Sergey Brin shows why augmented reality is THE Social Media tool of tomorrow with Google Glass.

We all know that Sergey Brin loves extreme sports and it is great to see that this particular hobby of his inspires Google to take huge steps in developing their consumer augmented reality Glass product. In one of the most impressive live on stage presentations yet he got a whole team of his buddies to demonstrate Googles’ augmented reality vision in a way to show that AR is not for tech minds only.

One of Google’s big plans for Glass was to help users capture and share the world as they see it, but that’s clearly not all. As we’ve seen in the concept video, it’s also about facilitating communication and putting more information — think navigation information, or a user’s current speed. The possibilities are certainly “incredible,” but why is Google showing it off? According to Brin, it was because of three things — Google thought it was amazing (it is), it’s very visually striking, and because they wanted to appeal to the developer community. As such, U.S. based developers will be able to pre-order a beta build only at I/O, for the low, low price of $1500.

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Vivian Rosenthal talks about the social commercial approach of GoldRun.

I really like it when our peers in the Augmented Reality industry freely share their thoughts with the World. Fortunately I have had the pleasure to also chat freely with Vivian last year and I’m truly exited about the commercial approach that she’s taking with GoldRun. Have a look at the interview taken at CES and share your thoughts…

Oh…. and also don’t forget to download the GoldRun app 😉

http://GOLDRUNGO.com

Vodafone’s first mobile Augmented Reality experience for VNZMA.

Great signal from Vodafone… they’ve launched an app using augmented reality. Judging from this video they’re using sound and image recognition to trigger AR content. I must admit that it’s not quite what I would have in mind for Vodafone but it is of course fantastic that they are using it at such a large campaign scale.

So 5 Stars for Vodafone!

Download the VNZMA 2011 app and bring your phone to life with some clever augmented reality. Plus see whos nominated for the awards, vote for the Vodafone People’s Choice Award and heaps more.

Check it out here http://play.vodafone.co.nz/music/vnzma/app

Next phase for Face Recognition and AR

It is already over two years ago that The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) launched their concept of a social network application which was powered by face recognition. The idea: point your mobile device at a person and see all their social network connections floating around their face, as a kind of social network aura.

This concept movie triggered a lot of interest, both favorable and worried reactions (big brother…). Many people took it even literal and were expecting that such an app was around the corner and soon available for their Android or iPhone.

In reality the technology was not ready for this type of application yet, and TAT has been acquired by RIM since and works on mobile UI development instead.

TAB Worldmedia’s “Tweeps Around” gets a full story in the Huffington Post

Today we were pleasantly surprised by a fantastic full blown coverage of our “Tweeps Around” Augmented Reality channel in the Huffington Post.  The fantastic thing about this is that we didn’t even contact them about a press story but they spotted it themselves. What is even greater is that if you read the story you will find that they’ve done thorough research.

We just want to say… thanks Huffington Post for this great article!

Tweeps Around Puts Tweets On The World Around You

Twitter already lets you tag tweets with location, but what if you took a step further? Tweeps Around lets you see the tweets from users nearest to you and what they’re saying, adding a layer of micromessaged instant connectivity to your next walk around the block.

What it is: Tweeps Around lets you see tweets in your general proximity through an augmented reality layer that puts realtime information directly on top of the world around you, as seen through your phone’s camera.

Instagram + mobile augmented reality = urban artgallery

Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.

Now TAB Worldmedia turnes your street into an urban artgallery with Instagram on mobile augmented reality browsers Junaio & Layar. It’s cool, it’s free and it is lots of fun to play around with.

Johannes la Poutre & Remco Vroom, Augmented Reality content creators of TAB Worldmedia, were inspired by the Instagram photo sharing service. La Poutre: “We’ve produced several social sharing channels on public augmented reality browsers. The instagram service adds a new demension to picture sharing because the quality and perspective of the photo’s is very high.”

Vroom: “The Instagram AR channels are a true addition to our social media portfolio. We’ve succesfully introduced several social sharing services to augmented reality. Services like:

• Twitter: Tweeps Around + 4 million users
• Panoramio: Currently Worldwide top 3 position in layar
• Moby Picture: With several co-branded services
• Foursquare: Augmented Checkins & tip finder

As a next step we think adding an augmented reality view in the current iPhone app of Instagram could offer a unique experience for their users. With our AR player integration service we could easily do this for Instagram but that might be a bit premature at this stage.”

TAB Worldmedia & The Saints launch the Worlds first iPhone app with Layar AR viewer!

Today we launched the Worlds first iPhone app with Layar augmeted reality viewer. Mobile augmented reality specialists TAB Worldmedia & iPhone app. specialists The Saints, collaborated to create this fantastic AR enhanced iPhone app. for Verbeterdebuurt (improve the neighbourhood).

Verbeterdebuurt (Improve the neighbourhood) is a neighbourhood platform that literally puts your issues and ideas for the public space on the map. It invites you to improve your neighbourhood en shares your submissions. It offers participants the easiest way to send councils reports over the web, mobile or widgets. But that is just the start: Verbeterdebuurt opens all submission to the public and encourages citizens to view, support or share their neighbourhoods issues on your social networks.

