Mobile World Congress 2010

February 12th, 2010
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The 2010 Mobile World Congress will be held 15-18 February, in Barcelona Spain.

For four days, this beautiful Mediterranean city will become the place for mobile leaders to gather, collaborate, conduct business and experience VISION IN ACTION.

This year’s Mobile World Congress will include:

  • A world-class thought leadership conference featuring visionary keynotes and action-provoking panel discussions
  • An exhibition with more than 1,300 companies displaying the cutting-edge products and technology that will define the mobile future
  • An Awards ceremony  and industry seminars that highlight the most innovative mobile solutions and initiatives from around the world
  • And most importantly, the planet’s best venue for mobile industry networking, finding business opportunities, and making deals

In 2009, Mobile World Congress hosted approximately 47,000 mobile professionals from 182 countries. More than 50% of these were C-Level executives, and 9,000 of them represented mobile network operators from around the world.  In addition, more than 2,400 members of the press reported from the event, representing more than 1,500 media groups from 76 countries.

If your company wants to be a serious player in the mobile eco-system, you can’t afford to miss the 2010 GSMA Mobile World Congress. Join us in Barcelona and see VISION IN ACTION!

Preview the agenda!

Take the MWC Virtual Tour

Download the Brochure

Highlights from last year’s event

Be a part of Mobile World Congress!

Showcase Applications

The following companies/projects will demonstrate their software in the Mobile AR Showcase:

Would you like to participate?

If you are planning to come to the Mobile Augmented Reality Showcase
@ Mobile World Congress and you have a smartphone, then go to the
Apple AppStore, the Android Market and the Ovi Store and download the
applications from companies mentioned above.

On February 17, don’t forget to bring your business cards, your mobile
handset and your open mind! And maybe an umbrella if it begins to rain.

If you are a provider of an application or service and you would like to
demonstrate as part of the Mobile AR Showcase, there is no cost. We only
request that you help us to populate the Showcase directory of applications
by completing this form (same as button above).

Layar 3.0 Publishing Site is up

December 11th, 2009
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The Layar Publishing site is up, with support for Layar 3.0 layers! Developers can start making their 3.0 layers immediately by going to http://dev.layar.com

Changes this release:

* 3D Objects (see the Layar Wiki for details)

* Unlimited POI types

* Support for more textbox and slider filters

* New checkboxlist filter – there can be more than one

* User authentication – cookies

* Auto-triggered actions

* Local layers – a new way to define and find layers

* Flexible radius – Return as many POIs as you need, and then set the radius

* Improved layer validation, and automatic support for older client versions

* POI-to-POI capability, for story-telling and guided tours

Voodoo Experience Festival + AR

September 30th, 2009
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Augmented Reality for Fun

A sneak peek at the mobile augmented reality application for the 2009 Voodoo Experience taking place in New Orleans on Halloween weekend. The application was developed by Zehnder on the Layar Reality Browser available for Android smart phones.

Layar Reality Browser adds 3D to its Platform

September 23rd, 2009
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Layar announced the addition of 3D capabilities to its augmented reality browser platform. With 3D, developers can tag real-life objects with 3D text, place 3D objects in real-world space, and create multi-sensory experiences. The addition of 3D enables Layar developers to create more realistic and immersive augmented reality experiences for mobile devices.

First demo at Picnic Conference in the Netherlands

The first demonstration of the Layar 3D experience will be at the Picnic Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from September 23-25. A demo application has been developed to showcase the power of 3D. Conference attendees looking for “Picnic” in the Android Market can find and download the Android application to their phone to view a virtual exhibition that delivers a multi-sensory experience of reality, augmented by 3D.

They will experience the flyby of a jumbojet, a rocket launch, and be in the middle of an arcade game – all including sound. Conference buildings are tagged with 3D texts and on the lawn several 3D objects are placed such as windmills and 3D “experience domes”. Videos and images of the demo are available at www.layar.com/3D.

How does it work?

Layar 3D makes use of OpenGL, the accelerometer, the GPS and the compass of the phone. Developers can place 3D objects in their content layers based on coordinates. Objects can be optimized in size and orientation to create an immersive and realistic experience. The 3D capabilities support live downloading and rendering of 3D objects. Actions such as “open link” or “play music” can be assigned to 3D objects.

November Launch for Android

Together with selected partners Layar will update their API to support 3D objects for new and existing layers. Layar will launch 3D to the public in November together with the launch of version 3.0 of the Layar Reality Browser for Android.

Raimo van der Klein, CEO:

“We are very excited to announce this groundbreaking addition to the platform. Augmented Reality is an experience medium, not just a tool or a substitute for maps. With 3D we deliver these experiences. The platform currently facilitates over 500 developers who from November onwards will have endless possibilities to create rich 3D multi-sensory Augmented Reality experiences.”

About Layar

The Layar Reality Browser displays real time digital information on top of reality in the camera screen of the mobile phone. While looking through the phone’s camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, tourist information, play a live game, etcetera. Layar first launched on June 16th, 2009 and announced its global launch and version 2.0 on August 17th, 2009. The Layar platform serves as an enabler for mobile location services – any database with geo-location information can easily be turned in a content layer. The Layar Reality Browser is globally available for mobile phones running the Android operating system, with iPhone 3GS coming soon. Layar is a company based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

More information

Weblink: http://layar.com/3D

Semi- Augmented Reality on iPhone 3.1

September 10th, 2009
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Come on iPhone! you can do it, son

Apple gave users (and developers) the impression that the 3.1 firmware would provide support for AR apps. However, as Orin Inbar points out on Games Alfresco, 3.1 only brings ’semi support’ for AR apps. While developers can now overlay graphics on a live video stream, it is still not possible for developers to actually analyze the live video stream. Many AR apps like ARSights track markers or objects and then replace them with their own info. On the iPhone, this is currently only supported through a private API and, as Inbar notes, chances are that Apple won’t allow such an app into the store.

