Very Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Germany, when holidays come closer, people tend to say “it christmases a lot” – if you translate it directly and don´t care about the pain reading it afterwards. But in the last days I had the impression “it augmented realities a lot” too. Man, my blog stats exploded (I even entered the “growing blogs” section of wordpress), everybody is referring to this and that demo or campaign (some of them completely new to me) and last but not least: there are at least two webcam-AR seasons greetings microsites, using a virtual santa! For my part, I don´t need any more facts and figures from Gartner etc. to proove that augmented reality will kick it in the next years. And you know what? You, me, the funky brasilians at Mccann, the guys in New Zealand, whoever is dealing with AR right now. We are there from the beginning! Great.

So, here you can listen to the Baile Funk (?) and watch the funky Santa dance on your table: http://www.mccann.com.br/funkdenatal/

And: wishing you a peaceful christmas and an augmented new year!

VIRTUAL SANTA – reloaded

I want to share some interesting experience we`ve made the last days, releasing our augmented reality app for the iPhone. First of all, the small bug was a problem – but the users generated instant feedback, so that we could react and fix it. But of course you have to go through the approval process again, which actually takes to long for a yet released app. Maybe apple should somehow priorize bug-fixes or updates. Nevertheless, untill now over 2500 people have downloaded and used the app. And the response was quite positive. So, the AR functionality on the iPhone as a season´s greeting fun app for us definitely was a proof of concept. What do you think about VIRTUAL SANTA in your living room or foto based AR apps in general?

P.S.: the video above is for all the poor people not yet calling an iPhone their own… maybe there´s something techy under the christmas tree?

VIRTUAL SANTA

And right after my little metaphysical excurse, here´s a totally harmless augmented reality application leading to nothing more and nothing less, than fun on your iPhone. OK, there are many season´s greetings specials these days in the app-store. But where else can you take Santa in your own hands?

 

 

 

VIRTUAL SANTA can be found and downloaded for free: here.

Habermas Future?

As longs as the PEW INTERNET AND AMERICAN LIFE PROJECT and their sample of experts can be regarded as valid and representative, we are heading into an augmented future. “In 2020, virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality are popular network formats, thanks to the rapid evolution of natural, intuitive technology interfaces and personalized information overlays. (…)” And this quote goes even one step beyond:  ”By 2020, the virtual world will  have blended with the physical world; to speak of them as separate spheres will seem anachronistic,”. So, the most exciting questions arising for me are, which modell of technologically enriched worlds will succeed. Parallel (virtual) worlds or mixed realities? Will we still enter other worlds, or will they be integrated into our one big picture? And, favouring the second utopia, what technological hurdles have to be taken, can the public discourse and the institutional processes keep up with the development? Just think about data protection, manipulation, visual spam, cyber crime. Will for example a court in 2020 be able to react properly on “mixed reality delicts”? How can they look like? Will there arise new modells of services, will these be made by people or machines? Will social stratums be represented in the same way? Gosh. I think the discussion – and I don´t mean only the polemic, tech-pessimistic point of view - should follow right after the surveys and predictions. But the comments sections are empty. The deductions of those future trend questionaires are even more interesting. Don´t you think? Nevertheless, the full article can be found here.

World Premiere

Hello again! While I have been in Brasil - the reason for this lack of communication over the last weeks - the guys at my company had time to focus on some really good work. One outcome (and more to come in the next days…) is an advertising campaign for MINI, a brand of our hometown car manufacturer BMW. So, i proudly present the world premiere of the new MINI Convertible 09 as a technological world premiere: for the first time a classical print ad has been linked to the internet via webcam and augmented reality. Following the concept of our friends at Buzzinmonkey readers of german car magazines were able to celebrate the presentation of the new MINI in their own hands. The claim and the marketing approach of one of my favourite brands still is “Always Open”, and that´s how this can look like:

AR video editing

Dan Goldman of Adobe’s Advanced Technology Lab showed some nice scenarios for interactive video object manipulation by analyzing and segmenting objects in a video stream.

Have a look for yourself: