The company Zugara which is an interactive marketing and advertising agency specializing in augmented reality applications, has introduced a new concept of their Fashionista technology using Augmented reality to create an immersive and interactive experience. This time extending it to the possibility of augmented reality conferencing. Zugara calls their new product: ZugSTAR which is short for “Zugara Streaming Augmented Reality”.

Source: http://www.zugara.com

AugmentPro interviewed Matt Szymczyk, CEO, Zugara about their Fashionista Augmented Reality application. Now it appears they are using the foundational technology from the Fashionista application to a much broader marketing opportunity than just “social shopping”. According to the blog post from Zugara’s website:

“While integrating ZugSTAR into the Webcam Social Shopper is a natural extension of the tech, it’s certainly not the full extent of our vision.” said Matt Szymczyk, CEO, Zugara. “Gartner predicts that by 2015 200 million people will be paying for desktop video conferencing. Now, I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but this tech has the potential to impact virtually every single industry. Anywhere distance is a barrier to real-time collaboration, ZugSTAR has the potential to provide a tremendous amount of value.”

Their are a few examples that the ZugSTAR application can be applied to:

• EDUCATION (DISTANCE LEARNING): A science teacher can field questions and twist and turn a DNA helix as he/she explains their answers.
• MEDICINE: 3D models of an fMRI will allow a Dr. to either consult with other Dr.’s, or explain the test’s results directly to a patient.
• PUBLISHING: Augmented Reality Pop-Up Books can enable a parent that’s on the road to help their child to learn how to read.
• PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: A 3D model (e.g. of a shoe or a building being developed) can be shared, and discussed, with colleagues, clients, vendors, and partners.
• CASUAL GAMING: Augmented Reality based casual games can now be multiplayer.

To illustrate the technology view the demo video below:

Demo Video

The Swedish company T-post has taken augmented reality to a new level. Placing AR markers on a tshirt and packaging it as a “tshirt magazine”. According to the T-Post website their product is the world’s first wearable magazine. In other words, “Offbeat news + graphic t-shirt = T-post”.

T-Post Augmented Reality Tshirt

Once you sign up for a subscription you recieve tshirts within 3 weeks and then every 6 weeks after that for a price 19 EU per tshirt. It is a novel idea and apparently T-post is distributed in over 50 countries. They have a great environmental spin on their product as well. Further details are located on their website.

Now the interesting aspect of this wearable magazine is the augmented reality spin. On the tshirt itself as an AR marker which once you go to the T-Post “Rock Paper Scissors” game on their website you are able to play Rock Paper Scissors “against the computer”.

Does all of this sound interesting? Well, go ahead and have a look at the demo video!

Video Demo

According to a press release Hallmark Cards has launched an augmented reality experience with their greeting cards. Included in this post is an excerpt from the press release. Hallmark Cards, Inc., today announced the release of webcam greetings, new cards that use augmented reality technology to bring the card to life on a computer screen.

The person receiving the card can visit www.hallmark.com/extra and follow the directions to be able to view a 3D animated feature by holding the greeting card up to the web camera. The technology breathes a digital life into the card. The animation tracks with the movement of the card, so no matter which way the card is moved, the animation will rotate along in full 3D. In many cards, various scenes appear as the card is turned in different angles in front of the webcam for a range of digital experiences.

“As Hallmark embarks upon our next 100 years in business, it’s important to continually identify new ways to help amplify the emotions our consumers feel when experiencing and sharing our products,” said Monic Muldrew, associate product manager. “With the experience available through these cards that come to life with a webcam, we hope consumers will fully explore and interact with this fun new way to connect.”

The augmented reality enhancements in webcam greetings are unique to the greeting card industry. Ten cards currently are available for Valentine’s Day and, as the year progresses, the company will roll out additional webcam greetings. Most webcam greetings retail for $2.99. Some webcam greetings include a sound clip that plays when the recipient opens the card (clip is audible without going online). These cards retail for $5.99. All webcam greetings are available wherever Hallmark cards are sold.

For more about Hallmark’s webcam greetings and to view a demonstration, visit www.hallmark.com/extra.