On the other hand, though, apps that don’t need this functionality and only need to be able to overlay text over a video such as Layar or Wikitude should now be a possibility on the iPhone after they already made their debut on Android quite a while ago.

Wikitude strikes again

September 8th, 2009
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Wikitude releases their API

Augmented Reality (AR), the class of technologies that places sets of data on top of other views of the world around a user, is fast becoming a very crowded market. Austrian AR browser maker Wikitude has taken a very competitive step this afternoon with the release of its Application Programming Interface (API) to power AR browsers on any other application.

The company says its API

“Represents the emergence of an open AR development platform which could further drive the adoption of Wikitude as a potential standard for developers who want to create their own mobile AR experience. Get ready to see Augmented Reality come to far more mobile applications and for Wikitude’s competitors to respond.”

Wikitude displays Wikipedia and user-contributed Points of Interest over the camera view of Android phones, over a Google map or in list form. Wikitude.me provides an easy way for anyone to add Points of Interest that are immediately available to Wikitude mobile users. The company has said in the past that it intends to put all of that data under a Creative Commons license. The new API will allow an Augmented Reality camera view to be added to any other Android application that contains geographic data. Hopefully an API will be available from iPhone apps when the next version of the iPhone operating system is released. (We’ve asked Wikitude about that.)

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Wikitude says it worked with more than 100 developers from 25 countries in building its API. Both commercial and non-commercial API keys are available to remove the watermark placed over non-keyed implementations. The API allows developers to customize the actions that occur when info-balloon overlays are clicked on and change the menu options for the AR browser.

Will competitors like Layar, AcrossAir, Tochnidot, RobotVision and others release APIs soon as well? They have to be working on it, but Wikitude appears to have the most open disposition, one of the broadest developer communities and thus may be the best suited to become the AR platform of choice.

There are enough players in the AR field already that the competition will likely come down to two things: usability of interfaces and developer-friendliness. May the games begin!

Wikitude Drive – AR Navigation System

August 28th, 2009
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PRESS RELEASE.
Mobilizy GmbH reveals a preview of it’s augmented reality navigation system, the first fully functional mobile AR navigation system available for the Android platform. Wikitude Drive was developed by the Mobilizy Research & Development group in Salzburg, Austria, to satisfy the curiosity of the developers to see if it was feasible to combine real-time navigation with mobile augmented reality. The result of this quest is Wikitude Drive, a fully-functional, light weight navigational system which overlays point-to-point directions on a camera-view, without the need for maps.

Wikitude Drive boasts the following features:

* * Mobile AR navigation, similar to a heads up display (HUD);
* * Fully functional, map-less navigation;
* * POI 2 POI navigation;
* * Integrated voice commands (additional text-to-speech engine required);
* * World wide navigational data which is accessed in real-time from the internet; o (a mobile internet connection is necessary to access data while in motion)
* * Peer-to-peer navigational functions o Social navigational features will be implemented in future releases
* * Interfaces with existing navigational APIs (for example: NavTeq, Map24, TeleAtlas)
* * Launching for Android and iPhone soon.

ARvertising Note: All these AR browsers (Layar, Wikitude..etc) will get into the REAL THING the day HMD (head mounted displays – lets say “AR sunglasses”..-) will come to stay. Before that, in my opinion,  they are not going to give to final users something really useful (you can’t drive watching your phone’s screen for AR directions, sorry).

Maybe the “pedestrian” versions have one point…

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Yelp’s Augmented Reality (for free!) on the iPhone in US

August 28th, 2009
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Because good things doesn’t necessary have to cost money

Yelp’s portal is offering a FREE AR app to retrieve information layers on your iPhone 3Gs (US only). Layar, Android’s AR browser is also about to release their application for iPhone.

If you are interested to know who was the first one at the AppStore, they were Mètro Paris and London Bus (you have to pay for them).

Co-founder Antoine Morcos:

Basically, with this application, you are able to see all the metro and bus stations around you (<1km), and also a lot of Points of Interest (Restaurants, etc.) via Augmented Reality, thanks to the camera.

This Yelp-AR-surprise tells us that Augmented Reality Mobile Browsers show is just beginning!

Anyone knows Google’s plans? Are they just sitting there watching the wheels go round and round?

Here you can see Yelp’s AR Browser in motion:

iPhone wont learn it. No AR markers for API’s 3.1

August 27th, 2009
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Sad AR story…

Today a bird told us that iPhone wont allow access to live video on the API’s 3.1. That means that there wont be chances to make a Marker Augmented Reality app for iPhone -for now-.

For now, AR community’s iPhone developers will have to concentrate their forces into browsers like Layar or Wikitude , based on compass & gyro to create the AR effect.

So.. stop dreaming about pet jumping around a marker… or stuff like that.

We all hope that Apple start thinking forward again as always did…

iPhone and Layar = Augmented Reality…Really?

August 24th, 2009
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As we explained in early posts, iPhone will release in september the live video library that will allow systems like Layar to be used on apple devices.

For now Layar works only on Android phones.

Layar situation

Already downloaded 50.000 times since launched, there are already 68 layers available around the globe.
You can find stores, tourist guides, transit info and many others. 110 layers are yet to come..

Mr. Lens-FitzGerald, co-founder of Layar said:

“There are already local directories like Google Local search, but with Layar, you can supply services based on that customer at that moment. Layar allows for context-aware services, because the phone has sensors of where that person is, who that person is, what kind of weather there is. It’s not just about finding people; it’s about providing a service that’s context-aware. [Consumers] found you; how can you help them right now?”

There is a part of the developers AR community that still need a sign to believe in AR Mobiles

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