My name is Sebastian and I did a one-week internship in the Munich offices of Metaio. Since I have been interested in Augmented Reality (AR) for a long time, I discovered metaio because I already enjoyed their app, Junaio. My main advisor and “personal coach“ was Matthias Greiner, who was extremely hospitable, showing me the company and explaining everything that they do at Metaio. From the first day, I had my own computer and workplace where I could explore different Junaio channels. Especially in the beginning, I was very happy that Matthias spoke German with me, but with most of the international staff I had to speak in English, which was a good chance for me to practice my language skills.
After these “first contacts” with Metaio and Augmented Reality I got my first tasks and was really part of the team. I was allowed to use, for the whole week, the very powerful software Metaio Creator and learned more and more about this program and its potentials. As time flew by, I learned a lot about tracking and finally I was allowed to create my own channel. Eventually, on Friday my channel had been published in the Junaio AR browser.
The picture shows Sebastians trackables of his business cards
Too bad that this was also my last day! I hated to go, but – if I get the chance and Metaio agrees to give a “bothersome” scholar trainee a second chance – I really want to come back for another internship in this great company.
This, unfortunately only for one week, internship was one of the best weeks in my life and that is not a lie!
Sebastian
Dear Sebastian,
We really enjoyed your company and were definitely amazed at how fast you grasped the Metaio idea! It was great to see how quickly you managed to work with the Metaio Creator and understood what is important to know. We hope you are proud about your own junaio channel and will surprise your classmates and teachers with it!
As soon as you are free to join the Metaio team we would be happy to welcome you again!
The best interactive augmented reality CMS gets brand new user interface and experience for print media
MUNICH & SAN FRANCISCO, 31 OCTOBER 2012: Metaio, the world leader in augmented reality (AR) software and solutions today released the latest version of its Metaio Creator, the only commercially available desktop drag-and-drop content authoring software optimized for all print media.
“Publishers and design professionals aren’t necessarily experts in Augmented Reality yet,” said Peter Meier, Metaio CTO. “The Creator makes it easy for them to not only launch an experience but also to scale their content – massively.”
The newest version of the Metaio Creator is the most powerful Augmented Reality content production system available. It’s the ideal tool for publishers and designers who want to bridge the digital and real worlds to add content to their print media- magazines, t-shirts, posters, logos, business cards, catalogs- nearly any image or object is just clicks away from being augmented. Publishers, Designers, Brands and Agencies don’t always have access to Augmented Reality developers. This tool allows them to easily integrate and manage augmented reality content in their mobile ecosystems. Over 300 million magazines and catalogs have already been delivered in 2012 powered by Metaio Augmented Reality technology. The Metaio Creator will enable a content explosion for augmented reality, the likes of which have not seen since the beginning days of the internet. Learn more and download the free version athttp://metaio.com/products/creator
The Metaio Creator deploys to the Cloud and major mobile platforms like Android and iOS. Publish to the Junaio Augmented Reality Browser or a native app using the powerful Metaio SDK. Powered by the Augmented Reality Experience Language (AREL), the Metaio Creator lets nearly anyone produce mobile AR interactions without any coding necessary. Watch the video to get started, or visit dev.metaio.com/creator/tutorials/the-basics/
It’s that time of year again when voting begins for all of the panels everyone has submitted to South by Southwest Interactive. Even if you’re not planning on attending South by Southwest Interactive, you can still support metaio by making your voice heard in the community voting!
Take a quick minute to create a PanelPicker account (if you don’t have one) and then link straight to these two great panels that feature metaio projects and use-cases:
In order to engage with a younger, tech-savvier audience, Toyota launched an integrated marketing campaign for the 2012 Toyota Corolla that featured emerging technology like 2-D print activation and vision-based mobile augmented reality to leverage its existing yet scarcely-downloaded mobile app, the Toyota Shopping Tool. It also features an entirely digital open-source anime pop-star sensation named Hatsune Miku.
Toyota saw huge successes as a result: Corolla leads jumped 30% the week of the lauch; Toyota Shopping Tool mobile app downloads increased 600%; website traffice for the first week increased 167% and continued at an all time high for the next seven weeks.
In this proposal, learn how the interactive director of a multicultural agency and the project lead for an augmented reality company worked together to make this campaign a huge success for Toyota, culminating in a Multicultural Excellence Award.
