But when they do, some of them wear their personalized virtual reality goggles.

Here’s the now-famous picture of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, wearing his Google Glass augmented reality specs, riding the New York City subway. It’s from Noah Zerkin, who says he snapped it after chatting with Brin on a downtown-bound #3 train.

Double-bonus for Zerkin: He happens to be an “Augmented Reality enthusiast/hardware prototyper” who plays with this stuff at SuperTouch Group. (Sure hope he hasn’t Lennay Kekua’d us!)

For a not-totally-safe-for-work interview with a Googler who also wears his Glasses out and about in New York City, check out this Gothamist interview.

“Motorola Mobility today announced that it has acquired Viewdle, a leading imaging & gesture recognition company,” a Motorola representative said in a statement. “Motorola and Viewdle have an existing commercial agreement and have been collaborating for some time.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Among Viewdle’s products was an app called Social Camera that performs facial recognition to identify those in a photo from among one’s friends.

CNET reported earlier this week that a deal was close, noting that talks had been under way with Motorola since before Google acquired the company.

DVF

And then all of a sudden, Google hands you a fancy new toy.

That has been the case for famed designer Diane Von Furstenburg, who has been playing with Google Glass, the tech company’s wearable augmented reality glasses hardware. Von Furstenburg (or DVF, for short) used them to document her days in the lead up to New York Fashion Week, the premier runway event of the haute couture world, where designers the world round come to show off their new clothing lines.

DVF basically used Glass as a personal diary in the days leading up to her runway show, capturing the sights of Manhattan along with showing the hardware off to her suite of models. It’s also the first actual video that’s been shot using the glasses — unlike the highly criticized, completely produced promotional video that showed what Google imagined Glass would be able to do someday.

What better way to upstage your fashion contemporaries, then, by slapping a pair of unreleased, unobtainable Glasses that just so happen to be color-coordinated with your entire new line? After meeting Sergey Brin at a conference, DVF thought it would be fah-bu-lous to include Glass in her own work. Brin was kind enough to loan her a number of pairs, complete with Google staff, who taught the models how to use the things.

The timing of all this was interesting, too. In allowing Glass to make some high-profile appearances this week (Wall Street Journal reporter Spencer E. Ante got to play with a set as well), Google could stay on the radar while Apple dominated the news. And if Google looked future-focused even as iPhone 5 was being nicked as an incremental step, well, all the better.

Check out the video below to see rich people playing with their new toys. Fashionably, of course.

Tap and Go Is Ready to Go
Near Field Communications (NFC) technology is increasingly being embedded in smartphones, allowing devices to communicate by tapping. For example, tap your phone to a poster to buy a shirt; tap it to a kiosk to buy a ticket. The tap-and-go concept is intuitive, versatile and a great way to share data between mobile devices. NFC is highly versatile, standards-based, interoperable and security-ready. Its adoption in retail and supply is already starting.

Consider this: by 2016, 700 million NFC smartphones are projected to ship. Customers with digital wallets embedded in NFC-enabled phones don’t need a special app to make payments, nor do they need to carry dozens of debit, credit and loyalty cards. They simply touch their phone to the NFC-enabled payment device, sign and go.

Beyond payments, NFC has the potential to positively impact commerce in other ways, including:

• Quick and easy ticketing, much like a “Fast Pay” toll tag on a car.
• Sharing files, contact information and more by simply tapping NFC phones together.
• Tag reading via applications that enable identification, physical access, transportation, inventory, loyalty and marketing opportunities up and down the supply chain.

Who’s the Next Lady Gaga?
Big Data has the potential to unleash a new wave of innovation, responsiveness and service for companies that are able to harness its value. Many pioneering companies are already creating value and competitive differentiation by mining extremely large quantities of typically unstructured data for hidden patterns and insights. The potential impact is virtually unlimited. In retail, we’ve seen brands successfully gathering and analyzing consumer sentiment, then creating personalized recommendations for millions of customers.

Another example is music analytics leader, Next Big Sound, which is using unstructured data to figure out who the next Lady Gaga might be. It uses big data to scan all the different music and social networks (Spotify, iTunes, Facebook, YouTube), analyze likes, plays, downloads — and ultimately provide insight to music executives into how artists become stars.

