There’s always that one guy who posts “First!” on every comment thread. Total Immersion gets to be the lucky bloke to put the first augmented reality app onto the iPad2.

And I for one salute them.

The tablets are made for a better AR experience. While the magic mirror is strictly 2010 tech, I’m good with that, since it gives a new user a quick visceral experience with the technology.

Go, go, gadget Total Immersion.

Two years ago, in 2009, augmented reality took its first steps into mainstream consciousness.  This last year, 2010, we’ve seen augmented reality really expand into new formats and across spectra.

Like I did last year, I’m going to review month-by-month the mishaps and happenings of augmented reality in 2010.  This year the task seems more imposing as there’s a lot more content to cover, even though interest on the technology has plateaued.  And I expect that progress has been exciting, we still haven’t hit the real possibilities that AR has to offer and don’t expect to for another few years.

January

Already I’m overwhelmed by the amount of available content to choose from for this review.  Even just a year ago, I’m surprised by how much was going on in the month of January.  Also, the tone of the articles are much different than they are now.  People were still getting use to the idea of augmented reality and not quite sure where the technology was headed.  There’s a little more settling in the marketplace and augmented reality isn’t such a foreign phrase now.

Biggest News – The AR Consortium announces ARE2010.  Reading that article makes me wonder if there’s still anything going on with the consortium or has it just become the way to organize the ARE events.

Coolest App / Video – At this point, apps are still far and few between so the early months will be more devoted to the videos.  This video should of no surprise because it garnered a quarter of a million hits.

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.

Best Article / Interview – Augmented Reality: Pure Hype or The Next Big Thing by Computer World did a nice job of summing up the technology at that point in time.  Additionally, it gave a good basic lesson on AR to those who’d never heard of it before.

Notable Quotes – This one comes from Tish Shute’s interview with Anselm Hook.

When you are mediating the translation layer between the image and the data, then there is an opportunity for you to control it, and that opportunity is hard to resist.  It is hard to choose not to own that opportunity. It is an advertising opportunity. It is a revenue opportunity. It is a chance to send a message and a tone.

I know that Google and companies like that are keenly aware of the kinds of roles they don’t want to hold, but it is sometimes seductive to think about them. And I am afraid that we, as a community, need to assert an ownership, kind of a commons, over how computers will translate what they see to information that we perceive.

Other Notables – Augmented Planet argued the Case Against Augmented Reality, which garnered some philosophical interest but didn’t really lay out a concrete case against it.  Also, AR Drone.

February

Biggest News – Layar opens their App Store was pretty big news.  Also, they picked up another $3.4M in funding.

Coolest App / Video – The Recognizr became an actual app which opened up the idea that Your Face is A Social Business Card.  No one has come up to me holding up their smartphone to find out who I am yet, but I suppose it’s still possible.

Best article / interview – Tish does all the best interviews.  Here’s another with Brady Forrest: The Physical World Becomes a Software Construct.

Other notables - The Augmented Planet reviews best practices for AR apps, 7 Ways AR Will Change Your Brain, and Augmented Maps with Photosynth.

March

Biggest News – Double shot of Metaio here with the Junaio $5,000 app contest and Junaio 2.0 hitting the iPhone app store.

Coolest App / Video – The augmented reality sketching games really captivated a lot of people by ditching markers and letting people create on the fly.

Best Article / Interview – Visual Search, Augmented Reality, and Physical Hyperlinks for Playfulness, Not Just Purchases: Talking with Paige Saez about ImageWiki.  Does Tish ever use a short interview title?  Geez.

It sucks that it is a closed proprietary system, but the App Store has done something for software that nothing has ever done in the whole world. Software is candy now. It’s candy. It is like when you are waiting at the grocery store at the checkout line and you are stuck behind somebody, and you have got all these little tchotchka’s, candy bars, magazines, nail-clippers and things. That is the equivalent of software now. It’s become an impulse buy, which is amazing. Nobody would ever have thought…that is actually revolutionary. That’s huge.

Other notables – This article of mine hit a StumbleUpon feedback loop and blew the doors off any of my previous articles or since – Eye Tracking Will Be The New Click-Throughs;  another one of note is Total Immersion on Sky News.