The lady of the house is often the one picking the décor and design at home. If she can see a ductless system in her house virtually, thanks to augmented reality, sales rise — and have they ever. Using custom mobile apps integrated with emerging technology, such as augmented reality and a custom app store, Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating is revolutionizing the way its sales channel members do business. Tools in hand, Mitsubishi Electric is projecting an increase of $30 million in revenue next year, while simultaneously decreasing future costs for printing and distributing product catalogs by millions of dollars.
Mitsubishi Electric’s products can save homeowners 30-percent on their energy bill, but most just want to know, “What is it going to look like in my house?” Augmented reality is Mitsubishi Electric’s most visual tool in its custom app store that will deploy 11 new enterprise apps for a variety of specific needs in its sales channel.
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Voting starts today and continues to the end of the month, so tell your friends!
Share on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Myspace, Friendster, IRC….basically whatever you want.
While you’re at it, vote for anything else you think is cool!
Outside voting counts for 30% of the selection process, so help us get to SXSW so we can bring these great panels to life!
Yesterday we have launched the new version 4.0 of junaio with a much cleaner UI, a new API and improved performance. Instead of giving you my view on how this will change the use of Augmented Reality for real world browsing, I will let the experts of the press speak for us:
TheNextWeb: “…While there are a slew of apps that tap GPS, image recognition, visual search and other elements of augmented reality, Junaio does a good job of merging them all.” http://goo.gl/2E3DV
Engadget: “…Junaio offers less ‘clunky’ apps, new API for developers…..In fact, Junaio really needs to have coffee with Project Glass…” http://goo.gl/N1Fbr
Techcrunch: “….[Junaio] has made some major progress in simplifying the UI. Its new interface is much cleaner now and lets you get right to the camera view when the app starts up so you can immediately start scanning AR content, targets or QR codes ….” http://goo.gl/FybFL
The New York Times: “… [The junaio] interface is in some ways a little simpler to navigate because of its on-screen icons.” http://goo.gl/VMoqI
It´s still early – but please be invited to join our yearly conference InsideAR on October, 1st and 2nd . At this year´s InsideAR we will focus on showing you how the Augmented Reality eco-system – from Chipset OEMs, Technology Providers, Content Providers to End-Consumers – will enable the massive adoption of Augmented Reality. More on this: http://www.metaio.com/insidear/welcome/
We have moved Weekest Links to the metaio blog for the time-being. While they live here, we will be sure to treat them to all of the amenities that they enjoyed on the junaio Blog.
metaio / junaio recap:
Engadget takes our Next-Gen AR for an ARM-powered walk [story]
metaio named as company driving new business trends [story]
metaio highlighted as “One-to-Watch” in new innovation business report [story]
We welcomed 5 new Certified Developers to junaio [blog post]
junaio used as a tool for enhancing museum collections
Certified Developer ARworks launches the Olympic Navigator for junaio
Certified Developer EDDIEBOND releases Japanese junaio showreel
From ARound:
Augmented Reality used for giant interactive Korean Theme Park
DARPA developing augmented reality contact lenses for soldiers [story]
Research and Markets releases new report on Prototyping AR [story]
General Mills CMO Mark Addicks really digs new technology [story]
Non-AR Pick of the Week:
As we begin to better augment model cities, it is only fitting that we look in awe at one of the largest model cities in the world. Very amusing commentary as well: “Probably the world’s smallest airport!” Yes, it probably is.
Hopefully by now you’ve all seen the teaser video and read about the very, very cool announcements we made at insideAR this year. I honestly wish that I could adequately describe insideAR. Maybe it’s because I helped assemble and move 15-20 very heavy table. Maybe watching these camera arrays and industrial prototyping demos come to life, piece by piece gives one more of an appreciation in seeing the finished product. Maybe it was just my first time in Germany, combined with the anticipation of Oktoberfest in Bavaria, combined with the excitement of meeting all of the people with whom I’ve only ever communicated via Skype or telephone or email. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on my floundering attempts at description- we have videos!