A New Take on Reality
Augmented reality (AR) presents practically limitless applications. AR is used to superimpose computer-generated sensory input (sound, video, graphics, haptic feedback, etc.) to create a mediated reality overlaying and enhancing the live real-world environment. It’s already being used in navigation, manufacturing, logistics, military services, entertainment, sports, healthcare and numerous other industries.

In commerce, AR has the potential to be a significant driver of sales and conversions. Forward-thinking marketers are already taking advantage of AR to cleverly deliver useful information that adds value to the buying process.

One example of a brand cleverly using AR is Lego. In collaboration with AR technology company Metaio, Lego created an in-store AR system called the Lego Digital Box (LDB). The LDB allows customers to simply hold a Lego box up to a scanner, which recognizes exactly which Lego set it is, and then displays what the set looks like fully assembled on a video screen. You can tilt it up, down and around to see the set in 3-D interactive animation. The initial trial period of LDB in select stores was so successful in increasing customer satisfaction and product sales that Lego made the decision to roll it out in all 80 of its stores, displaying over 200 products.

The Power of the Crowd
Thanks to the Web, brands can tap the vast possibilities of crowdsourcing to shape a product or service. Examples are plenty, with undeniable results. Take, for example, the auto brand Fiat that, in partnership with Brazilian interactive agency AgenciaClick, launched a Web site inviting Brazilian consumers to invent a concept car that Fiat would exhibit at Sao Paulo’s 2010 annual auto show — the Fiat Mio. The challenge was a hit: The site’s 17,662 registrants submitted over 10,000 ideas.

The site was organized much like a social network displaying comments, photos and a Twitter-like sidebar feed. Ideas were divided into categories such as design, materials, safety and infotainment. All designs were shared online for a completely transparent process — turning the traditionally secretive model of auto production on its ear. Dozens of users’ ideas made it into production, contributing to the Mio’s final propulsion method, shape, infotainment, body materials, biometry and driving aids. Throughout the process, Fiat’s engineers reviewed ideas submitted, consolidated the technical design and published the results via open source software in early 2010 before then turning the discussion toward a branding and marketing campaign for the October car show.

Don’t Buy, Rent
According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, the circular economy is not a new technology but rather an innovative industrial model that is restorative or regenerative by design. Its key goals include replacing the “end-of-life” industrial concept with “cradle-to-cradle” restoration, shifting toward the use of renewable energy, eradicating toxic chemicals and eliminating waste.

In the world of commerce, collaborative consumerism aligns with the principles of circular economy by allowing consumers to pay for the use of a product, rather than buying and eventually discarding it. One prime example is Netflix. With over 23 million users, the video streaming and DVD rental company focuses not on selling to customers, but on loaning DVDs/streaming videos. Similarly, car-sharing company Zipcar provides automobile reservations to members who are then billed for the time spent using the cars. Another example is Rent the Runway, which rents dresses from top designers on a four- or eight-day basis.

Dave Bruno is marketing director for RedPrairie, a supply chain and retail technology company. As part of RedPrairie’s research into Commerce in Motion, the company conducts research and analysis of the ever-changing dynamics of global supply chains and the hyper-connected consumer. None of the companies mentioned in this post are clients of RedPrairie.

Only app administrators could create new Wallit walls, and users had to be in relative proximity to a place to properly use the app.

Wallit has now torn down those walls to the app. Starting today, users can create a virtual wall anywhere, from their office to their living room to a party at a friend’s place.

Since the whole idea of writing on virtual walls could be a bit confusing to those who haven’t seen the app, there’s a video below to help show how it works.

Basically, Wallit app users have the option to leave a note on a virtual wall that’s superimposed over a real location. Depending on whether the wall is private or not, users within Wallit’s social network can use their phone’s camera to capture an image of that building or structure — such as the Golden Gate Bridge, for example — and see what people have written around it, as well as other data that might be available.

Augmented reality apps that show contextual info based on your location are hardly new, though Wallit does add an interesting social twist to AR. Mobile apps like Wikitude and Google Goggles display info about your surroundings on a smartphone screen and, of course, Google’s Project X glasses aim to remove the smartphone from the whole equation, and instead show relevant local information through a wearable device.

The Wallit app is free, and right now the 700 existing walls don’t show any ads. However, Wallit creator Veysel Berk says that “value walls” may be a part of the app in the future, where brands will customize certain walls. Whether that means ads will appear on already existing virtual walls, or whether the ad walls will be completely separate, is still unclear.