April

Biggest News – TechRadar reported that Google Goggles would be opened up to third party apps.  This was big news back then but we haven’t seen much from it.

Coolest App / Video – Augmented driving on your iPhone – the precursor to cars driving themselves?

Best Interview / Article – Has Augmented Reality Peaked? Rouli Nir asks an important question that is still relevant today and so is the answer.

Other notables – AR Wave at Where 2.0 and The Stark HUD 2020 (fake, but makes me drool).

May

Biggest News – Ogmento recieves $3.5M in funding as reported by RWW.

Coolest Apps – Two apps stick out to me this month with Gigaputt and ShootAR.

Coolest Video – What’s another year in AR without some magic from our favorite magician Marco Tempest?

Best Article / Interview – Bloomberg TV’s 30 minute show about augmented reality.   I swear I’m not partial to this video because during the interview portion with Tish (nice to see her on the other side of the interview table), she’s got her computer open to my website.  Besides 30 minutes of AR goodness, this show is a reminder that AR has moved well beyond the university level.

Other Notables – Sixth Sense for Autism and 10 Cool Things Happening Right Now in Augmented Reality.

June

Biggest News – Obviously the biggest news in June was ARE2010.

Coolest App / Video – A three-pack from the event: Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, and Jesse Schell.

Best Article / Interview – More from ARE2010 with Tish’s interview of Bruce Sterling.

Well, it’s because they are trying to do a different thing than media does.  I mean, they are trying to “augment reality.”  They don’t want you to know that you are using a medium.  They don’t want you to realize that you’re watching computer animation overlaid on some video acquisition stream.  That would defeat the whole point of AR.  It’s entirely different from an analog medium like television, where you turn on the television and there’s a constant stream of station identification alerts.   That’s like: “Don’t touch that dial!  You’re on channel 13!  Stay with us!”  Then it’s like, “And now a few words from our friendly sponsors!”  That medium was engineered to keep your eyeballs locked to a single stream that they’re feeding you.

Other notable – Digital Bullets: Is AR a fad or commercially viable.  An interview with various CEOs.

July

Biggest News – Qualcomm’s 2010 Augmented Reality Developer Challenge.  With $200,000 in prize money at stake for this contest, you can be sure there will be some impressive applications when the results are announced on Feb 14th of 2011.

Coolest App / Video – The augmented reality BP logo hack for the “Leak In Your Hometown” brought forth some interesting questions about trademarks in an AR world.

Best Article / Interview – A Short Interview: Celebrating Layar’s First Year from Rouli.

Other notables – The Great Civil War Project.

August

Biggest News – Kooba receives $3.0M in funding.

Coolest App / Video – Two times the dystopic vision.

Best Interview / Article – Lester gives his view that AR glasses are at least twenty years away.  I suspect he’s wrong based on some quick Moore’s Law-like math, but we’ll see.

Other notables – Vision Based AR from Jay Wright (Qualcomm) and 3 Reasons Why Games Are The Killer App for AR from Ori Inbar.

September

Biggest News – The world’s first augmented reality stamp (okay, so September wasn’t a big month for AR news).

Coolest App / Video – Hands On With the Lumus See-Through Wearable Display.  Unfortunately the demo is their helmet version and not a commercial display, but in a year lacking in AR glasses news, I was desperate.

Best Interview / Article – Urban Games, Storytelling with Augmented Reality, The “Big ARNY”, and “Inside AR: Talking with Thomas Alt, Metaio.”

October

Biggest News – Tonchidot lands $12M in second round funding as reported by Games Beat.  As the year goes on, so does the size of funding.

Coolest App / Video - The Sex Offender Augmented Reality Tracker App.  I picked this one for many reasons even though it’s not a great use of AR.  The first is the strange mashup of the viral video guy Antoine Dodson with a serious application.  The second is the implications of the use of data.

Best Article / Interview – Is AR Ready For the Trough of Disillusionment by Chris Arkenberg and Mobile AR is Sexy But Is It Practical by Jack Benoff.

