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If you've been following our posts about augmented reality (AR) in the last few months, you've noticed that we speak often about practicality and its importance for the proliferation of the technology. Sure, gimmicky applications can be fun and new, but it's my opinion that the more practical and useful an AR application is, the better suited it is to help push AR toward mainstream acceptance. With that being said, AR developers should be aware of a contest being hosted by metaio , the makers of the junaio iPhone app and mobile AR platform, which will reward creativity and practicality in AR. Sponsor The company says over 200 developers have flocked to the platform since opening up junaio's API to the public, and to reward them, they are giving $5,000 to the developer who makes the best use of it. Developers can sign up on junaio's website where they can follow instructions on how to get started creating a "channel" for their AR content. The company is encouraging as much creativity and practicality as possible in order to stand out against the crowd of simple POI locators. "The creative potential of junaio is vast: AR Mashups, multiplayer games or scavenger hunts, interactive, indoor and outdoor exhibitions, tours with animated 3D characters, eduainment right on the spot and location independent gaming," the company expressed in press release. "It is up to the developer to challenge his imagination and become as much creative as he wants to." On June 16, the top five channels with the most subscribers will become finalists in the contest, and the winner will ultimately be chosen by a panel of AR and IT aficionados, including Robert Scoble , Thomas Carpenter of Games Alfresco , and Dr. Christian Geiger, professor and mixed reality researcher at Düsseldorf University. I will also be participating on the judges panel, and am very excited to see the innovative AR channels that could come from this contest. I am also thrilled that metaio and junaio are pushing the creative side of the contest. It is much easier for gimmicky AR applications to become popular, but these kinds of applications don't benefit AR as much as actual useful implementations. The subscriber threshold will merely be used to shorten the list of applications that will be considered for the prize, but that doesn't mean the most popular one will win. For more information on the contest and on the junaio platform, check out their website , or if you happen to be in Germany, stop by at AR DevCamp in Berlin this Friday. There will be free sessions available for developers to learn the capabilities of the API and will provide a jumping-off point for those new to the platform. Discuss
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Budding AR Developer? Put Your Creativity to Use and Win $5,000
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Robert Scoble
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Fans of augmented reality (AR) will be excited to learn that their favorite emerging technology is now front and center of a brand new marketing campaign based around one of the Discovery Channel 's most popular television shows. Unfortunately for most tech nerds, it's not Mythbusters, though I wouldn't be surprised if the campaign was successful enough to spread to other shows. Instead, Discovery is promoting its docu-drama hit Deadliest Catch with a desktop-based AR ad campaign . Sponsor During episodes of the popular show, Alaskan king crab fishing enthusiasts are encouraged to visit a special webpage where they can print a flier that allows them to experience the adrenaline pumping action of "crabbing" for themselves. Okay, not really, but the experience - a 3D game controlled by the flier - actually looks pretty neat. By holding the flier up to a webcam, users can steer a 3D fishing boat that appears on the flier in a race against the clock to snatch up 20 crab pots (see video below). The experience was developed by Total Immersion , one of the top AR vendors profiled in our recently published report on augmented reality marketing . Though the popular show has just returned for its sixth season earlier this week, the AR game was tested in March with the show's Facebook fans - an effort that the company says reached over a quarter of a million viewers. But one of the great things about this AR experience is not the game itself, but rather the all out blitzkrieg of marketing behind it to make sure it reaches as many people as possible. Discovery and their marketing agency PHD are not only promoting the game through on-air mentions during episodes of the show, they are also providing print, online and experiential (ie: big trucks with giant monitors parked in public locations) advertisements as well. The print ads are running in some of the most popular magazines on newstands today, including ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, People and Entertainment Weekly. The online ads can be found similarly targeted websites, including ESPN.com, MSN.com and TVguide.com. The public kiosk-style displays were parked last week in Union Square and Citi Field (home of the Mets) in New York and in Washington D.C. at Nationals Stadium and on the National Mall. Clearly PHD sees sports fans as a crucial cross section of Deadliest Catch fans, as they strategically placed the kiosks at baseball stadiums during the first week of the MLB season. But I'm not excited that Deadliest Catch is getting a big marketing push for the debut of its new season, I'm