The app can be found here in the iTunes store. It’s currently only available for iOS devices, though Berk says an Android version is in the works.

Once again, Jon Stewart nails it perfectly on this “Daily Show” segment — and all at once, too, with biting commentary on Google’s new augmented-reality glasses, the $1 billion Facebook just forked over for Instagram and, yes, Mr. Handsome Devil, Ryan Gosling.

I wonder when they’ll be releasing that filter?

In all seriousness, a billion is a lot of money.

Enjoy:

Here’s an aggressively adorkable video mashup, called “ADmented Reality — Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads” by Rebellious Pixels.

Project Glass, which the search giant unveiled earlier this week, could bring the world augmented reality glasses.

Oh joy.

Here you go:

Unveiling the project should make it easier for Google to test the weird-looking glasses in public. As currently designed, they have a horizontal frame that rests on a wearer’s nose, with a wider strip of computer and a little clear display on the right side. So they’re not really “glasses” in the traditional sense at all.

From a video Google put out of how the prototype works, an augmented-reality-glasses wearer can control music, get directions, take pictures, give voice commands and conduct video chats. The glasses don’t cover the whole eye, so it seems like the wearer does something like look up to engage with the display.

Project Glass is part of the Google[x] special projects division that also includes self-driving cars. The glasses team is led by Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun.

The New York Times first reported the project in February. At the time, it said the glasses were expected to go on sale later this year. However, Google said today that it’s unlikely the glasses will hit the market this year.

These days, though, the technology is making its presence felt. Augmented reality apps are adding another layer to all kinds of real-world objects, from toys to magazines, even to Heinz Ketchup bottles that offer up recipes to anyone with a smartphone.

“It’s happening,” said Jay Wright, a senior director at Qualcomm. “We’ve hit this inflection point of adoption.”

Taco Bell has a game that can be played by pointing a phone at its meal boxes. Qualcomm is working with “Sesame Street” on an interactive playset that allows figurines of Bert and Ernie to come to life when captured by a smartphone. A museum in San Diego is using augmented reality to show how magnetism works.

“You can’t see magnetic fields,” Wright said.

Marketing remains the big driver for augmented reality. Total Immersion, another player in the space, recently launched a big campaign for Tic Tac that turns the boxes for the candy into a game, when paired with a smartphone and the companion app.

“It’s truly a national campaign, and the client is supporting the app with a multimillion dollar ad campaign,” Total Immersion CEO Bruno Uzzan said in an interview. “It shows that the market is maturing.”

Augmented reality is also useful for doing things like allowing virtual try-ons and interactive product manuals, such as this app that helps when installing a new flat-panel TV.

“For the first time, augmented reality is not being associated with (something) gimmicky, and starts being associated to return on investment,” Uzzan said.

One of the catalysts for Qualcomm’s efforts, Wright said, was when it opened its developer kit up to the iPhone.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/augmented-reality-actually-becoming-one/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120118/nokias-city-lens-brings-augmented-reality-to-windows-phone-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120118/nokias-city-lens-brings-augmented-reality-to-windows-phone-video/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:02:13 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=164567 Seeing the new Lumia phones at Nokia’s booth at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show was interesting, but what caught my eye was one of the apps running on some of the devices.

Nokia was showing Nokia City Lens, a program from its labs that is among the first augmented-reality apps I’ve seen running on Windows Phone.

Microsoft’s phone platform did not initially provide access to the camera app and other features needed to make the app a reality. Support for such programs came with the Mango update released last fall.

City Lens combines map and points-of-interest data with what is seen in the camera’s viewfinder to show what is nearby, and in which direction. The program is a labs project for now, but the company is planning a beta next month.

Along with its hardware, Nokia is counting on software to help it stand out from rivals. The first crop of Nokia phones come with the company’s own Drive app for turn-by-turn directions, as well as a unique-to-Nokia ESPN app.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120118/nokias-city-lens-brings-augmented-reality-to-windows-phone-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111220/an-app-that-helps-you-install-that-tv-you-just-bought/ http://allthingsd.com/20111220/an-app-that-helps-you-install-that-tv-you-just-bought/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:50:19 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=155339 Get out the hammer, the screws and the iPad.