Other notable – The Missing Manual on the Future: Tim O’Reilly’s Four Cylinder Innovation Engine.  It’s not specifically about AR, but it’s an important read.  Google Goggles now available on iPhone ( I probably think this is more important than it truly is since we haven’t seen much from it).

November

Biggest News – Kinect.  Kinect.  Kinect.  While Layar raising $14M in funding was nothing to sneeze at, the buzz has certainly been about the Kinect sensor.  See the Kinect Hacks site for all the best Kinect news.

Coolest App / Video – AirRaid Social Augmented Reality Game brought us a tower defense game combined with AR and social networking.

Best Interview / Article – Google Goggles Tests Ads Triggered By Your Mobile Camera by TechCrunch.  This article is important because it portents the future of advertising.

December

Biggest News – Android 3.0 may have a Google built AR app that comes with the OS?

Coolest App / Video – WordLens has garnered almost 3 million views on its video.  That easily gives it the top spot in our apps category for the year.

Best Article / Interview – Most AR Companies Not Doing AR? from Venture Beat.  I’m not a hardcore definition guy when it comes to AR.  IMHO, if it meets the customers needs, then you can call it whatever you want.

Other notables -10 Awesome Ways To Use Kinect For Augmented Reality,  AR Tags The Sign Of Apps To Come, and Metaio’s AR Magic Tricks.

What It All Means

I’m absolutely certain I’ve missed a few important items from the year or some just never actually came to fruition (hello Mirascape.)  So if I have, let me know in the comments section and I’ll add it to the list.  Some of the themes I notices as I reviewed hundreds of articles was the lackluster state of AR apps.  While we have tons of AR apps now, most of them, minus notables like WordLens, are pretty blasé.

The other common theme was AR companies receiving significant funding.  The total was around $50M between the various announcements, but I’m certain next year will outclass that number by a couple of hundred million.  Given that investors are bullish on AR, we can feel comfortable that we’ve only seen the beginning.

Did the year 2010 live up to your expectation?  It did for me, barely.  While the software and hardware (Kinect!) made advances, I was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of any news on the AR glasses front.  I even tried to put together a “State of AR Glasses” post, but found a couple of the players avoiding my phone calls and emails.  Oh well, if they’re not ready, they’re not ready, I’m hoping next year is better on that front.

But overall, I’m pleased with the direction the technology is going.  Heck, I even published a book and a few short stories about the fictional use of the technology and will publishing a few more next year, so you can be sure I’m bullish on the technology too.   So here’s to another year behind us and a bright shiny new year ahead, complete with surprises, apologies, and new directions we never even thought of.  Either way, I’ll be here to watch it unfold.

Augmented reality has come a long way in a years time.  Last year I got excited by research projects and gimmicky AR webcam advertising, but that quickly faded on the tenth plus iteration.  It wasn’t until July that we starting having real AR products in the form of apps.  Nearly a year later and still early in the development of the AR ecosystem, we’re seeing a more diverse use of the technology and that has me excited again.  So I want to take a moment to go over ten cool things going on right now in augmented reality.

1. Battle of the AR Browsers

Wikitude, Layar, Tonchidot, Junaio, TagWhat and others hope to be the standard for the AR browser market.  Layar has recently upped the ante with an AR content store and TagWhat takes it in a new direction by combining lessons learned with Foursquare and Twitter.  I suspect one of the big boys like Google, Twitter or Facebook will eventually either create their own or co-opt the ideas from these early browsers into their current products.  I’m not sure which horse to bet on in this race, but in the end we customers are the winners.

2. DIY Portable Augmented Reality Headset

Using an Eye-Trek video headset, the guy at Tailormadetoys made a pair of AR glasses.  I love the DIY culture and while they’re not see-through, I think all the right parts to make one are out there.  This post from Team Hack-a-Day proves that the DIY makers are getting close, so why can’t one of the big makers get it done?

3. The AR phone – Ouidoo

The specs on this Ouidoo QderoPateo smartphone are in the WTF!? zone.  While the phone won’t be out until the fall, the company claims it’ll have a 26-core CPU capable of 8-gigaflop floating point operations and include  512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen.  Whew.

While I’m not completely believing the hype, and it could end up being vaporware, it certainly looks promising.  Though it’ll have to work hard to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Droid.

