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i have a few complaints about the use of “augmented reality.” the first is primarily semantic. it seems (to me at least) like the term it implies some kind of (pre-digital?) “non-augmented” reality. this is more or less explicit when we refer to things like “augmented revolution” or “augmented conference.” it seems like the idea of augmented reality was introduced to make a point against a false binary (“digital dualism”) and i agree that this is important, both academically and in real life (see what i did there?). but i think the way we talk about augmented reality is sneaking a version of that binary back in. not the naive real v virtual but maybe something like real v “real+” and i think that is a mistake. and it is a strange mistake to read here, on a blog called “cyborgology” that proclaims (rightly i’m sure) that we have always been cyborgs. our friends from sst especially, i think, are sensitive to how reality has always been “augmented” if we are paying attention. so quoting sst hero latour:

If we wanted to project on a standard geographical map the connections established between a lecture hall and all the places that are acting in it at the same time, we would have to draw bushy arrows in order to include, for instance, the forest out of which the desk is coming, the management office in charge of classroom planning, the workshop that printed the schedule that has helped us find the room, the janitor that tends the place, and so on. And this would not be some idle exercise, since each of these faraway sites has, in some indispensable way, anticipated and preformatted this hall by transporting, through many different sorts of media, the mass of templates that have made it a suitable local—and that are still propping it up.* and he goes on for literally pages. he starts on p 200 (where the quote is from) and ends somewhere on p 203. then he picks it up again on p 206 with more. by 207 he is talking about the “plug-ins”, “patches” and “applets” that actors in a lecture need to make sense of what is happening. and cyborgs:

As we have witnessed so many times throughout this book, information technologies allow us to trace the associations in a way that was impossible before. Not because they subvert the old concrete ‘humane’ society, turning us into formal cyborgs or ‘post human’ ghosts, but for exactly the opposite reason: they make visible what was before only present virtually. In earlier times, competence was a rather mysterious affair that remained hard to trace; for this reason, you had to order it, so to speak, in bulk. As soon as competence can be counted in bauds and bytes along modems and routers, as soon as it can be peeled back layer after layer, it opens itself to fieldwork.

In the tradition of much post-Modern theorizing, “augmented reality” offers a new conceptual paradigm, seeking to implode/queer/do category work on the real/virtual dichotomy and make room for a more flexible understanding of social media that allows for recursivity between these two concepts.  A person embedded in augmented reality is a cyborg in the Harawaysian sense.  For this reason, the editors of this blog have proposed – somewhat tongue-in-cheek – that our research is best understood as “cyborgology.”  In augmented reality, the culture is hyper-literally super-imposed on the material.  Our bodies and all other objects in the world become canvases for the digital and its rapid circulation of signs and symbols.  In Bauman’s term, everything becomes a conduit of Liquid (post-)Modernity.  However, the symbolic order expressed through the digital does not emerge out of nothing; it is a reproduction or extension of what has always existed.  The digital and material are always in circulation and neither can be abstracted from the new order of social relations.  That is to say, society is neither online or offline; it is augmented.  Thus, augmented reality and the cyborgs who populate it are now the proper objects of sociological inquiry.

three distinct perspectives perceive the Internet as either virtual reality, mediated reality, or augmented reality.  I argue (in the spirit of Saussure) that these three perspectives are only fully comprehensible defined in relation to one another.

This weekend in Amsterdam you may see a whole bunch of people waving their smartphones around at once. It’s the first social net/augmented reality flashmob, aka a fabulous way to combine three novel Net memes into one event.“Every square in every major city in the world knows the ‘human statue’ phenomenon,” he notes, so the intention of this weekend’s performance art is to take the human statue game totally into the digital world.have a smartphone that’ll run Layar (i.e. one with GPS).activate Layar, wave your smartphone in the air and ogle whatever strange and wonderful digital statue installations Veenhof’s chosen to populate the augmented space over Dam Square with. There’s a rumor that the Beatles will be showing up in pixel form, to recreate their famous Abbey Road pose.Is this the start of a new trend? You betcha. Flashmobs are still a popular affair, and AR is a tech that’s on the point of exploding into the mainstream public consciousness.