A new app feature from Aurasma is aimed at taking the pain out of product assembly, by tapping into augmented reality and creating a visual guide for mounting a television — maybe that brand-new one you just bought — on the wall.

Despite being a slow year for TV sales, manufacturers got a boost over Black Friday weekend, and a recent report says one in five U.S. broadband-enabled households plans to buy a flat-screen before the end of the year. Not surprisingly, around 28% of consumers find the process of installing their TVs to be frustrating, according to Kelton Research.

Could a visual how-to help?

In order to access the step-by-step guide, consumers first have to to download the Aurasma app, then aim a smartphone or tablet at an Aurasma-created installation guide. The augmented reality technology, which gives interactive context through a phone or tablet by using GPS, video and other sensory data, prompts a sequential “how to” guide for installing a flat-screen display on the wall. (You can see how it works in the video here.)

An AR app is a nifty idea for those holiday gadget purchases, but right now, Aurasma only has “auras” for how to mount a flat-screen on the wall and how to install an HP router; the company sees more product-assembly instructions in its future. The Aurasma app is free and works on iPhone, iPad 2 and Android devices. It is also available as a free SDK for app developers who want to build on the AR technology.

Augmented reality isn’t new: The first AR project is believed to have been developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory back in the 1960’s, though it was years later before it was called “augmented reality.” It is commonly used in sporting events — to project ads or other graphics on the field during a football game broadcast, for example — and has been increasingly making its way into gaming as well.

In recent years, marketers have begun targeting augmented reality campaigns at smartphone users, who can use an app or AR-friendly browser on their devices. Users simply point their smartphone camera at a poster or product and receive a digital layer of information, which could include an ad, price point, instructional video or a where-to-buy option.

Aurasma, an augmented reality platform created by HP-acquired Autonomy and based in San Francisco, launched in June 2011 and has since reached two million downloads. The company says it is currently working with around a thousand brands worldwide to power interactive campaigns, including Panasonic, BMW, Universal Music, Paramount Pictures and Virgin Atlantic.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111220/an-app-that-helps-you-install-that-tv-you-just-bought/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110623/developer-finds-new-use-for-ipad-camera-invisibility-trick/ http://allthingsd.com/20110623/developer-finds-new-use-for-ipad-camera-invisibility-trick/#comments Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:41:09 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=90523 For many, the cameras on the iPad 2 seem a bit superfluous. That’s especially true for the rear camera, since at least the front one can be used for video chatting.

Indeed, Apple gave that rear camera a fairly meager resolution, prompting some to suspect it was included just so competitors couldn’t use its absence as a selling point against the iPad.

However, one developer may have found something decent to do with that rear camera. Levity Novelty has released an app called Invisibility that uses the combination of the rear camera and the iPad 2′s gyroscope to create a cool illusion of invisibility. The 99-cent app can take a picture of a table top and then be used to pan over that same table top, making the tablet appear to be transparent.

“The iPad has always promised it is a magical device,” Levity’s David Levitt said in a telephone interview. “Invisibility is delivering on that promise at a whole new level.”

Another developer, Total Immersion, has come up with Magic Mirror, a clever use for that front iPad camera that lets users “try on” various outfits, hairdos and accessories.

Levitt said his app has been in the works since the debut of the gyroscope-equipped iPhone 4, but said he shifted plans to the iPad 2 when it was released in March, offering a preview version of the app in April before delivering the final app this week, with a few more tricks.

Levitt said Invisibility combines a few of his passions. He said he has been working on virtual reality technology since the 1990s, when it took dual $100,000 Silicon Graphics workstations (one for each eye) to achieve realistic effects.

His app got a boost on Thursday when Wired writer Steven Levy tweeted that the app was “the coolest use for iPad 2 camera I’ve seen to date.”

“Thank you, Steven,” said a happy Levitt, who noted he brought an early version of the app to one of Levy’s recent book signings.

“It’s this wonderfully distracting, conversation-starting thing,” he said of the app.

Levitt said he plans to bring the app to the iPhone 4 and the latest iPod touch, but said it will remain an Apple-only app for now.