Remco Vroom and Johannes la Poutre, augmented reality directors of TAB Worldmedia; “When we first got in contact with Verbeterdebuurt in 2010 we immediately realized that this is exactly the kind of service that could benefit from Layars’ mobile augmented reality functionalities. By looking around through the layer viewer you really get a good sense of how active you, your neighbours and the council are in actually improving the neighbourhood.”

Stijn van Balen, technical director of Verbeterdebuurt; “We achieved a lot of succes with the Verbeterdebuurt iPhone app developed by The Saints. I was really excited when TAB Worldmedia called me to tell about the Layar player and that we were now ready to integrate the augmented reality view into our iPhone app. I am very happy with the result; the Layar player is a real exciting and engaging addition to our Verbeterdebuurt iPhone 4 app.”

Thomas Engel, director of The Saints; “Bringing AR to companies own App is a great step forward into the adoption of Augmented Reality. The fact that the leading company in this domain, Layar, is the one to facilitate this is great. We expect many of our clients to include this functionality into their Apps, with Verbeterdebuurt being the first and what a great example to start with.”

About Verbeterdebuurt
Verbeterdebuurt is a prizewinning eparticipation concept. Its website http://www.verbeterdebuurt.nl launched in april 2009 and has since seen over 100.000 visitors, 10.000 issues and cooperates with more than 300 councils in the Netherlands. The Verbeterdebuurt foundation aims to engage citizens to improving their neighborhood through their platform. The platform is also available for councils that seek participation and improved relations with citizens. The business model of the foundation is based on offering tailor-made solutions and backoffice integration.
Contact info: contact@verbeterdebuurt.nl

About TAB Worldmedia
TAB Worldmedia creates mobile augmented reality content for premium brands. TAB Worldmedia was one of the first companies that professionally developed AR content on Layar. With popular augmented reality layers like “Tweeps Around (>3million unique visitors in 2010), Foursquare, Panoramio” and commercial brands like “Walt Disney, Heineken Music Hall, ID&T, Unibail Rodamco and National Geographic” in our portfolio, TAB Worldmedia is one of the most active content development companies on the Layar platform.
Contact info: info@TABworldmedia.com TABworldmedia.com

About The Saints
The Saints creates meaningful user experiences through creative use of mobile technology since 2005. Development is done on all mobile & tablet platforms; iOS (iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch), Java (J2ME), Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian and BlackBerry. We are always focused on creating mobile relevance for our clients. We love mobile and we love to make your App. More information and cases can be found at www.the-saints.nl

TEDx goes Layar augmented reality with TEDxPortraits

A couple of weeks ago we at TAB Worldmedia met this incredible creative group of people that were working on a concept called TEDxPortraits. The title of the concept alone immediately grabbed our attention. One evening we made an appointment with them to meetup at Canvas in Amsterdam to talk about their ideas. There we were introduced to @vijfke @supertaboo @ikbendAF.

TEDxPortriats is a new collaborative initiative of the three of us, @ikbendAF told us. “The concept of TEDx Ideas worth spreading immediately triggered us to come up with TEDxPortraits. We will be using this incredible camera that we got sponsored by Polaroid to make beautiful analogue sepia style pictures of keynote speakers and thought leaders. We will ask them to write their “ideas worth spreading” on the Polaroid picture. We will publish these pictures in a printed book and online version for people to see.”

As you can imagine we were totally inspired by this concept because we  believe that this is exactly the kind of storytelling idea that needs to be brought to a mobile augmented reality concept. After an inspiring talk we decided to bring the digitized Polaroids portraits to Layar so everybody that has Layar installed on their phone can view these inspiring thoughts in augmented reality.

The TEDxPortraits Layar is sposored by TABWorldmedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How it works:

1. Install Layar on your Android-, or iPhone 3Gs/4.
2. Open the Layar augmented reality browser
3. Go to search & type: TEDx
4. Open the TEDxPortraits layer & enjoy!

Open the Layar directly with this mobile link:

http://m.layar.com/open/tedxportraits

Or use this QR-code

Mysteryland 2010: the biggest dance event with augmented reality

So today we went over to Mysteryland to prepaire and test the Mysteryland layar. It’s mighty impressive what ID&T has done with the area. From what we’ve seen we can already say that this year will be the best EVER!!!! Never mind if there’s a little rain because once you’ve hit the Mysteryland grounds you’ll forget all about that! There is so much to see and do… it’s truely awesome… but unfortunately we can’t show you the pictures… sorry that’s what we agreed with ID&T.

What we CAN show you are the first snapshots of the Mysteryland Layar! Mysteryland will add a whole new dimension tomorrow. Using the Layar augmented reality browser, you will be able to explore the huge terrain through the camera of your Android- or iPhone and find out which of the 150 dj’s is performing on the 16 stages and what is the fastest way to get there. When zooming in on a stage you will be able to learn more about the dj that is on stage, what he is playing and get downloads via Dance Tunes.

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?