A recent video released by Hidden Creative has caused some discussion over augmented reality among netizens. The video explains that augmented reality technology is the way of the future. Users are able to use their cellphones or digital device to scan their surrounding and find out live information on the spot. The video also demonstrates how augmented reality can also overlay objects in a real-life space to help users with renovations by virtually rearranging furniture or configuring the colors virtually. Nevertheless, although most reactions to the video have been quite positive and enthusiastic, some bloggers are little bit more skeptical as to whether augmented reality is here to stay. Comments from Digital Urban included: “We maybe wrong but waving your phone around simply does not feel like the future to us”, “Augmented reality often just seems to be cool rather than actually good enough to be useful” and also “The way AR is presented here is not a step forward, it’s a step backward actually”.

For example, way back in 1961, cinematographer Morton Heilig patented his Sensorama machine, an immersive multi-sensory device that looked like a giant arcade game, except it emitted aromas, environmental elements such as wind and it also vibrated and played stereo sounds. Whilst some have referred to this as the earliest example of augmented reality, it probably leans more towards the virtual reality world.

Other key advances that helped blur the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds include American Computer scientist Ivan Sutherland’s development of the first head-mounted display (HMD) in 1968. It was primitive and bulky, but it was a sign of things to come:

Moving forward, computer artist Myron Krueger built what was called an ‘artificial reality’ laboratory called the Videoplace, in 1974. The Videoplace combined projectors, video cameras and special purpose hardware, and onscreen silhouettes of the users, placing them within an interactive environment.

*Theory mashup of AR and cyborgs.

http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/05/09/cyborgs-and-the-augmented-reality-they-inhabit/

*Actually, it’s more of an argument about the definition of Augmented Reality and the definition of Cyborgs, until you can get ‘em to click together like puzzle pieces. But so much debris is left on the floor when they’re done with the theory tin-shears, that the debris looks more interesting than the remainder.

What will it take for mobile augmented reality to become mainstream? Big brands are starting to experiment with AR features in their own apps and partnerships with startups such as Layar, Wikitude and Metaio, but there was a strong sense at yesterday's AR Summit conference in London that much work remains to be done to take the technology beyond early adopters."One of the worst things about this industry is the name," said Nick Brown, chief executive of AR technology provider Crossplatform. "Augmented reality? What does that mean to the public?"Layar's AR strategist King Yiu Chu suggested that the key may be a shift in the way people think about AR. "Augmented reality is not a technology: it's part of everyday life," he said. "It will be embedded in televisions, cars ... everything that has to do with vision. You don't want to be aware of that, you just want to experience."

Starbucks is launching its first major augmented reality app this holiday season that will let customers animate their coffee cups with their smartphones.

Starbucks Cup Magic launches for iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. next Tuesday. (In Canada, just the iPhone version will launch.) As demonstrated in the video above, the app works by pointing your phone’s camera at the company’s red holiday season coffee cups and 47 additional objects, such as bags of coffee, on display at Starbucks retail locations.

Doing so will produce animations involving five characters — an ice skater, a squirrel, a boy and a dog sledding and a fox — on your screen. You can also interact with the characters. For instance, if you tap the boy on the sled he does a somersault. Those who activate all five characters can qualify to win an as-yet-unnamed prize.

While tablet computing may in future transform the whole computer industry, it is already changing the way we look at augmented reality. And this is not only because of the big display. More and more different devices for multiple OS platforms are expected to appear on the market, equipped with advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras. The cost of data roaming is likely to drop and considering the millions of people expected to buy such a device in the next few years, there are incentives enough for optimizing augmented reality (AR) tablet software and to start creating really useful and fascinating applications taking full advantage of the promising, new capabilities. metaio, with its junaio 2.6 release, a junaio plug-in for third party app integration, and the revised mobile AR SDK Unifeye 2.5, is well prepared and ready to go for the next generation of AR applications. If you want to learn more about mobile AR in general and on tablets, everything is summed up here: http://www.metaio.com/specials/augmented-reality-on-tablets/ And here you can find a movie with almost everything we´re working on: 3D tracking, markerless 2D tracking and image processing, virtual manuals, interactive TV, smart packaging, advertising as a service, context sensitive product visualization, AR gaming and so on. By the way: to my knowledge it´s the first AR demos running on the Android 3.0 based Xoom!