4. Eyeborg

Bionic eyes and augmented reality.  It’s like peanut better and chocolate!  Rob Spence is putting a camera into his eye to make movies with (and because its just plain cool.)  And he’s also interested in combining augmented reality with his eye camera.  They’ve come up with a promotionalAR eyeborg t-shirt in the meantime.

Eyeborg’s New AR shirt in action! from eyeborg on Vimeo.

5. ARE2010

Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Marco Tempest, and the list goes on.  It pains me to say that I won’t be able to make the inaugural event.  I had a work conflict with that week, so I have to bow out of hosting the panel on AR glasses.  But for the rest of you, I hope you’ll be able to make it.  With AR on the rise and viable business options a-plenty, it’s a good time to network and see what everyone is doing with the nascent technology.  This is the “can’t miss” AR event of the year.

6. ARWave

Our favorite interviewer Tish Shute and longtime commenter Thomas Wrobel have been sheparding the AR Wave project and collaborating with people all over the globe.  While it’s still too early to tell, this could end up being one of the most important AR developments out there if they can truly create an open source way of using AR.  As they’ve been telling everyone, they’re trying to make a system that:

* Anyone can make content

* Anyone can make a browser

* Anyone can run a server

7. iPhone OS4.0

It almost pains me to get excited about an iPhone update that promises video access to make real AR work on that smartphone.  We got fooled last September with the OS3.1.  I’m hoping we don’t get fooled again (unless you’re the Who.)

8. Haptic AR floors

I’m not even entirely sure if haptic floors fit into the augmented reality spectrum, but it’s so crazy weird and true, that I had to include it.  I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing a commercial product anytime soon though (or ever.)

9. AR Drone

While the news on the AR drone is a stale few months old, I still think it warrants inclusion because it was a great product.  The hovercraft alone was worth the price of admission, but the AR added a creative twist to it.  I have no idea if it sold well, but it sure did capture the imaginations of a lot of geeks.

10. You choose!

Let us know what you think is the coolest thing going in augmented reality right now.  Whether it’s a product only hinted at or one currently residing on your smartphone, we’d like to hear it.  So let us know over at Games Alfresco in the comment section (pointing the conversation over there to keep the comments together)!

I haven’t done many press releases as of late, but this one caught my eye due to the various partners involved–”Key Figures from Nokia Research Center, Total Immersion, Walt Disney Imagineering & More To Discuss Cutting-Edge Blend of Reality and Computer Generated Content.”

*** press release ***

WASHINGTON – The NAB Show, the annual conference and expo for professionals who create, manage and distribute entertainment across all platforms, has announced the participants in a Super Session titled “Augmented Reality: Entertainment Meets Ubiquitous Computing.” Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging form of experience in which the real world is enhanced by computer-generated content specific to a location and to an activity. The 2010 NAB Show takes place April 10-15, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The panel will feature industry pioneers Rebecca Allen, director, Nokia Research Center; Gene Becker, managing director, Lightning Laboratories; Chetan Damani, founder and CEO, acrossair; Joe Garlington, creative vice president, interactive projects, Walt Disney Imagineering; and Bruno Uzzan, CEO and co-founder, Total Immersion. They will examine how augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and alternate reality games (ARG) provide new forms of entertainment and new ways of transmitting information by dissolving the boundaries between the real and the virtual.

New Amsterdam Media principal Seth Shapiro will serve as moderator. The session is produced in association with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation and takes place Monday, April 12 at 2:30 pm.

“Augmented reality is a concept that is beginning to change media, entertainment and marketing in tangible, exciting ways,” said Chris Brown, executive vice president, conventions & business operations for NAB Show. “We are very excited that this group of leaders in the space will be at NAB Show to share their groundbreaking work and insight into what’s next for content.”

Rebecca Allen is director of Nokia Research Center Hollywood and Nokia Research Center Cambridge, US. Allen previously directed the Emergence Project at UCLA, an Intel funded research effort involving artificial life, 3D virtual environments, augmented reality and unique interfaces. She was also creative director/executive producer and 3D visionary at Virgin Interactive Entertainment and a member of the world-renowned NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory and MIT’s Architecture Machine Group.