“In a way, we are an Apple-only shop partly because the other platforms don’t consistently have gyroscopes or an API for them,” he said. “It’s just a natural for us to stick with that, but obviously that could change.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110623/developer-finds-new-use-for-ipad-camera-invisibility-trick/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110519/qualcomm-bringing-augmented-reality-software-kit-to-the-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20110519/qualcomm-bringing-augmented-reality-software-kit-to-the-iphone/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 12:00:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7880 Although its chips don’t power the iPhone, Qualcomm has decided to bring its augmented reality software kit to Apple’s phones in an effort to make it more attractive to developers.

Qualcomm released free software tools for Android last year in an effort to get more developers to write processor-hungry apps that combine the virtual realm with the physical one. Starting in July, though, developers will also be able to use Qualcomm tools to write augmented reality apps for the iPhone.

“We realize it is a complex ecosystem with multiple operating systems,” Qualcomm’s Jay Wright said in an interview at the ARE 2011 conference on Wednesday. “Developers need tools and technology that address that challenge.”

It’s an interesting move for Qualcomm, which plans to release the iOS tools for free through an Austrian subsidiary. Wright acknowledged that Android was a more logical operating system, given the fact that its chips are used there.

“Android was a logical starting point because of developer momentum and Snapdragon penetration,” Wright said. “Moving forward we will support additional operating systems.”

In any case, the move thrilled some of the developers that have been writing code using the Qualcomm tools.

“Its fantastic for us because it opens up a market,” said Morgan Jaffit, whose app, Inch High Stunt Guy, allows users to position various ramps and other objects on their screen in an effort to propel a stunt motorcycle rider to make it through a flaming hoop.

With the move, Jaffit and his Australian colleagues now hope to release both the iPhone and Android apps in the coming months.

Also pleased is Paulius Liekis, co-founder of Pixel Punch, the Lithuanian developer of Paparazzi, another augmented reality game built using Qualcomm’s tools. The app was released a week ago for $1 in the Android Market, but he sees the monetization policies as much better on the iPhone, where users are more willing to pay for content.

“They appreciate good content,” he said of those with an iPhone. “On Android, consumers are different. They do not want to pay.”

Paparazzi was the winner of a developer challenge Qualcomm funded last year, earning $125,000 for Pixel Punch, while Inch High Stunt Guy finished second, earning $50,000 for Jaffit’s company, Defiant Development.

The student team from USC that finished third in the contest said they, too, are looking forward to being able to bring their game–Danger Copter–to the iPhone as well as Android.

“Definitely it motivates us so much more to finish it up,” said Kedar Reddy, one of the USC graduate students.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110519/qualcomm-bringing-augmented-reality-software-kit-to-the-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110517/startup-gambles-folks-will-wear-special-contacts-to-get-their-reality-augmented/ http://allthingsd.com/20110517/startup-gambles-folks-will-wear-special-contacts-to-get-their-reality-augmented/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 12:00:54 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7762 There could be a lot of reasons why virtual reality hasn’t taken off, and the bulky glasses may not be the only thing holding back the industry.

But the stuff of science fiction has made a slight tweak and is gaining momentum. These days, the concept has largely morphed into the notion of augmented reality, an evolving category that includes all manner of applications that merge the real world and virtual objects. While there are plenty of phone-based implementations–and even a few popular ones–games requiring special glasses have remained a small niche.

One start-up thinks the main thing wrong with the approach is the glasses themselves–typically bulky headsets that completely block out the real world and, well, make the wearer look like a complete dork. Tiny Innovega has a patent on technology that moves most of the heavy work to a specially equipped contact lens. Though their approach still requires special glasses, they can be light sunglasses, as opposed to the science fiction kind.

“It eliminates the social stigma,” says Innovega CEO Stephen Willey.

Innovega is among a quintet of start-ups taking part in a “launchpad” competition that I will be moderating on Wednesday at the Augmented Reality Event–a two-day industry event that kicks off this morning in Santa Clara, Calif. Other contestants in the pitchfest are Mobilizy, Previznet, Neogence and GravityJack.

While the companies are small, many of them have been at it for some time, including Innovega which has been around since 2008, and Mobilizy, whose Wikitude browser is one of the early location-based augmented reality programs.

Although Innovega hopes one day to get its lenses on the eyes of consumers, for now it has its sights set on niche markets like the defense industry and those with advanced macular degeneration–areas where people are willing to put up with more cost and complexity to get the product’s benefits. The company isn’t counting on reaching production until 2014, and mass consumer adoption is probably further out than that.