This is the first clip of many that we plan to roll out over the coming days and weeks, demonstrating the current and future technologies under the hood (sometimes literally) of metaio.
insideAR was divided into various exhibition segments- one of these was called “Augmented Living”, where we demonstrated some of the potential uses of AR in the household, including the new junaio 3.0 SCAN release that allows the user to get pricing and ingredient information from grocery item barcodes. In that same area, we were also showing our Bosch 3D studio app for iPad that allows people to practically redesign their kitchens with new appliances- without ever leaving their homes.
Many attendees played around with the Around Me Geo Trivia junaio game is a very creative example of how gaming, education and mobile AR can work together to shape an engaging user experience. Sensor fusion takes elements that we tend to take for granted — orientation, geographical relative position, radial distance — and translates them into usable information- in this case, a very fun trivia game.
Our company was built on out-of-the-box industrial solutions, so it should be no surprise to see those prototyping examples in the above video. The sub-millimeter tracking with a guided camera-arm would allow any manufacturer the highest digital scrutiny in examining a prototype on the factory floor; and with the “window-to-the-world”-type 3D mapping you can overlay the original wireframe to the real-word object itself, regardless of its size. With this kind of technology, metaio is naturally bridging the industrial gap between the digital creation and the physical construction of a given product.
Really cool stuff we’re talking about here. Really cool.
Once again, we’re going to be rolling out all sorts of video in the near future, so be sure to either subscribe to this blog or to our YouTube channel (or both!) in order to stay posted.
If you haven’t heard from TechCrunch, Dexigner, or Augmented.org, this year’s insideAR brought some very significant developments for metaio. To sum it up, we made three important announcements to over 450(!) attendees:
The release a free version of the Mobile SDK, soon to be integrated with a game engine
The release of an AR-publishing tool, junaio Creator, to enable virtually anybody to create AR content for junaio
Strategic partnerships with the leading chipset IP supplier ARM and mobile platform developer ST-Ericsson on joint R&D
What this means for the industry
Mobile SDK is now free
This is a big deal. AR is a young industry- we want to see it into adulthood. We want developers, researchers, students, newcomers etc to be able to test the limits of their imaginations and creativity with one of the most comprehensive and advanced mobile AR solutions out there. I can’t wait to watch these independent developers shape the future of AR applications in their endeavors.
The junaio Creator
User interface and workflow are two of the most important things that any software provider must consider- we want both of these aspects to be more streamlined, more convenient, more natural- and that’s why we announced the junaio Creator. It’s tool that takes all of the image recognition, the natural feature tracking, and the complex algorithms of junaio and reduces that magic to two simple words: point and click. Whether you’re creating a junaio channel or utilizing our junaio Plugin to add a feature to an existing app, the junaio Creator allows you to do this without a single line of code. Check out the demo in the TechCrunch article and see for yourself.
Formal Collaborations with ARM & ST-Ericsson
I’ve been saying this for years: the surest way to enable the smoothest most immersive AR experiences is to ensure the optimization of the hardware. Though we’ve already been optimizing our software for these wonderful mobile devices that pepper our lives, metaio can now work directly with these processing and chipset providers to find the best way to ensure that mobile devices are AR-ready before they hit the shelves.
In closing
We have a genuine passion for what we do. It may seem as though we ‘re making bold statements, but please understand that it comes from a shared excitement, an almost child-like fascination in its innocence at seeing dreams becoming reality, not just 3D and digital content (though we do that too).
Augmented Reality on Every Smartphone by 2014- It will be magic.
Hatsune Miky is an adorable, completely digital Japanese celebrity created by Crypton Future Media in 2007 using YAMAHA’s “Vocaloid” Software. The (evidently) 16-year-old, 5’2” songstress’s voice has been samples in thousands and thousands of user-generated videos, audio tracks, animations etc. Her albums have even topped the Japanese charts- not bad for a girl that doesn’t exist!
Hatsune Miku may be a digital construct, but the great thing about Augmented Reality is that we can take digital and 3-D content and breathe life into it by placing it in the physical world. A virtual entity could assume all three dimensions and interact with the real world- and that’s exactly what we did for the beautiful Hatsune Miku in this most recent development for Toyota.