Video Demo

On Friday December 18th, 2009 Layar 3.0 was removed from the iPhone App store due to many crashes that the app was facing after an initial launch. According to the Dirk Groten the CTO of Layar he mentioned on their blog post:

We had issues already since the very first launch of the iPhone app. Unfortunately these issues were due to bad memory management decisions right from the start, something that we could not easily fix without completely re-engineering the app. There is some old code in there that is buggy and we don’t know exactly where the bug is. Since the app worked fine for 80% of the users (and on all our testing devices), we decided to move on to v3 before we would rebuild the framework of our app. We’ve tested v3 thoroughly internally and did not have any issues with crashes when submitting to the App Store. In fact, we still cannot reproduce the crashes that many of our users are reporting right now.

So back in late October 2009 Layar received $1 million in VC funding to continue to build their application and now with this launch it seems like they will need all hands on deck to make sure the app is working correctly for all of the iPhone users.

At times making such a decision of pulling an app can give you more negative feedback than positive feedback due to critics hassle of a company NOT to release a product before it is fully tested.

In this circumstance, I am glad that Layar chose to remove it and correct the app as the community of users were giving feedback of its instability. Perhaps in future releases Layar and other AR apps will crowdsource their product to multiple beta testers before an official release to have the app work for 100% of the users.

Excerpts from the following content was used from the official press release by the leading New Jersey interactive agency Rosetta. This is yet another unique way that interactive agencies are using augmented reality to engage consumer experience. To be honest, it felt strange trying to align my tongue to the screen but it was fun trying to then capture the snowflakes for a good cause.

Snow Day by Rosetta Agency

Rosetta announced a breakthrough in augmented reality technology that debuted in the holiday card sent to Rosetta’s clients and friends. The card, which combines motion detection and facial recognition elements, challenges recipients to collect a million digital snowflakes with their tongues, which will in turn, benefit New Orleans youth.

For Rosetta’s holiday card, the agency developed an algorithm that is able to detect, as accurately as possible, when a person’s mouth is open and when his or her tongue is stuck out. According to Rosetta, this is the first time augmented reality technology has been able to distinguish a feature as intricate as a person’s tongue against the background of a human face. Rosetta created the motion detection and facial recognition technologies using flash and combined the elements in a way that allows them to work in sync and form a game.

When a recipient opens the card, he or she can play an interactive game that involves catching falling snowflakes. The game is designed to automatically launch a viewer’s webcam when the player hits “play.” The player is asked to stick out his or her tongue, and the new augmented reality technology tracks the player’s tongue movements with his or her head and shoulder movements. Each time a player’s tongue catches a snowflake on the screen, a point will be added to the automatically updated tally that shows how many snowflakes have been caught by all card recipients.

Good Cause

When one million snowflakes are captured, Rosetta will sponsor a “snow day” for New Orleans children who have never experienced a snow day. The event will take place in a New Orleans’ City Park on February 20th, 2010 and will feature games and activities, food and beverages and an appearance by “Frosty the Snowman.” The festivities will be capped by six inches of “real” snow.

Rosetta emailed the holiday card on December 15th to thousands of clients and friends who are encouraged to pass it along.

Try Out The Holiday Card

The card can also be viewed / downloaded at http://holiday.rosetta.com/snowday/.

Rosetta’s Creative and Customer Experience Team came up with the idea as a fun way to connect the holidays with this interactive game and the charity effort. Also, they worked with teams from each of Rosetta’s offices across the country to develop the game and “snow day” event. Overcoming the technical challenge of mapping and tracking an object as small as a human tongue was achieved through a collaborative effort by Rosetta’s technology team.

“This card represents some of the best of what Rosetta is all about – great creative ideas, cutting-edge technology, a deep understanding of social media, and a commitment to the larger community,” said Chief Creative Officer, Gary Scheiner.

“We came up with this idea, and then our tech guys figured out how to make it work,” added Toni Hess, Partner and Group Creative Director, who spearheaded the initiative. “It uses facial recognition software, which I don’t believe has ever been used like this before. The technology is invisible, which lets the fun of the idea take center stage.”

The fashion industry seems to be a great niche for augmented reality as we’ve seen the success of the Esquire and InStyle magazine using AR together with their magazine to boost sales and differentiate themselves from their competition. Now, introducing the folks from Laboratory4.com who have created a unique concept called the “Augmented Reality Fashion Show”. This innovative concept developed using the FLARToolkit shows the possibility of having a few svelte models strutting their stuff on a “virtual runway”.

