When we we last talked to augmented-reality startup Dekko back in September of last year, the company was building a platform on which it hoped to find developers to build a new generation of applications that blend computing with the real world. And while it still hopes to be that platform, which it’s calling a “real-world operating system,” the company is focusing its efforts to create its own… → Read More
For those startups in newer areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality who complain that VCs are too focused on consumer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a new VC that has raised a fund of around $100 million, with a large chunk coming from co-founder and serial investor Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early stage investments in emerging… → Read More
Google Now may be one of Google’s most underrated new products of 2012, but I think it will turn out to be Google’s killer mobile product in the long run. It’s the one tool that brings together virtually everything Google knows about you and where you are and then turns all of this information into a useful dashboard on your phone. No other Google product (with the possible exception of some of… → Read More
Augmented reality (AR) — the term does not exactly jump off the tongue. But the concepts behind the technology are beginning to change what we think of ourselves, objects and the people in the world that surrounds us. → Read More
Meet Sharky the Beaver, Sphero‘s first augmented reality character for their little robotic spheres. Over the past few months, Orbotix has been developing many new ways to use the toy. With this new app, the company is making its first step into the world of augmented reality. As a reminder, Sphero is a ball with an internal motor. You can control it using a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone or… → Read More
Munich-based augmented reality pioneers Metaio announce today a whole slew of new products. These include:
• A new SDK - powered by a new Augmented Reality Experience Language (AREL)
• An update to Metaio Creator (their AR desktop publishing tool for non-technical users)
• Advanced camera technologies like continuous visual search and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and… → Read More
If there’s one problem with 3D modeling and printing its that you never really know what you’re going to get. That’s where Augment comes in. It’s a new program for phones and tablets that allows you to see 3D printed objects in an augmented reality display, thereby allowing you to see what an object will look like before you start the print process. It works with most major 3D modeling formats and… → Read More
Here’s an interesting approach to Augmented Reality marketing: turn hats into Zombie heads.
The Zaphat (pronounced like Zap Hat, not Zafat) is a new line of fashion apparel where the logo on the accoutrement acts as the target for an iOS/Android app that uses Augmented Reality to transform the wearer into an avatar of their choice.
In other words, when you wear a special hat, people can… → Read More
Amazon Flow, the barcode scanning/augmented reality app from Amazon subsidiary A9.com, has arrived on Android today, following its November 2011 iOS debut. To refresh your memory, the app lets shoppers scan things like CDs, DVDs, books, toys, video games, and more using their smartphone’s camera in order to display product details and pricing info.
Barcode scanning, however, is not unique to… → Read More
Qualcomm announced an upgrade to their Vuforia Augmented Reality platform on Wednesday. Vuforia is a platform that focuses on using images as the “targets” to launch an AR experience, rather than requiring consumers to scan QR codes or other glyphs.
So instead of scanning a barcode, you just scan a specific picture to start the AR experience on your mobile phone or tablet (it could launch a… → Read More
Nature Publishing Group teamed up with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to run an augmented reality advertising campaign. Point your tablet or smartphone at the print advertisement and watch the beautiful KAUST campus spring to life before you! You can click on the various departments, “talk” to virtual students, and peruse job openings hosted at Naturejobs. → Read More
When it comes to Augmented Reality browsers on mobile devices, I always particularly liked Junaio (just one of the many AR tools created and maintained by Munich-based company Metaio). It’s an especially appealing option since it’s quite powerful, and has many, many content channels to choose from (a good side effect of their successful developer outreach – they have over 10,000 active content… → Read More
Augmented reality isn’t always totally pointless. Sorry if you think it’s hugely useful to see an augmented view of tweets around you just by holding up your phone, but I like to find slightly more advanced applications using the technology. One such app, MagicPlan, fits that description.
From the two-year old startup Sensopia, the MagicPlan iOS app is rolling out version 2.0 of its floor plan… → Read More
With all the talk about the potential of Google Glass, I thought it might be nice to drop back in on the current state of Augmented Reality — the kind where you still use a smartphone to view markers or images.
In the spirit of Google’s “20-percent time”, Melbourne Australia based mobile app development company jTribe developed an Augmented Reality Easter egg hunt for their fair city… → Read More
Augmented reality seems to be all the rage this week: Microsoft earlier today got in touch to give us the heads up on some technology it’s been working on — its designs for how to make a user’s experience of a location specific only to that user — one day after Google revealed more details about its own take on that idea in the form of Project Glass.
