Announcement: TAB Worldmedia primary sponsor of NIMA Awards 2010

Amsterdam, July 27th. Augmented reality agency TAB Worldmedia announces its official partnership with NIMA (Dutch Institute for Marketing) and its position as primary sponsor of the NIMA Marketing Awards 2010.

Remco Vroom and Johannes la Poutre, founders of TAB Worldmedia state: “We are very proud to announce this official partnership with NIMA just 6 months after we started TAB Worldmedia. The partnership means a lot for us and for the emerging industry of mobile augmented reality and other location bases services. We want to stimulate innovation in the Dutch marketing scene and we hope to make a substantial contribution through this partnership. Our position as primary sponsor of NIMA Awards 2010 is one of the many things we want to do with NIMA.”

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3D multi-touch the next stage for augmented reality

We’ve been looking forward to 3D motion tracking since Tom Cruise showed off this cool feature in the film Minority Report. And we did see some initiatives that approached this futuristic feature rather closely.

Personally I am more than fascinated by the rapid development of this new technique. The secret is that the technique is actually there already… it’s just not as cool yet as we know from Minority report because we still have to view the images on screen but we’re getting there.

Now I guess you must be pretty curious to see some of this stuff in action right?

Ok, I’ll show you what I’m talking about…

Google acquires Metaweb

Yesterday, Metaweb announced that it has been acquired by Google.

Now this is very significant news because Google clearly shows that it no longer ignores the whole web 3.0 aka Semantic Web or Linked Open Data movement.

Up till now it seemed that they were not interested in these developments, which started early in this decade. Apart from a minimal exercise with “rich snippets” (normally known as microformats or the official w3c standard RDFa) they largely ignored the parts of the industry which were building on Semweb standards. Now, they get a jump start in this space with Metaweb and it’s flagship product, Freebase.

As you may know, Freebase is a Linked Data index of the web’s knowledge. This model of indexing the web is radically different from Google’s traditional approach; because everything is based on community efforts (DBPedia is a central source) and well defined open standards, there is no “secret sauce” involved – and hence no competitive advantage – which the well kept business secret of Page Rank provided until now. From this perspective, Google has a huge benefit by a dis-organized web of documents and so no incentive to contribute to any Linked Open Data standards.

At one hand this competitive advantage was diminishing because challengers like Bing are catching up with very similar quality web search results. At the other hand the Linked Data web is getting serious traction with the publication and rapid adoption of Facebook’s Open Graph protocol (and continued support form parties such as Yahoo!).

So all in all this is a very logical step for Google to take, and likely something they were planning for already, just waiting for the right time to hit and spend some pocket money.

OK, fine you’ll ask, but what has this to do with Augmented Reality?

Not very much on first sight, but I am convinced that Semantic Web technologies and Social Graph data will soon play a huge role in the evolution of Augmented Reality, see my blog post earlier this year: The Path to the Future of AR is Open.

For now, watch the video below for an excellent explanation about the benefits of Linked Data (Source: Metaweb’s blog).

Beyond Breakout -The world is like a giant game board. Why don’t all marketers want to play?

I want to share this increadible masterpiece that was written by futurist David Griner. It is a must read…

Imagine this. You’re on a cobblestone street. The sun is low and red between the high-rises, making you squint as you scan for clues. There, on a half-obscured flier on a wall, you see it: a picture of an anchor. You hold your phone in front of it. The gaunt and smirking ghost of an admiral appears on your screen. He gives you a subtle nod before pointing to an unlabeled door. You push it open. Inside is an elegant woman holding a serving tray. “Congratulations,” she says. “You’re the first to find the secret stash of the new Admiral añejo tequila. Have a glass, courtesy of the Admiral.”

Is this real life or a fantasy world? It’s a high-tech combination of both, and it’s a scenario that could happen today. Thanks to the rapid evolution of mobile technology, smartphones have transformed the real world into a giant game board, allowing users to interact and compete in ways that were science fiction a decade ago. Whether you’re fighting to be Foursquare mayor of your favorite coffee shop or searching posters for hidden QR codes to reveal hints about a new movie, it’s clear that businesses have more ways than ever to engage their fans and make day-to-day life more fun. For advertisers and the brands they market, the potential is virtually limitless, which makes it a given that most big brands can hardly wait to get in on the action, right?

Follow the Rabo cyclists in the Tour De France in augmented reality.

We introduced the Moby augmented reality Layar a couple of days ago and now we already have the first commercial brand working with the new concept. And what a brand it is… Rabosport! The Branded Rabosport Now Layar lets you explore the content around you in augmented  reality. Showing you the latest photo and video Mobypicture postings and Twitter updates of the Rabosport Cycling teams and those of the Press and all Fans, nearest to you. The Layer shows all the location tagged content of the realtime platform Rabosport Now, developed by Mobypicture.

Fans can post content to the Layer by adding #raboploeg to their regular Mobypicture and Twitter postings using any of the over 750 different Mobypicture enabled applications and services.

Why ‘mobile augmented reality’ will be a huge industry!

I was reviewing my list of TED talks and I came across this talk from David Sivers on “How to start a movement”. With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)

I guess this is what all of us who are working in mobile augmented reality feel like. And also why we all know that mobile augmented reality is will be a huge industry. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this TED talk!

Location based AR: the Third Generation

Mobile Augmented Reality on consumer devices is not even 2 years old and already at its 3rd generation regarding richness of its content model.

Apart from the very rapid technological improvements this has mostly to do with the creative innovators who adopted the new medium. These innovators constantly look for new ways to enhance the experience by adding new layers of depth and interaction models.

Mobile- or Location Based AR?

Mobile AR is an often used term to set this class of applications apart from the mostly static, marker based AR applications where a webcam attached to a computer is used to link a 3D model t a printed graphical marker. This type of application is certainly less mobile than the application class we call Mobile AR, but the main difference is that the latter uses the observer’s location as a unique trigger rather than visual recognition of a marker.

Welcome to the fantastic world of Mobypicture’s augmented reality!

People all around the world share their adventures using Mobypicture to all their social networks. From their mobile phone they easily upload photos, video and audio to their friends on networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, their blog and numerous other social sites and services.

The Moby Layer lets you explore the latest picture and video postings of other Moby users nearest to you. You can view the content through the mobile phones’ camera in Augmented Reality, or on a map and there is a List view. Clicking the content gives you more info (comments etc.) and options; the routing how to get to the spot where the picture was taken and a link to the content on the Mobypicture website, where the user can get more info and leave a comment themselves.

How can businesses benefit from these possibilities?