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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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We're pleased to announce ReadWriteWeb's latest premium report, Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Analysis of the Leaders, the Challenges and the Future . This report will help you develop a sophisticated understanding of Augmented Reality (AR), the mobile and web technology that places data on top of a user's view of the physical world. The research included will help you decrease your AR development time to market by learning from the first wave of early adopters. AR offers a new marketing and product paradigm for a high impact, high value customer experience. More than 1,000 AR campaigns were kicked-off last year and we expect to see many more in 2010. In this report, we profile key AR development companies, their campaigns as well as development lessons learned. Sponsor Want a quick visual introduction to Augmented Reality? Check out the following video from our friends at Common Craft, just released today and available for licensing from their website . Ready to jump into the nitty gritty of AR for marketing your company's product? That's what our report is for. Here's what you'll find in ReadWriteWeb's latest report . The report is divided into three parts. PART 1: The AR Market Defined - provides a succinct introduction to Augmented Reality (AR), its history, current size, how fast it is scaling and key players in the market. PART 2: AR Supplier Profiles - profiles 10 leading companies specializing in the development of Augmented Reality applications for their clients. PART 3: Summarizes results of a survey of AR developers providing insight on key controversies in the field, project requirements, cost categories and duration of development. Survey of Experienced Developers The survey of experienced developers included in the report has unearthed some information about AR implementations that you won't be able to get anywhere else. How important is it for companies to use existing AR browsers as opposed to building their own stand-alone mobile AR apps? Hidden costs associated with AR app development. Developer experience requirements for AR app development. Timeline for development of AR apps. Total cost and cost break down for developing a Webcam AR project. When live video processing will be enabled on popular mobile phones? This is critical for the next stage of AR, because it will allow for apps that are responsive to what's actually being looked at instead of just what's expected to be in a given location. Also check out our other ReadWriteWeb Premium Reports , which will give you a competitive advantage by enabling you to understand key Web trends such as The Real-Time Web and its Future , and The Guide to Online Community Management . Keep an eye out for our next Premium report coming soon, which will cover best practices for location data acquisition and user privacy! Discuss
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Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Our Newest Research Report
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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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If you haven't yet heard of Chatroulette , the webcam shuffle site that connects you with random people from around the world, then it's time to crawl out from under that rock where you've apparently been hiding. This viral sensation, created by a 17-year-old Russian programmer , lets you flip through video chat sessions with anonymous strangers using a simple interface that anyone can master. You may end up having engaging conversations with someone thousands of miles away or you may connect with a curious voyeur like yourself, but you're just as likely to come across the oddballs, the freaks, not to mention the downright disturbing. Yet despite its weirdness, Chatroulette brings back an element of fun and surprise to vastness of the Internet, where social networks of friend lists and avatars has remained the norm for years on end. And now, thanks to the site's popularity, the Chatroulette clones are beginning to appear. Sponsor Dubbing the sites below "clones" implies that they're unoriginal knock-offs. That wouldn't be fair, actually. Instead, the sites and services, for the most part, represent those that have taken the inspiration of Chatroulette and what it allows for and have cultivated that into a new type of service - a niche service, a text-based chat, a funny web collection of imagery - that serves a select audience's needs. The Clones Case in point: JayDoe and Zypyo , Chatroulette-type services created in response to this request from a Reddit community member who asked for a service designed just for fellow "redditors," as members of the social news website call themselves. (Side note: Hilariously, Zypyo's creator found that, despite the request for a "mature" version of Chatroulette, Redditors still wanted to see, well, more than just each other's faces .) Next up there's CamCarousel, dubbed a "better Chatroulette clone" by its creator , Ralf Rottmann. Meant to be more as a proof-of-concept at first - an example of how to build an app using Adobe's Flex platform - the site began to grow as soon as he launched it on its own domain, Camcarousel.com . He's now considering open-sourcing the app and adding support for white-labeling, themes and premium accounts. The Text Bots Then there are the Chatrolette-like text bots like SomeoneRandom and Omegle. Omegle is another Chatroulette-like text clone, but one that actually preceded the videocam site created by the Russian teen. This text-only chat site launched in March 2009 and touts itself as a place to "talk to strangers!" Also created by a teen, this time Vermont native Leif Brooks, Omegle may now gain more attention thanks to Chatroulette. A plus for this one: Omegle has an iPhone app for random connections on the go. Another recent creation is text bot SomeoneRandom . Just add the account someone_random@ymail.com on Yahoo! Messenger or someonerandom@bot.im on Jabber clients. Send out a message (like "hello!") to the bot to initiate a chat session with a random stranger. To end the session, type "bye." Popjam is a text-based random chat app that takes the conversation to Facebook by way of a Facebook application. However, as ReadWriteWeb blogger Dana Oshiro argues on her personal blog , chat services like Popjam and others miss the point of Chatroulette. Where the webcam-sharing site is boldy exposing people to each other's real selves, chat site users are still able to hide their faces. That's something that speaks volumes about our modern age. "I cannot help thinking that there is an entire generation who is fearless in the face of an anonymous crowd," writes Dana. The Spin-Offs Finally, there are the spin-offs, like Catroulette , for example. This blog isn't so much about real-time connections, though, just pictures of you and your cat. But don't worry, it can still get weird, which, let's face it, is the whole point. And this is only the beginning, folks. Advertisements on various job boards have developers calling out for coders who can build Chatroulette-like sites or who are interested in buying ones that already exist. Prepare yourselves: the Chatroulette clones, variations and spin-offs will soon be upon us. Even Chatroulette itself is giving way to niche sites built around its service, like the MissedConnections site dedicated to those looking for romance via the webcam service. Will any of the Chatroulette send-ups gain the notoriety and user base of the webcam-surfing oddity, though? Likely not. There's something to be said for being the original, and, if nothing else, that's exactly what Chatroulette is. And it's a weird, odd, but addicting and wondrous original, at that. Chatroulette image via flickr user wwwes Discuss
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Chatroulette Clones: A New Market for Random Connections
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