In the meantime, the company has development grants from the National Science Foundation and DARPA to build prototypes of its technology. Ultimately, it is looking to partner with contact lens and glasses manufacturers to make the actual units, while it would license the technology.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110517/startup-gambles-folks-will-wear-special-contacts-to-get-their-reality-augmented/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110503/why-smartphones-can-see-more-than-we-can/ http://allthingsd.com/20110503/why-smartphones-can-see-more-than-we-can/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 22:42:29 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1767 If you’re tired of looking at the world through the same lens all the time, try adding a few virtual objects.

This week, rather than do my usual product testing, I decided to offer a peek into one of the most exciting trends in technology: augmented reality. AR, as it’s commonly known, is about as close to magic as we can get without visiting Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Not to be confused with virtual reality, which substitutes a simulated world for the real thing, AR takes a live view of the real world and/or a real object and adds computer-generated graphics or sounds that appear as if they’re right in the scene. The resulting visual can look convincing enough that people reach out and try to touch the AR object.

Built for AR

Most smartphones are now built with the technological requirements for AR—including a camera, accelerometer, compass and GPS—so developers are quickly building AR apps that take advantage of these devices. The technology started showing up in apps in 2009, and now hundreds of them use AR.

AR games add objects to real-life places and scenes, like ghosts in Ogmento Inc.’s Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary that appear as if they’re on the actual street that people are on, viewed through the people’s iPhones.

Viewdle’s Social Camera uses AR for social networking as it identifies people in photos by comparing their images to tagged photos of friends in Facebook. Google Goggles uses image recognition to provide information about real-life objects including books, artwork, wine and menus, which can be translated into a language you can read.

AR: It’s All Around You

You may not realize it, but basic forms of AR are at work in our everyday lives. Some cars, like the 7-series BMW, offer heads-up displays that impose data onto the windshield of the car so drivers don’t have to glance down to read things like current speed.

Armchair quarterbacks appreciate AR every time they see the National Football League’s first-down yellow line, visible only to the television audience. And some sporting events now include advertisements that appear on TV as if they’re painted on a field or basketball court.

Physical Object Attraction

Each of the developers with whom I spoke about AR’s future agreed: Computer vision is the central element to creating AR apps.

Computer vision describes a device’s ability to see, meaning it can recognize an object, extract information from that object and do something with that information.

AR apps that rely mostly on GPS do more guesswork than object recognition. Google Goggles, for example, takes advantage of GPS for local search when someone uses an Android phone to pan around and see points of interest identified on the screen, like businesses. An app called Layar uses GPS and helps people with things like finding the closest drugstore or getting extra points in a game by walking to a certain place.

One example of a device that uses full-fledged object recognition is Nintendo’s 3DS hand-held game, which comes with six AR Cards. With the naked eye, these cards look like small rectangles the size of playing cards with question marks printed on them. When viewed through the 3DS’s two outward-facing cameras while playing AR Games, the cards come to life with things like boxes that unfold, a dragon that pops out of the box and bull’s-eyes that must be shot using buttons on the 3DS.

Hallmark Cards Inc. is getting in on the AR action. Some of its greeting cards come with instructions to hold the card in front of a Mac or Windows PC webcam, which makes the characters drawn on the card appear animated on the computer screen.

Interactive Advertising

The AR Magic Mirror app uses the iPad 2′s cameras to impose objects on images of one’s face, including masks, hairstyles and marks. The app quickly analyzes the size of one’s face and different objects can be selected to appear as if they’re being worn in real life.

This app comes from Total Immersion, a company known for the way it incorporates AR into online and print ads. One online ad includes an interactive driving game that made users feel like they were driving the Volvo S60 through whatever their iPhone or Android camera displayed as AR obstacles fell into the road. In another campaign, people printed out a PDF of the Olympus PEN digital camera, held it to a webcam and saw animated demonstrations of the camera’s features, as if the camera—not a piece of paper—was in their hands.

Effortless Socializing

The Viewdle Social Camera, a free app for Android devices, suggests names of people in photos taken by an Android smartphone by comparing their faces to a database of friends tagged in a person’s Facebook account. Viewdle works completely on the smartphone so images don’t need to be slowly uploaded to a remote server each time a face is identified. No one is automatically tagged in Viewdle photos; rather, it suggests who it thinks the person is, and the phone’s owner approves this suggestion. The photos can then be shared from this app via Facebook, Flickr, email or MMS.

