Enterprise Augmented Reality - An augmented marketing ploy or substantive reality? - [En] Orange Business Live. Mobile Summit Keynote, Plus Photo Highlights From The Day. Augmented reality: it's like real life, but better | Technology. Don't act too surprised if, some time in the next year, you meet someone who explains that their business card isn't just a card; it's an augmented reality business card. You can see a collection and, at visualcard.me, you can even design your own, by adding a special marker to your card, which, once put in front of a webcam linked to the internet, will show not only your contact details but also a video or sound clip.
Or pretty much anything you want. It's not just business cards. London Fashion Week has tried them out too: little symbols that look like barcodes printed onto shirts, which, when viewed through a webcam, come to life. Benetton is using augmented reality for a campaign that kicked off last month, in which it is trying to find models from among the general population. Augmented reality – AR, as it has quickly become known – has only recently become a phrase that trips easily off technologists' lips; yet we've been seeing versions of it for quite some time. Augmented reality. NASA X38 display showing video map overlays including runways and obstacles during flight test in 2000. Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer.
As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.[1] By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.[2][3] Augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. Technology[edit] Hardware[edit] Hardware components for augmented reality are: processor, display, sensors and input devices. Display[edit] Head-mounted[edit] Eyeglasses[edit] HUD[edit] EyeTap[edit] Google Goggles Gets Translation. Google has released a new version of Google Goggles with an exciting new feature: translation.
According to the company's blog, the new feature will be able to read five different, Latin-based languages and translate to many more, all using a smartphone's camera. The new version of Google Goggles will help translate text from English, French, Italian, German and Spanish into many more languages, and will be able to read many more, including non-Latin-based langauges such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic, in the future. Using Google Goggles for this feature is a simple process, as described on Google's blog: Point your phone at a word or phrase. Use the region of interest button to draw a box around specific words Press the shutter button If Goggles recognizes the text, it will give you the option to translate Press the translate button to select the source and destination languages. Live Video Access for iPhone OS 4.0 Has AR Developers Excited. When Steve Jobs and Apple announced some of the new features and APIs that would be available in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 upgrade, they managed to sneak in a feature that has gone largely unnoticed.
On a slide showing a smattering of new APIs, "Full access to still and video camera data" sat quietly at the bottom of the screen, and when Jobs named off a few of the APIs, he left this one out. Mobile augmented reality (AR) developers, who have been champing at the bit for access to raw iPhone camera data insofar as to petition Apple for it, immediately took notice of the feature. But wait, can't apps already access the camera? Until OS 4.0, this was only partially true. Yes, developers could access the camera and include either stills or video in their applications, but the ability to actually analyze a live video feed has been severely hampered. The Augmented Reality Industry's Jan Brady Complex. I'm starting to think that the Augmented Reality industry is very close to developing a Jan Brady complex.
If you know what a "Jan Brady complex" is, then skip to the next paragraph. For those who didn't grown up with the 1970s-era television show The Brady Bunch, a Jan Brady complex refers to the middle sister Jan Brady who constantly complained that her older sister Marcia received all the attention. Still with me? Good. Guest author Matthew Szymczyk is the CEO and founder of Zugara, an interactive marketing agency that consults Fortune 500 brands - including Lexus, Sony PlayStation, Reebok and Toyota - on their strategic utilization of emerging media and technology.
Zugara also develops its own proprietary Augmented Reality solutions and technologies. Video demos can be found here. This idea came about through conversations with people in the AR industry, and also watching presentations and discussions from just about every high profile name in the biz. State of the Augmented Reality Union from the RWW Mobile Summit. Last Friday, ReadWriteWeb hosted our second unconference event in Mountain View, California as experts from around the world gathered to discuss the mobile Web and its future.
One of the hot topics I was eager to discuss going into the event was augmented reality (AR) - a top trend that we are tracking here at ReadWriteWeb. In case you weren't able to make it out to the summit, here is an overview of the discussions surrounding augmented reality from the event. One of the key things I took away from our discussions of AR at the summit was that large group round-tables can quickly devolve into an argument over what is and what isn't to be considered "augmented reality. " This has been a conversation I've experienced not only when trying to describe the technology to someone unfamiliar with it, but also when speaking with experts in and executives in the field.
As augmented reality evolves, I believe the accepted definition should also evolve to reflect the current state of the technology. Qualcomm’s New Vision-based Augmented Reality Platform Will Knoc. Vision-based augmented reality — that is, pulling in data from a device’s camera and using it to position and rotate 3D models drawn on top of an on-screen view of the real world — isn’t really anything new. We started seeing tech demos of the concept 5+ years ago, and games like Sony’s Eye of Judgment have been doing it for nearly as long. More recently, the concept has been moving to mobile phones — a perfect fit, given that the camera and display are built into one unit. Up until this point, however, the idea has been more or less exclusive to those with gobs of cash or manpower to spare. Anyone who built up their own Vision-based AR tech generally kept it pretty close to their chest, so building a Vision-based AR app meant rebuilding things from the ground up.
It looks like the endless reinvention of the same wheel is coming to a close. How does a free platform like this sell phones? Before we dive any deeper, check out the demo video: AR Startups. 7 Best Augmented Reality Apps | Magazine. Yelp Monocle Uses the iPhone’s cam and compass to place Yelp ratings over a live view of establishments. Ideal for identifying five-star dive bars and avoiding bourgie bistros. iPhone ARider Streams Google maps from your iPhone to a special eyepiece you mount on your bike helmet. Now you’ll always know where you’re going. (Into a parked car?) TwittARound Look through your phone’s camera and TwittARound shows you location-stamped tweets (available from certain Twitter clients) from others nearby.
Wikitude WorldBrowser One Roman ruin looks pretty much like any other after a long day of sightseeing. Layar RealityBrowser Aim the camera on your Android phone at a cityscape and Layar coughs up data — everything from the location of bus stations and skate parks to real estate prices. Acrossair NearestSubway Lost in a public-transport labyrinth?
TAT AugmentedID Using face-recognition software from Polar Rose, this app can scan a stranger’s mug and reveal their contact info and profile stats.