech?
The AR Pop Quiz Answers
1) Tom Caudell
2) Wikitude, Layar, Juniao
3) Int13, Metaio, Mobilizy, Neogence Enterprises, Ogmento, SPRX Mobile, Tonchidot, Total Immersion, YDreams, and Zugura.
4) Sensor, overlay and tracker
5) 3m
6) Hirokazu Kato
7) Marco Tempest
8 ) Yelp / Monocle
9) Car companies
10) ISMAR
11) Eight
12) South Korea
13) Rainbows’ End, Halting State, (see this post for more)
14) Pink Hoodie
15) Sutherland
16) Denno Coil
17) No one (trick question!)
18) Apple
19) Vuzix, Microvision, Lumus
20) Arhrrrr
Popularity: 21% [?]
25 Things I Learned At ISMAR09
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on October 27th, 2009
Inspired by Joe’s “50 Things I Learned at ISMAR“, I’m going to take a crack at 25 things since I was only there for half the conferance.
1. Participation in ISMAR doubled from 2008 to 2009.
2. In the next six months it’s important that a few AR companies have success so funding will flow for the others.
3. Projections should be used in big interactive spaces to allow for a shared augmented experience.
4. The Disney Imagineers showed us how AR can make a difference right now.
5. HMDs will bring stripper poles to every corner.
6. Magic lens is or isn’t the answer for AR.
7. Lots of great research isn’t making it to commercial usage.
8. Apple must open up their video API, now!
9. Don’t wait. Use the technology at hand to make the killer AR app.
10. Place is the new social networking.
11. Augmented reality is NOT following Moore’s Law (but it can with enough money.)
12. Disney teaches us that the technology has to be invisible.
13. Sell the experience not the technology.
14. Stop trying to reinvent old games using AR. Create your own category.
15. Augmented reality should be about 4D (don’t forget about time!)
16. We need indoor locative solutions.
17. History can be reborn with the right magic telescope.
18. Light-weight, fashionable HMDs aren’t ready yet.
19. Conferances at the same hotel at the Mountain Dew Tour makes for interesting people watching.
20. I’m excited about the future of AR.
21. I saw at least five applications for AR on my factory floor, but no one is developing a commercial product for me to purchase.
22. Leverage the military to fund development for commercial.
23. I learned as much in conversations outside of the conference rooms than I did in them.
24. Don’t forget to tell a story.
25. Augmented reality pets don’t chew on the furniture (unless you want them to.)
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