We’ve already told you about Juniper Research’s bullish forecasts of the augmented reality services. According to latest figures we have from the research company, the market for mobile enterprise applications featuring augmented reality elements is expected to exceed $300 million by 2015. Among the deployments that will help this grow, Juniper points to areas as diverse as corporate utility, surgery and counter-terrorism.

A company called Logica is already working with the UK government on a project that could identify current and future AR capabilities, whilst evaluating them against various security and counter terrorism scenarios.

According to the report author Dr Windsor Holden, “It is highly likely that AR apps which would also incorporate location awareness will soon be developed for security service handhelds – if they are not already in development.”

Azavea announced the publication of a free white paper that summarizes their research on the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital access to historical and cultural resources

the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to develop innovative techniques for leveraging the sensors in contemporary smart phones to expand public access to historical data in novel ways. 

The new Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org application provides point-and-view access to 500 historic photographs of selected sites around Philadelphia.  Users are able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing the camera of a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The historic photos then appear as an overlay on the current urban landscape, enabling viewers to compare the past to the present.

Augmented reality has been touted as the "next big thing" for a while, yet mainstream success has proved elusive. So what can be done to turn it from a gimmick into a commercial necessity?Imagine being able to watch miniature versions of Kings of Leon or Lady Gaga play on a table right in front of your eyes.

One company - String, in partnership with tech firm Digicave - has developed and demonstrated a system that creates the impression of a 3D figure mapped onto, for example, a book shelf. Such technology opens up the possibility of having a pop star appear in your bedroom, performing as if they were on-stage.

The idea of augmented reality was first mooted as far back as in 1965, with Ivan Sutherland's now famous essay Augmented Reality: The Ultimate Display. In it, he said that "with appropriate programming… a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked," stating that digital handcuffs would be able to actually restrain users, and those shot by digital characters would be killed in real life.

"It's a novel user interface that's got everyone interested," said Jay Wright, a senior director for Qualcomm focused on augmented reality.

The compass-based mapping feature you see now represents only the beginning of augmented reality's promise, Wright said. In an interview, he said the next generation of augmented reality will better integrate superimposed images with reality and work with a broader set of applications. He believes it represents an elegant way of marrying the tangibility of the physical world with information available in the digital world.

There are still technical hurdles to surpass. More phones are starting to use a 1-gigahertz processor or faster, which is recommended to handle such tasks. The computer vision, he said, needs to be improved to it can scan three-dimensional objects rather than just flat images, which he expects is the catalyst to opening up the feature.

By providing an open platform for the creation of augmented-reality layers, these apps have democratised the AR industry - and made possible flights of fancy such as Unseen Sculptures, in which new-media artist Warren Armstrong and nearly two dozen others collaborated to populate central Melbourne and Sydney with a range of virtual artworks that "appeared" when smartphones running the Layar app were pointed at particular parts of the city."I'm fascinated by mobile devices and their ubiquity," says Armstrong, who has spearheaded the project's expansion - including planned engagements with the Sydney Fringe Festival, Cairns Festival and other projects. "It's very immersive: you can go to a location, put on headphones and do amazing things with sounds. Layar takes care of the fiddly back-end stuff for people who aren't au fait with PHP or MySQL programming. The whole thing is in its infancy, and there's a lot of scope for creating new things."

As part of BlackBerry Dev Con Asia taking place in Singapore right now, Wikitude has announced additional support for smartphones running on the BlackBerry 6. Bringing Wikitude to devices running BlackBerry 6 will help answer considerable demand expressed by users who want to experience Wikitude’s extensive content offering including more than 2,000 content Worlds consisting of approx. 150 million places around the globe. Users of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, 9780,9788 and BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphones can download Wikitude on BlackBerry App World starting today.