Called SemanticMap, the idea is technology… → Read More
Another Augmented Reality update from Total Immersion popped up on my radar at this year’s Mobile World Congress. This nifty app, demoed at the Texas Instruments booth, is loaded with retail potential for e-commerce situations. This is not the first AR tool we’ve seen to assist with retail apparel purchases, however it is one of the best. Excellent AR tracking. → Read More
At many conferences, like the Mobile World Congress, it seems the best demos usually end up happening while waiting in line for lunch or for a cab. While rolling through the pile of video content I collected at the MWC this year, I ran back across this Augmented Reality demo by Aurasma. It is a perfect example of the “elevator demo” and in one way illustrates the portability of many AR… → Read More
Yesterday, Metaio CTO Peter Meier ran a small demo for me that describes how their new Creator Mobile software allows any user to map a 3D space with a coordinate system, so they can then add their own digital, Augmented Reality content to that space. This mobile app will work in conjunction with their desktop solution called simply Metaio Creator (video description at this link), which is where… → Read More
There have been whispers in the past of augmented reality goggles or glasses, but generally we have been able to dismiss them as exaggerations or concepts. The technology, while it isn’t unrealistic, simply isn’t quite there yet.
Apparently that hasn’t stopped Google: a new report is appearing corroborating earlier ones that they are working on a pair of augmented reality glasses. They’d… → Read More
The story about Vuzix’s new AR/holographic enabled concept glasses broke last week, but I had a chance to catch up with Clark Dever from Vuzix (with my rogue TechCrunch ghetto cam) for a brief video explanation and demo of the technology.
The short of it is that it involves some highfalutin’ technolgy to get the displays to accurately display into the lens material. Their displays were quite… → Read More
If you ever wanted to be able to read text on a street sign or on a menu in a restaurant when abroad, your smartphone might be able to help you soon. Japanese electronics company Omron has developed a smartphone application that can instantly translate (short) foreign texts you come across – firing up the app and pointing the phone’s camera at the text in question is enough.
Omron says that in… → Read More
It’s been a while since we’ve written about DIY online shop, Zazzle. But the company has grown to be one of the largest customization companies out there, with 20 million unique visitors a month. And today the company is pressing forward with developing its own innovative new ways to help users more accurately customize and visualize their products.
To do so, Zazzle is today announcing the… → Read More
Augmented reality has one more use case: a team of researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed an AR guidance system that can help inexperienced or new workers navigate difficult situations remotely.
The way it works is that the system (currently in prototype stage) makes it possible to share the first-person perspective of a… → Read More
German augmented reality firm Metaio showcased some updates to their core technologies today at this year’s ISMAR conference in Basel, Switzerland. The company is documenting this update with out-takes from some highly technical white papers and also, thankfully, with a few video demonstrations (for the algorithm-ly challenged out there – like me).
The basic gist of this update to their core… → Read More
CrowdOptic, a maker of an augmented reality app and mobile analytics solutions for the enterprise, has raised $500,000 in new funding today in a round led by Bowman Capital. According to CEO Jon Fisher, CrowdOptic will use the new capital to accelerate development of products in the area of mobile-powered technology for live events as well as expand the security features of its platform. → Read More
Augmented Reality company Total Immersion released a free, Augmented Reality SDK today called D’Fusion. The updated kit is specially designed for multi-platform developers of games, apps and marketing solutions.
To mark the occasion (and demonstrate the tech) Total Immersion are also launching a free iOS game in the app store called Skinvaders. The game, which takes advantage of Total… → Read More
Truth be told, I wasn’t very impressed with what electronics makers showed at the CEATEC 2011 tech exhibition – especially because a lot of the new products were “leaked” to the Japanese press before the event started.
However, here are a total of five of the coolest innovations Japanese companies showed at CEATEC 2011 in video form, delivered from our friends at Diginfo TV (YouTube channel). → Read More
I was able to attend Metaio’s InsideAR 2011 conference last week in Munich and check out many new and updated Augmented Reality concepts at the event. Several concepts I saw at the trade show portion resonated with where consumer AR is headed and some were merely for entertainment. But pretty much everything I saw tried, in some way, to push the envelope of technical possibility. I saw some cool… → Read More
Junaio, the mobile Augmented Reality browser created by German AR firm Metaio, has been updated this morning: Version 3.0 now supports scanning barcodes. Some of you are probably thinking “Whoop-dee-doo, every app can scan barcodes nowadays.” And you’re right; it’s not really a big deal in that sense. When you consider Junaio’s capability at advanced image recognition, using it to scan 1D and 2D … → Read More
Augmented Reality veterans Metaio are announcing some more details about their upcoming insideAR conference scheduled to take place in Munich, Germany on September 26 – 27. While the speaker list for the event has been available since July, the greater theme for the conference is being updated via press release today. That theme is: “From a Vision to a Roadmap”.
To help illustrate this… → Read More
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