Toyota has been enamored with Hatsune Miku for quite some time now- they’ve produced numerous (and clever) video spots featuring the star interacting with people as though she were a real person, as well as print ads, billboards (they’re everywhere here in San Francisco) and an integrated social media campaign. We were happy to be able to (literally) bring a new dimension to Hatsune Miku’s recent introduction to the states.
iOS users can immediately access the experience by downloading the free Toyota Shopping Tool App in the iTunes App store. An Android update is coming soon, but until then users with Android devices can download metaio’s free mobile AR browser, junaio, and search for the “Hatsune Miku” channel to get the same cool performance. Once the app is launched, just point the camera at the image below (called a “ToyoTag“) to see Hatsune Miku singing “Big Dream” and dancing alongside her favorite vehicle, the 2011 Toyota Corolla.
metaio used the junaio Plugin to develop this app for a Toyota, a feature that combines the technology, audience (1.7 Million Downloads) and accessibility of junaio, the most advanced mobile Augmented Reality browser, with the added value of a custom branded white-label application. We were able to use the same superior image recognition technology and tracking algorithm as we use in junaio to integrate this experience directly into Toyota’s mobile app as if it were a white-label application. Even better, the modular structure of the Plugin allows content to be easily and efficiently modified and changed, making the junaio Plugin a great development and branding solution.
Read the full press release here, and be sure to stay posted on all of Hatsune Miku’s exploits in America with Toyota. And make sure to check out this great video of the experience below:
South by Southwest Interactive 2012 might seem far off, but the voting deadline for panels is quickly approaching. I am happy to say that metaio is participating in four different potential panels, and we’d really like to see them get a great response from our followers. We’ve got some very cool topics in the works, so we’d really appreciate your support! You can vote for as many panels as you like, so please be generous. Make sure to create an account, it only takes a few minutes- just click on the titles of the panels below to go straight to the voting page!
Augmented Reality promises the future, but who is actually building new things with it? How are they making any money? As new projects demand six-figure budgets, can privacy rights, humanistic design and fun coexist with user metrics, brand messaging and a lust for “k-factor”? We’ll take a look at what’s been built, why it did and how we might design better games for players and clients alike moving forward.
Every new project is defined by the business practices that enable them. So why do so many Augmented Reality experiences fall short of the expectations of both the buyer and end user? With dissatisfied clients and rumors of low ROI, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate how we sell AR. Roman Hasenbeck, Director of Sales and Business Development at metaio Inc., the nation’s leading AR Tech firm, explains the process of selling AR the right way. He shows us why the Hype Curve is just a crutch for lazy producers, and how the most crucial yet often-ignored components to ensuring a great project and closing a sale is taking the time to learn the tech, design a thoughtful experience and communicate it effectively to the client.
Using a variety of original source material, Chris Grayson will give an overview of the global network, as envisioned by thinkers at ARPA before the creation of the ARPAnet. Examples include J.C.R. Licklider’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” 1960; Douglas Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect,” 1962; and Ivan Sutherland’s “The Ultimate Display,” 1965. Some focus will also be given to the people and personalities involved. Lisa Murphy will provide the technical explanation for many milestones in the evolution of the internet, making the case that the human interface to the network has historically been limited by the available technology, and with Augmented Reality, we are now entering an era that truly begins to deliver on the original vision.
Our life styles are increasingly evolving into hybrid experiences that blend the physical with the cyberspatial and the virtual. Moreover, these interactions are creating new forms of communities for fun and commerce, where consumers and businesses increasingly use hyperlocal incentives to leverage our immediate surroundings. In this panel, we’ll explore how games, collaborative consumption, Augmented Reality, consumer to consumer brokerages, experience augmentation, visual discovery and local commerce are providing the glue for diverse hyper-local experiences and communities.
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Outside voting counts for 30% of the selection process! Help us get to SXSW so we can bring these great panels to life.
Augmented Reality will fundamentally change the way how we access, understand, enjoy and share digital information. The vision of being able to point a mobile device camera at anything in the real world and instantly receive contextual information is beginning to take shape as a roadmap to the future of AR. Enabling technologies and the vast growth of content will turn AR into a daily-used standard interface. The 2011 insideAR event in Munich, September 26-27, will demonstrate that AR is here to stay.
An outlook on the Roadmap of AR and the vision of an Augmented City – where contextual, digital information displayed in the real world is only a fingertip away – can be seen at this joint demo by the Media Processing Division of ARM and the R&D department by metaio:
Come and visit us at insideAR and experience the Augmented City of Munich!
Posted by anglmaslov 