Take a look at a few video demonstration below. Curious to hear your thoughts on other possible uses.

Video Demo 1

Video Demo 2

Layar recently announced their Layar 3.0 publishing platform for developers to create applications. As reported earlier here on AugmentPro, Layar secured $1 million in VC funding and with this new 3.0 version of their publishing platform they are gaining more exposure to the development community to use their platform as the foundation for augmented reality.

Tom Carpenter first posted the announcement on his blog The Future Digital Life then large blog and news sites began to report on this announcement as well. TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, and even The Washington Post aggregated the TechCrunch post.

Photo Source - Layar.com

On the Layar blog they demonstrate a few use cases of how developers are creating certain applications such as the applying an architectural building on top of a construction site to demonstrate how that building will appear in reality once the structure is complete.

Another example is that of “Historical Storytelling” where users are able to go through the streets of London and point their mobile device on Abbey Road and see the infamous Beatles walking across the street.

Also showcased is the possibility of creating an application on top of Layar which allows the user to place images, artwork, etc. on top of a certain POI where users can then view. This is similar to the independent MagiCam iPhone application.

The most interesting use case is the B2B and Personalization applications that can be developed. Layar v3.0 features easy login through cookie support, which enables personalization of your layer. This allows a company to showcase certain POI/elements only to employees. Also, it further enables Twitter and Foursquare type layers to evolve even more.

Layar v3.0 can now be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market and is available for all Android 1.5 and 1.6 devices. We will release a compatible version for the Droid as soon as possible. To date Layar has almost finished testing for Android 2.0.

A version for the iPhone 3GS is to follow after Apple approves that updated application.

Its great to see Layar taking a page from Apple in trying to create the “iTunes” of augmented reality by creating an platform which developers can easily tap into AR to provide to their clients and users.

Video Demonstration

John C Havens VP Social Media at Porter Novelli recently wrote an article in iMedia Connection on “Augmented reality: What marketers need to know“. In this article he brings up an example that Microsoft will be using a form of augmented reality in an upcoming Xbox system called the Xbox Project Natal.

Here is yet another fascinating approach to using augmented reality, face and voice recognition to be used by the general consumer. Though this is a mere concept, take a look at the promotional video from E3 2009 Expo and view some of the consumer videos for their feedback.

Xbox Project Natal

Consumer Video 1

Consumer Video 2

Consumer Video 3

whiteapp.com

Recently in my search for new and relevant augmented reality use cases, I began to search for white label uses of augmented reality. Like many web application services it is only a matter of time before companies begin to create white label versions of respective applications. This is where whiteapp comes along.

whiteapp has a directory suite of white label mobile applications that they provide for the iPhone, Android OS and Symbian OS. Among them there is the ‘Augmented Reality’ application for the iPhone. The company behind whiteapps is putITout a London based applications development company.

I was extremely intrigued to find out more about this solution so I contacted Charles Cadbury the Founder of whiteapps and Managing Director from putItout to begin to ask some questions to discover what is the strategy and direction of their current white label AR application.

Charles Cadbury – Founder whiteapps.com Interview

AugmentPro – I see that your company Pit It Out is a London based digital development company. Can you tell me a bit more about your company and client base?

Charles Cadbury - Founder whiteapp.com

Charles C - Its putITout.  We set up 3 years ago to fill a skills gap in the London market.  Freelance web developers were charging a great premium for their services and often took a lot of management time in order to get jobs produced to spec.  Our offering centers around project managed development resource (we have grown our own team in Lahore, Pakistan) and manage all projects through a team of project managers and account managers in Russell Square in London.

Our clients tend to be mid sized creative and marketing agencies.  We typically build large, dynamic, websites, Facebook applications and bespoke CMS solutions.  From March this year we started to offer mobile application build to our client base, using a strong network of developers and mobile usability experts.

AugmentPro – What made you decide to launch whiteapp.com?