After being crowned “The Most Addictive Social App Using the BBM Social Platform” at BlackBerry DevCon Americas in October, Wikitude most recently won the BlackBerry® EMEA Innovation Award for “Best BBM Connected App”, awarded in Alicante 1stDecember. “Extending the Wikitude platform to millions of BlackBerry 6 smartphone users will make the BBM experience richer than ever before. We are extremely happy to finally bring this version of Wikitude to even more BlackBerry smartphone users,” says Martin Herdina, Wikitude’s CEO.

Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations, Research In Motion, said: “We’re delighted that Wikitude has integrated BBM support within their app. Integration with BBM can allow much greater viral discovery for apps, as well as enrich and transform the user experience with important social elements.”

Thanks to augmented reality technology, a tiny version of Rihanna actually seems to emerge from the cap of a jar of Nivea Creme to sing her song “California King Bed.”

The app, which went live this week, is an attempt to “create engaging digital advertising experiences,” says a statement from the company. Nivea tried to create such as experience this summer with a “Co-Star with Rihanna” Facebook campaign that let users star in a short, alternative version of the music video for the song by editing themselves into the action.

For the AR component, all you have to do is buy a tin of Nivea Creme or print one out from Nivea’s website and hold either up to your computer’s webcam. Then, voila, Rihanna appears.

An ad agency, several musicians, and an app developer have collaborated on Lucozade Energy’s latest campaign, creating drink bottles that launch videos through an augmented reality (AR) smartphone app.

Billington Cartmell, a UK ‘thinking brands’ agency, led the project to join artistic expression with an interactive brand experience. Using a the unique ability of the Aurasma app to map and track cylindrical objects, the agency asked seven of the UK’s biggest musicians to design a Lucozade bottle which when viewed through Aurasma leaps to life with video and animations.

A great deal of exclusive content was created for this campaign, and most of it is accessible only through the AR-enabled app. The animations that play from the bottles in the app are really only teasers, directing users to a website with documentaries and behind-the scenes video.

The power of social media to burrow dramatically into our everyday lives as well as the near ubiquity of new technologies such as mobile phones has forced us all to conceptualize the digital and the physical; the on- and off-line.

And some have a bias to see the digital and the physical as separate; what I am calling digital dualism. Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality.

geo-tagging (think Foursquare or Facebook Places), street view, face recognition, the Wii controller and the fact that sites like Facebook both impact and are impacted by the physical world to argue that “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.” This is opposed to the notion that the Internet is like the Matrix, where there is a “real” (Zion) that you leave when you enter the virtual space (the Matrix) -an outdated perspective as Facebook is increasingly real and our physical world increasingly digital.

American retail company REI ventures into augmented reality (AR) promotions by creating an AR app to give prizes to consumers and at the same time encourage traffic inside its new location in New York.

The app is named “Find Out NYC” and may be used by consumers to scan more than 400 specially-designed REI posters located around New York City, which serve as portals to six virtual scenes. Upon finding one of these posters, they can use their smartphone at the poster to scan and capture its respective headline. This will take them to an AR page that projects the virtual nature scene along with pictures of outdoor gear prizes that they can tap to win them. Apart from winning the outdoor gear prize, customers are also given the chance to win a trip for two to Costa Rica.

From REI: REI is now in New York City! We’re located in the historic Puck building near Manhattan’s SoHo district. Drop in and explore our 39,000-square-foot, three-level store. REI offers top-brand outdoor gear and clothing for camping, climbing, cycling, fitness, hiking, paddling, skiing, snowboarding and more. We’re also a complete New York City bike shop, offering professional bike shop services to help keep you biking the streets and trails year-round. Come by, meet our friendly staff of outdoor experts, and gear up for your next adventure. Find out about all of the REI events going on now in the New York area, and be sure to download our new FIND OUT NYC app! Use your phone to scan and unlock specially designed REI posters around the city which serve as portals to six virtual scenes. Use the map functionality on the app to find the posters nearest you. Get Find Out NYC app details.