Gene Becker is managing director of Lightning Laboratories, a professional services company focusing on strategy and action for the connected world of ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, social media and the Internet of things. Previously, Becker was a technical director at Hewlett-Packard, where he led advanced research and business development for Cooltown, a web-based platform for mobile and ubiquitous computing.

Chetan Demani is founder and CEO of acrossair, a company dedicated to building advanced iPhone games and augmented reality applications using the OpenGL library. Previously, Demani launched several successful companies in the internet space, including Imano, a full service interactive agency with clients such as Nestlé, Citibank and Hotels.com.

Joe Garlington is responsible for the creative development of all interactive attractions for Disney theme parks around the world. Garlington has overseen the creation and development of numerous interactive attractions, including “DisneyQuest,” an indoor interactive theme park that debuted in 1998 at Walt Disney World; “Turtle Talk with Crush”; “Stitch Encounter”; “Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor”; the new post show for “Spaceship Earth”; and many more.

As CEO and co-founder, Bruno Uzzan in the driving force behind the growth of Total Immersion, the global leader in augmented reality and a pioneer in commercializing the technology. Based in Paris, Total Immersion maintains a presence in Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong, and has an impressive client roster that includes Mattel, McDonalds, Disney, Coca-Cola, Nike, Twentieth Century Fox and Nissan Motors.

Two-time Emmy® winner Seth Shapiro is a leader in the profitable application of new technology to emerging business models. He has managed digital media initiatives with Walt Disney Company, DIRECTV, Comcast, TiVo, Time Warner Cable, Showtime, HBO, STARZ, and many others, including a variety of startups, venture and private equity partners. Shapiro is principal of New Amsterdam Media, a partner at the Opportunity Management Company, and co-founder of Media Valuation Partners, a leading firm specializing in the economics of media, entertainment and emerging technologies.

About the 2010 NAB Show

The NAB Show will take place 10-15 April 2010 in Las Vegas (exhibits open 12 April). It is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. Complete details are available at www.nabshow.com.

News media registration is now available online. Click here to register as press for the NAB Show.

About NAB

The National Association of Broadcasters is the premier advocacy association for America’s broadcasters. NAB advances radio and television interests in legislative, regulatory and public affairs. Through advocacy, education and innovation, NAB enables broadcasters to best serve their communities, strengthen their businesses and seize new opportunities in the digital age. Learn more at www.nab.org.

Yahoo! and augmented reality leader Total Immersion have come up with some nifty ways to bring consumers into the action at the world’s largest winter sporting event.  Yahoo!’s “Fancouver” exhibit enables passers-by to insert themselves into the festivities in a host of guises.   Kicking off yesterday, Feb. 12, Fancouver features an entertaining and versatile digital out-of-home display, with dual windows that use augmented reality (AR) face tracking and tracking to a brochure, respectively, to give fans a distinctly different view of the proceedings.

Total Immersion leads the augmented reality industry in total projects (around 125 last year and they’re expecting over 250 in 2010.) They’ve successfully created world-wide campaigns like Coke Zero and the Avatar i-Tag game line. So when they talk about augmented reality, I want to make sure I’m taking notes. Iriny Kuznetsova from 2Nova interviewed Nicolas Bapst about the company and their current activities. The interview was short, but had a few interesting insights.

Total Immersion has done work for the military in creating augmented reality solutions that put simulated objects on the battlefield. This is a much cheaper alternative to war-gaming with real equipment. Hopefully this encourages the military to fund more see-through AR HMDs.

Total Immersion expects that AR mobile marketing will be the new trend in the coming year and shows off a brief demonstration. They’re converting their PC software to mobile to take advantage of the smartphone growth. I found Nicolas’ observation about how augmented reality marketing applications give you direct access to your customers interesting. By moving people from static newspapers to the computer (and especially the smartphone), then they can find out exactly who is interested in their product and then leverage social media to spread the word. Nicolas explains they doubled time on websites by adding augmented reality content. I’m curious if this increase will sustain as the novelty of augmented reality wears off.

Nothing game breaking here, but worth a few minutes if you’re not familiar with the company.

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.