Charles C – Advertising agencies were coming to us time and time again as they were either being asked for, or wanted to offer applications to their clients.  The cost of designing and building these applications from scratch was proving too expensive for a majority of clients.  The global economic meltdown didn’t help at all…

At the same time I was meeting more and more developers who had built applications, pouring vast amount of sweat and coffee over learning the Apple SDK and not receiving adequate commercial recompense by monetizing through the app store.

whiteapp was a way to offer agencies a “shopping list” of applications they could browse and purchase, we could simply re-skin or make small alterations to these apps in a short period at a far lower cost than bespoke development.  At the same time we shared any money we generated with the developer who created the application which in the most part far exceeded the money they had made through selling the app through the app store.

AugmentPro – whiteapp seems to have a suite of mobile white label applications. Which ones appear to be the popular ones so far with agencies and clients?

Charles C – Due to an October launch the Advent calendar has been the most popular application and used as a simple brand asset for branding campaigns.  The Augmented reality application has come a close second as its an exceedingly hot topic right now and at the right price is a great PR tool to gain column inches and deliver a great experience to the user.

AugmentPro – You appear to currently have one Augmented Reality white label application. Can you please briefly describe its core features?

Charles C – It’s a “finder” application.  It takes geographic locations from a database (held locally or in the cloud) and overlays these data points on the real time video feed from the iPhone’s camera.  If the user does not have an iPhone 3Gs or holds a 3Gs flat the data points are shown as a google maps mashup, giving route finding functionality. Different tabs can be added and managed through a web based CMS that can overlay different datasets on the video feed.  Any level of additional functionality can be added to this application depending on the client’s requirements but starting from an existing product saves production time and subsequently cost.

Why re-invent the wheel – people love it!.

Download complete Augmented Reality white label application Fact Sheet here

AugmentPro – Currently it appears to only support the iPhone 3Gs. Do you have in plan to support the Android and/or other mobile OS’s?

Charles C – We are currently working with an Android developer and hope to list an Android Augmented Reality whiteapp in January 2010.  We are also working on a pitch for a bespoke build of a symbian Augmented reality product that we would like to offer as a whiteapp.  Hopefully this will come off and we will be able to offer that from May 2010.

AugmentPro – From a white label AR standpoint, what are your timeline estimates in order to deliver an AR white label app from initial conversation to final launch?

Charles C – If you hold the dataset, do not mind it being hosted within the application and have all the creative assets to hand we could turn this around within a week.  Usually there are a few iterations of design and bespoke functionality that need to be ironed out and the process can take 2-3 weeks before we submit to the app store.

AugmentPro – Do you have in plan to launch other Augmented Reality white label applications? I would love to see one that allows you to instantly generate a Marker, select from a gallery of predefined elements, then to generate an AR browser app. Is this wishful thinking?

As and when developers create Augmented Reality applications we are more than happy to list and market them  on whiteapp.  So hopefully your readership has this in development and we can all live happily ever after.

During the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City this past week, the folks from the Augmend Reality Lounge Meetups put together a panel discussion with Porter Novelli on Augmented Reality. There was a fantastic panel of those that participated. Some of the people that were attending included:

• Robert Rice: CEO of Neogence, Chairman of the Augmented Reality Consortium
• Ori Inbar: Co-founder and CEO of Ogmento
• Jack Mason: Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media at IBM
• Lynne d Johnson: SVP Social Media at the Advertising Research Foundation and host of the NYC Android Developer’s Meetup
• Erik Manley: Manager, Digital Media at GE
• Michael Eisenreich: Technology Leader for GE’s company-wide Internet presence
• Marco Neumann: CEO and Founder of KONA, Lead Organizer for New York and San Francisco Semantic Web Meetup
• Matt Szymczyk: CEO of Zugara
• John C. Havens: VP, Social Media at Porter Novelli.

Jack Mason IBM

Among other events that happened John C. Havens: VP, Social Media at Porter Novelli shared this great video presentation from the “Unconference” portion of the Web 2.0 Expo. Jack Mason Strategic Programs & Social Media at IBM Global Business Services talking about Augmented Reality and The Internet of Things. Jason’s title to the presentation is “Web 20.0 + DigiPhys = Outernet”. His overview is straight forward and thorough.

I highly recommend following a Wiki that has been created around the “Outer Guidelines Initiative” to gain and share further insight on Augmented Reality.

Video – Jack Mason IBM – Download Here