thrilled that augmented reality is at the center of it, and is getting huge play infront of mainstream eyeballs. A prominent campaign for one the highest rated shows on a very popular cable channel is exactly the primetime exposure that AR needs to keep pushing on the brink of universal adoption. That being said, there could be a downside to this exposure. Is this experience the best form of AR that should be placed in the national spotlight? Could this further the notion that AR is a gimmicky advertising trick because of the gaming aspect? There are plenty of experiences, which we have discussed at length , that provide practical services and applications by way of AR, and steering a fishing boat is hardly one of them. My fear, as a fan of the technology, is that widespread exposure of this type could actually damage AR's growing reputation. So I guess theres a bit of a risk/reward balance that needs to be found in these AR experiences with the potential to reach millions of viewers. The chance to put the technology infront of that many people is impossible to turn down, but at the same time, depending on the application, it could backfire and leave a lasting impression in many minds that AR is nothing but a fun toy that ad agencies get to play with in hopes of engaging users with the "wow factor." Personally I have a preference for AR experiences that actually provide a practical service , but I can't help but be excited for this new campaign from Discovery and Total Immersion. Discuss
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Discovery Channel Puts AR In Front of Millions of Eyeballs
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New York-based online video management company whistleBox has developed a new browser-based augmented reality (AR) experience geared directly at children by integrating it with the one thing every kid loves: cartoons. The project, dubbed Do Crew , is a series of animated stories for kids that include interactive AR games and challenges that the kids can play with using a webcam attached to a desktop or laptop computer. Sponsor In examples shown in videos on the Do Crew site, kids can control cartoon vehicles by jumping or leaning side-to-side, and can play other games by waving their hands in front of the camera. Think Project Natal but in a web browser, and integrated within kids' cartoons. This is an excellent use of augmented reality technology because it is a practical application with genuine value, an attribute we discussed last week as being the strongest way AR can break into the mainstream. Best of all, with games like these, kids will no longer be passively glued to their sofas as this new AR project encourages the kids of stand and use their body and arms to control the games. The Do Crew developers state that their mission with the game is help combat the growing epidemic of child obesity. "Children will not stop watching television, and parents will not stop feeling guilt about that fact. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a rare opportunity to acknowledge this epidemic and treat it at the most basic level," the site says. "The Do Crew team is dedicated to making all passive media active, and we believe that with a little technology and imagination we can reimage the personal computer or console video game system as effective electronic exercise equipment." Going after the children's entertainment market could also be a boon for the augmented reality industry which has yet to find the public spotlight. Time Magazine named AR as one of the top tech trends to watch in 2010 , and by engaging children, AR may be able to make significant strides towards mass public adoption and acception. Actually, AR experiences aimed at kids are not a new concept; a LEGO Store installation that helped kids see 3D reprensentations of model kits right on their boxes, and a web-based Topps baseball card experience that made the players on the cards come alive in 3D are two of the most well known AR roll-outs to date. New projects like Do Crew are not only great for kids, but also for AR as a whole as it strives to gain credibility and traction with as wide an audience as possible. Discuss
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"Do Crew" Augmented Reality Cartoons Help Get Kids Off the Couch
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Thanks to the growing popularity of mobile augmented reality (AR) applications such as Layar and Wikitude , as well as countless advertising campaigns from corporate giants, AR is beginning to make its way out of the shadows of obscurity and into popular culture. Once an experimental technology left for expert engineers, AR is becoming more and more accessible to both developers and consumers of the experiences. Now, the greater AR community has another feather for its cap as Time Magazine has recognized it as one of its 10 Tech Trends for 2010. Sponsor "One challenge for 2010 will be harnessing the growing ubiquity of webcams and smart-phones to make augmented reality useful as a tool in day-to-day life," writes Time's Dan Fletcher, pointing out the U.S. Postal Service's virtual box simulator that helps customers determine what size box to use by holding the item they are shipping up their webcam. Unfortunately, Fletcher merely skims the surface of AR in his 10 part article published Monday, and in doing so he unintentionally labels players in the mobile AR space as "gimmicky." I can see how it would be easy for someone investigating AR iPhone apps to be overwhelmed