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November 15, 2009

My Experiences with Junaio

by Thomas K. Carpenter in augmented reality | 6 Comments

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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. 

junaio1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing spectacular but now my daughter wanted to try.  She decided I was her subject and this is the result:

junaio2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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About

Thomas K. Carpenter

Thomas K. Carpenter is a full time urban fantasy author with over 60 independently published titles. His bestselling, multi-series universe, The Hundred Halls, has over 35 books and counting. His stories focus on fantastic families, magical academies, and epic adventures.

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  • Hi Tom,

    Great to hear your experience in trying junaio and your constructive feedback. We are well aware of the technical challenges that you mentioned above and will get those improved for the second version.

    Something we are working on is to add new models/3D content to the platform daily. It does get quite limiting when there’s only a batch of 3D contents.

    Also glad to hear your daughter had fun with it. We tried to put a different twist to the AR browsers that are out there and really focus on the social aspect. In the future, we hope to do tight registration of these 3D objects in real space. This is our first expression.

    Cheers,
    Lisa

  • I think “AR browser” isn’t quite the term for it. I know it has those capabilities, but I think if it takes off, it’ll be for the goofy social reasons and not the more pragmatic reason like Wikitude and Layar are going for. Not that it doesn’t have those capabilities, but I think its a different product all together.

    The reality browsers put most of the work onto the developers and the users only pull out the information they want. Junaio seems to be more about the users putting the content in.

    I’d call it a World Designer rather than a Reality Browser. 🙂

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