Viewdle’s future plans sound exciting: Devices with enough processor power, including some that are out now, will be able to display photos captured on the smartphone with each person’s most recent Facebook status update shown in bubbles above their heads.

Geek Alert

If you aren’t too keen on walking around holding your device up in front of you so you can play AR games or use AR apps, Vusix Corp. designs glasses with AR-visualization capability. But if you wear these glasses, don’t expect to get a date anytime soon.

From greeting cards to animated advertisements to mobile gaming, augmented reality is well suited for the smartphones people carry every day and we can expect to see much more of it in coming months and years.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110503/why-smartphones-can-see-more-than-we-can/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viewdle-ready-with-social-camera-an-android-app-that-never-forgets-a-face/ http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viewdle-ready-with-social-camera-an-android-app-that-never-forgets-a-face/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:00:03 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=6950

Viewdle still has big dreams when it comes to the potential for augmented reality. However, the company is opting to start small with its first app.

Dubbed Social Camera, the Android app aims to do one key thing: help users automatically tag their Facebook friends in photos taken with their cell phone cameras. Users have to identify a friend the first time, but after that, the app can detect them automatically, similar to what Apple offers in its Faces feature in iPhoto.

That’s a far cry from the broader vision Viewdle has been touting in a video on its Web site–one in which people in a video are identified and their social network status displayed above their heads. Though that is moving from science fiction toward reality, Viewdle CEO Laurent Gil said he decided to shift his team’s effort toward something less ambitious.

“Let’s do something that is non-intrusive, something that is very similar to the usual case of taking pictures,” Gil said.

Once users have tagged their friends, they can then share that photo on Facebook, or send it via email or MMS. Viewdle’s app, being launched in beta form on Wednesday, requires at least version 2.0 of Android along with a processor running at 1GHz or faster. Among the phones it works on, Viewdle says, are the HTC Desire and Desire HD, as well as the Nexus S and Nexus One.

Though a big believer in the power of augmented reality, Gil has also been outspoken in trying to get the industry to stop hyping itself and start delivering tools that people can use today.

As for the decision to work with photos rather than video, Gil said that doing video is technically possible, but not as natural for consumers.

“To show something real-time on video would break the consumer habit,” he said. “What we thought is, let’s do something that fits well with what people do now. Let’s add things when we feel the user is ready.”

Viewdle – Photo and Video Face Tagging from Viewdle on Vimeo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viewdle-ready-with-social-camera-an-android-app-that-never-forgets-a-face/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110411/augmented-reality-universe-gets-a-new-layar/ http://allthingsd.com/20110411/augmented-reality-universe-gets-a-new-layar/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:00:00 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=6160 Layar, one of the pioneering augmented reality phone applications, is getting a new update that the program’s founders hope will make it both easier to use and more social.

The smartphone app allows various information–from nearby 7-11s to residential home listings to game content–to be layered on top of what is seen by a phone’s camera.

“This year we are continuing to look for more ways to bring augmented reality into people’s everyday lives,” Layar’s Raimo Van der Klein said in a statement. “With today’s new version, we’re able to take a huge step closer towards that goal by giving users the chance to discover exciting new content and share cool layers and augmented screenshots with friends.”

On the social front, users will be able to share what they see with friends via Facebook and Twitter. The new version adds what the company says is a better user interface as well as the ability for various layers to now have animated content, as opposed to just static images.

The new features are available immediately in version 5.0 for iPhone (iOS version 4.0 and higher) and for Android. Layar said the new features aren’t yet available for Symbian, though it aims to add them to that operating system soon. The update has been in beta testing since February.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110411/augmented-reality-universe-gets-a-new-layar/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110405/new-iphone-app-lets-users-count-calories-without-burning-any/ http://allthingsd.com/20110405/new-iphone-app-lets-users-count-calories-without-burning-any/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:13:02 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=5921 There are lots of ways to count calories, but MealSnap may be the easiest yet.

The new iPhone app allows you to take a picture of what you are about to stuff your face with, compares it with its databases and then sends back an estimate of just how many calories you are about to consume (or have consumed if you manage to down it before the result comes back). The app, from InterActiveCorp’s DailyBurn unit, costs $2.99.