at the plethora of apps that let you shoot things in an augmented first-person perspective, but it is still disappointing that he failed to notice the quality apps in the space. But hey, it's still great for us augmented reality fans to see our beloved emerging technology receive national notoriety in a publication such as Time, so we'll take what we can get. AR snagged the #4 position on Time's list, but when you look at some of the other trends listed, you notice that AR is already taking advantage of most, if not all of them. Time's #1 tech trend for 2010 is location, and it points out the growing popularity of services like Foursquare and Gowalla . Mobile AR applications have been taking advantage of location data since day one and it continues to play a crucial role. After location comes "building platforms, not websites," which Layar has been developing with their third-party POI data-sets and their upcoming layer marketplace . Good thing "frictionless payments" is another trend to watch for in 2010, otherwise Layar's marketplace would be ahead of its time. Also on Time's list is social gaming, and social objects, immediately reminding me of Tonchidot's Sekai Camera app which lets users leave AR objects in physical space for people to interact with through the application. One could argue that AR uses all of the other nine technologies featured on Time's list with the exception of the iPad, which unfortunately has no camera with which to augment our realities. On a related note, Layar co-founder Claire Boonstra was named to Laptop Magazine's list of the most influential women in technology . Alongside Boonstra was Google 's Marissa Mayer, Caterina Fake of Flickr and Hunch fame, and Melinda Gates. This, as well as Time's inclusion of AR on their tech trends list, is great exposure for augmented reality. If you'd like to learn more about how companies are using augmented reality for marketing in both desktop and mobile-based experiences, be sure to check out our latest premium report on the subject which was released earlier this week. Discuss
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Augmented Reality Among Time's 10 Tech Trends for 2010
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Last week we told you about how Chevrolet , a division of General Motors , was bringing an augmented reality (AR) marketing promotion to SXSW in Austin. Now General Motors is kicking it up a notch with some experimental technology that will bring the world of AR to car windshields and provide a heads-up-display (HUD) experience. The new technology , still very much in the testing phase, uses an array of sensors which track both objects on or near the road, as well as the position and angle of a driver's head and eyes. By combining the data from these sensors, GM can then project images onto the windshield with lasers to help drivers stay safe when driving. Sponsor "Let's say you're driving in fog," says Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM's research and development. "We could use the vehicle's infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could 'paint' the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is," Seder said. In other words, it would be like having a fighter pilot's HUD in your car, except instead of tracking the sky for bogies, your car tracks the road for possible dangers. The display works by coating the windshield with transparent phosphors which emit light when excited by a laser. GM says this is better for the driver because the entire windshield can be used to display information, not just a portion of it like current in-car HUD systems. The technology also includes the ability to recognize and read road signs and alert the driver to when they are driving too fast or if construction is ahead. The company says that while this exact technology will not be in any cars in the near future, some of the features will start to be rolled into upcoming models. What this likely means is the transparent phosphor windshield will be placed in cars and used to display other HUD information, like speed, gas and other indicators. The hard part of this technology doesn't seem to be displaying it; rather, the barrier is in the sensor work between tracking objects on the road and tracking the position and angle of the driver's eyes. Since it's much easier to simply display objects that don't rely on exact positioning for the driver's point-of-view, it's likely we'll see these additions before the true AR experience becomes a reality. Eventually, however, GM hopes technology like this will make for better turn-by-turn directions and make it easier to find locations upon arrival. We've all heard our GPS systems say, "You have arrived at your location!" only to look around and not necessarily know where it is. With this new system, GM hopes they can solve the problem of "the last 100 yards" by displaying indicators of specific locations based on the sensor readings. This certainly seems like the future of driving, but I wonder if it will be displaced by cars that simply drive themselves. If we can create sensors good enough to find the lanes in the road and nearby vehicles, why not just let the car drive it self and skip the HUD? Either way, its great to see AR taking steps forward beyond marketing and into practical application in a consumer space, even if it is years in the future. Discuss
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General Motors Wants To Augment Your Windshield
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