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In December of last year, augmented reality (AR) browser makers Layar chose to pull its iPhone app from the App Store due to frequent crashes reported by users. They thought it was better for their brand to remove the application than to promote a faulty product. As we've mentioned in the past , Layar had hinted that a revamped iPhone app would be out near the end of February, and earlier this week they released just that. Sponsor With the relaunch of their iPhone app, Layar rejoins acrossair , Wikitude and others now vying for elbow room in the mobile AR space. Layar boasts one of the largest collections of points-of-interest (POI) data sets and now that library is available again on the iPhone. The usual suspects can be found on Layar, such as Flickr photos, Google search, YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles, but one of the more unique layers on the app is Foursquare integration. Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare's own app disappointingly doesn't support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act. "The new Layar Reality Browser has a re-engineered engine under the hood. This new engine makes the application light, stable and very quick," the company said on its blog. "It is ready to handle all the current layers and it is a good base to realize all of our exciting future plans." Layar's return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company's new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it's use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple's in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that's a whole other argument. This could be a huge step forward for the mobile AR space. As these applications become more useful, more refined and more popular, companies will be excited to participate in providing branded content in an AR experience. Expect an announcement from Layar in the next few weeks about the launch of this exciting new platform, but in the meantime, iPhone users (3GS only) can go snag Layar's free app (iTunes link) in the App Store. Discuss
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It's Back! Layar's Mobile AR Browser Relaunches On iPhone
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Last year, the ARToolkit, a fundamental building block for creating augmented reality applications, was ported to Flash in the form of the FLARToolkit . This was a watershed moment for AR, as it became exponentially easier for Flash developers to create their own augmented reality experiences. Before then, AR had been a high-tech concept that experienced developers and companies had been experimenting with; by becoming more accessible to Flash developers, AR took off in popularity last year. Sponsor Now, in 2010, the ARToolkit has once again been ported, this time to Microsoft's Silverlight platform. German .Net developer Rene Schulte recently released the SLARToolkit which will allow augmented reality applications to run in Silverlight. "SLARToolkit is a flexible Augmented Reality library for Silverlight with the aim to make real time Augmented Reality applications with Silverlight as easy and fast as possible," says Schulte. "It can be used with Silverlight's Webcam API or with any other CaptureSource or a WriteableBitmap." The SLARToolkit supports detection of multiple markers, both from simple black and white, and custom markers, and is based on the Matrix3DEx Silverlight library. The port to Silverlight is another important step for augmented reality, and could lead to the further expansion of AR both on the desktop and on mobile devices running Windows Mobile. Earlier this month we saw Adobe Flash and AIR gain support on the Android Mobile OS, and Flash on the iPhone has been a recurring rumor since the device was first released. AR may not be the biggest mobile market, or a killer feature for mobile phones, but with the expansion of the ARToolkit to Silverlight, and the Flash support on Android, it has taken a big step toward wider exposure to more users. SLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality 3D projection sample from Rene Schulte on Vimeo . Discuss
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Now Silverlight Does Augmented Reality Too
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Your phone can translate foreign language text just by looking at it through Google Goggles. A South Korean telecom has released a product similar to Google Goggles. The social content Augmented Reality mobile browser junaio will have a new version released at SXSW next month and there's now an 8 minute video from TED available detailing Microsoft's plans for Bing, including Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality (AR), the practice of displaying data on top of our view of the world around us, is hot stuff. Below are the top stories on AR from around the web over the past 24 hours, selected with help from OneSpot . Watch this space: ReadWriteWeb will be releasing a research report on the use of AR for marketing very soon. Sponsor Google Demos New Translation Functionality For Google Goggles Geek Sugar "We've been able to translate languages with the help of Google Translate for a while now, but this new function within Google Goggles (which I'm already a big fan of) kind of blows my mind." metaio @ SXSW 2010 Augmented Reality Blog Metaio will present a whole new version of its social content mobile AR browser junaio at SXSW this year. The company's Unifeye Mobile SDK is also among the finalists of the "Accelerator" competition. A New Augmented Reality (AR) Application in Korea : Ovjet GIS + AR (Augmented Reality) "Korean mobile network provider SK Telecom has revealed a new augmented reality application called Ovjet for Android-platform mobile phones. It seems like quite similar to the concept of Google Goggles. " OllieBray.com: Microsoft Bing Maps augmented reality demo at the TED 2010 Short 8 minute TED Talk from Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas on the company's latest evolution of Bing Maps. Included an Augmented Reality demo. Here's the video. Discuss
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Google Goggles, Metaio, Bing AR: Today's Top Stories in Augmented Reality
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