Like the calorie signs at restaurants, what you learn may not be that pleasant, but some research seems to show we make better choices when armed with the information. Then again, other studies suggest that may not be the case.

DailyBurn CEO Andy Smith said he lives in New York, a place where some menus have to list calorie information.

“I know that affects my decisions,” he told Mobilized.

Smith admits that the app won’t be spot-on in estimating calories, but notes that’s not necessarily the point.

“It’s not super important to be accurate,” Smith says. “Just the act of tracking something can change behavior.”

Because it stores a record of the photos, the app can also be used as a visual food diary. The truly ambitious (or even the boldly gluttonous) can opt to share the pictures with their friends and family, using the in-app ability to upload to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

“Some people like that to keep them accountable,” Smith said.

I wasn’t that ambitious, but I did want to put MealSnap through its paces. I started easy, snapping a picture of a tangerine. I didn’t want to make things too easy, so I didn’t add the optional caption. Two minutes later it guessed it was an orange and told me it was somewhere between 43 and 65 calories. Next up I sent a bowl of peanuts in the shell, including the caption. Within a minute it came back and estimated that would add up to somewhere between 149 and 224 calories (not counting whatever I burned cracking those pesky hulls). I opted to take a pass on the peanuts.

I wanted something that I could compare with an actual calorie count. In the name of science, I decided to scoop myself some light ice cream (I know, I have a rough job). I measured out exactly one cup, which the product label said should be 240 calories. I then scooped it out, snapped the picture and added a caption. MealSnap estimated my midmorning indulgence in the range of 108-162 calories.

MealSnap is only for iPhone for now, though the company hopes to do an Android app eventually. DailyBurn is still in the final beta testing for the Android version of its main app, which tracks exercise and nutrition information. Smith said the 14-person company has more iOS expertise, but is working to quickly get up to speed on Android.

“We know we’ve got to do it,” Smith said. “It’s coming soon.”

Smith said that MealSnap reflects the direction the company hopes to go, with apps that are less scientific but more fun and easy to use.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110405/new-iphone-app-lets-users-count-calories-without-burning-any/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/augmented-reality-industry-aims-to-get-beyond-the-hype/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/augmented-reality-industry-aims-to-get-beyond-the-hype/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:00:47 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=5144

Laurent Gil is tired of seeing demos on what augmented reality can do in the future.

That’s not because he doesn’t believe in the potential of the technology. Indeed, the entrepreneur has built his entire company–Viewdle–around the promise of augmented reality. But Laurent says it is time to spend less time talking about pie-in-the-sky visions and more time showing what it can do for people now.

“There’s been a lot of hype around augmented reality,” he said. “A lot of hype usually is a good thing only in the beginning. Then at some point it becomes a question of ‘Does it make my life more useful?’”

Laurent says the industry is at an inflection point where it can now show real applications for the technology. “Showing a demo of what it can be is contributing to the hype,” he said. “Showing a product that is here today is what makes it a reality.”

Augmented reality applications, particularly on the phone, have already begun to make an impact. Word Lens, an iPhone app that translates signs on the fly, was an overnight hit. Other titles have proved popular in both the gaming and retail arenas.

Another popular arena has been applications that allow users to get more information about their location by pointing their phone as they head into an area. Gil said he is not totally sold on that approach. Having to walk down the street while staring at one’s phone, he says, is not exactly natural.

“It’s just not normal,” he says. “It’s not normal enough.”

Augmented reality applications, he said, need to create user experiences that don’t make people totally alter their behavior. Among the areas he sees as taking good advantage of the capability today are gaming companies like Ogmento, which tap a user’s natural surroundings to inform the game but don’t require the player to do a whole lot of awkward motion.

In that case, he said, augmented reality “is a feature that brings reality inside of a game.”

Meanwhile, Gil’s company, Viewdle, plans next quarter to introduce a free Android app, which gives users the ability to recognize and tag who is in the viewfinder, then to share the image with people in their social graph via social networks, social media, email, MMS or SMS.

Gil will be among the participants in a CTIA panel I am moderating on Tuesday addressing the opportunities and challenges of augmented reality. Also on the panel will be Bruno Uzzan of Total Immersion as well as Jay Wright of Qualcomm and Ogmento CEO Ori Inbar.

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