Microsoft presented their Augmented Reality mapping technology at TED.
Look at the video below, fantastic what it can do.

For me, three things strike out:
*The incorporation of Photosynth processes in their maps. Great way of including crowdsourced images in a natural way.
*The abilty to augment a location by use of the mobile phone camera and being able to see their real-time view superimposed on maps.
*The ability to look inside buildings due to the use of backpack cameras.

What is your first impression on the new opportunities?

The information on Youtube says the following on this new and experimental way of applicating Augmented Reality:

Adidas Originals is launching the first Augmented Reality experience in footwear. The adidas Originals AR Game Pack is a set of 5 shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue. When you hold the code in front of your webcam, you’ll gain access to a virtual version of the adidas Originals Neighborhood. Each month between February and April, we’ll launch a new interactive game within the Neighborhood and your shoe will be the game controller. The experience launches on February 10th at http://www.adidas.com/originals

Great way to get attention and be an innovative brand!
It certainly is a fun way to use your shoes ’slightly’ different than normal. The campaign behind is excellent, giving the Augmented Reality enabling also real meaning by using it as the game control and not solely as something which calls a digital superimposing.

Augmented Reality can be applicated in many situations, creating new, fun and innovative ways to bind customers, offering them a new experience.
What other examples can you give where AR is applicated like this?

We hope that people in the industry will be interested in anonymously contributing their knowledge so we can all benefit from the aggregate results.   The intended respondents for these surveys are people who have built or have hired other people to build AR apps.  The intended readership of the results are people who are interested in hiring AR developers.  We hope this information will help more people feel comfortable hiring AR developers, that more information will be good for the AR economy and the people who want to be a part of it.   We’ll be sending the results out to everyone who participates, along with a discount code if you’d like to purchase the larger research report this will be a part of.   If you’ve got any questions you can email me at marshall@readwriteweb.com  Thanks for you time taking these surveys.

To access the surveys go to:

Webcam AR

Mobile AR

With a userbase big as Yahoo’s one, it’s a logic result that Yahoo is figuring out how to leverage its users to create an Augmented Reality application which differs a bit from others.
Instead of tagging pictures to a geolocation, Yahoo’s goes social by making it possible to leave notes on specific surroundings, which can be read by the user’s network.

Read here the patent which is filed by Yahoo. Read up the detailed decriptions, some interesting notes are made.
The abstract:

Disclosed are methods and apparatus for capturing information that is pertinent to physical surroundings with respect to a device, the information including at least one of visual information or audio information. Overlay information for use in generating a transparent overlay via the device is obtained using at least a portion of the captured information. The transparent overlay is then superimposed via the device using the overlay information, wherein the transparent overlay provides one or more transparent images that are pertinent to and in correlation with the physical surroundings.

There are many Augmented Reality applictions developed or in development, the potential application by Yahoo differs in terms of existing userbase and possible mass adoption. The social aspect might drive adoption, being able to identify oneself faster with overlaying data, than any kind of data which is not close to someone.

Would this move make sense by Yahoo?

It might be an unsettling reality, or hard to grasp, or too different from current settings, but as Matsuda explains:

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

This view offers a look into a more cyborg-like society, where technology and the human being are intertwined heavily. Not a bodily intertwining, but more an informational and intelligent enhancement.
If our daily lives are being ‘controlled’ by step-by-step executions, how does that impact the quality of it?

This film is produced to finalize his Masters in Architecture, which is part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
It’s wise to contemplate about consequences of technologies, even if they are exaggerated, to understand and keep understanding its role in society and effects on the environments.

Your opinion?

As stated on the Deloitte’s Fast50 webpage:

Deloitte yearly forecasts the major trends expected to impact the Technology Media & Telecom (TMT) business in the year ahead. In 2010 the Deloitte TMT Predictions will be launched on March 2 during the Predictions event (Almere).
Deloitte Fast50 challenges TMT entrepreneurs to launch an own Prediction. What will be the major trend expected to impact your business in the year ahead and how many persons agree with you?

Agora Media has entered the contest with two predictions:

By Richard Kastelein:

Media Convergence and Social TV

If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until social TV hits your screens. And it is not as far away as you think – not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. Social media fused with TV is …the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.
As Facebook revolutionized the way advertisers can niche-target their online demographics, social TV will profoundly change the ad agencies and marketing departments will offer their wares in the television realm. It’s called tCommerce and watch out – TV widgets and recommendation engines are not far away.
Neilsen ratings seem vague, less targetable and will likely become obsolete in TV 2.0. See http://agoramedia.co.uk/blog/?s=kastelein&x=0&y=0 for articles I have written on Convergent Media and Social TV.
Contest link

By Gianluigi Cuccureddu

The Synaptic Web, Ubiquity and Augmented Reality
The Synaptic Web, where relationships between nodes are more meaningful than the nodes (alone), is a new way of looking at the evolution of the Web (in comparison to the Semantic Web). Augmented Reality perfectly fits within the Synaptic Web, enabling users to create meaningful relations between all sorts of content/data (nodes) and enhance their reality. Mobility and media/content consumption are two important subjects which will transform by the Synaptic Web and Augmented Reality.
The hyperconnective society wants to consume whatever content, wherever they are, when they want. Ubiquity as an aspect will move further up to the core of marketing strategies by means of mobile devices.
A key word within ubiquity is of course real-time. Mobile devices suffice this need and (will) challenge businesses in the near future to be omnipresent with the brand at all touch points of their target groups.
Contest link

Both the predictions approach the same future outlook: a convergent socializing digital world which is available anywhere at any time on any screen with more meaningful and relevant content.
Do add your comments on our predictions’ pages if you think these are the outlooks we can expect in the near future?!

Proximity Marketing as described by Wikipedia is “the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place.”
The commercialization of location will get a boost by the power and opportunities offered by Mobile Augmented Reality applications.

Have a look at the first real-time Augmented Reality proximity marketing platform by Insqribe:

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WOW!

I can’t simply express it differently, these are the next steps in the Augmented Reality evolution and diffusion.

First of all, Sketch Recognition is a development which will make QR Codes / markers redundant on the long run and will create a more natural/organic augmented reality.
View below the video which shows how the technology interacts with the augmentated content! This goes beyond the abilities of current browsers and technologies which do not understand the augmented data, but merely shows it based on markers or GPS data.

The next video will really blow your mind because the technology enables recognition upon natural shapes.

When you combine the two new developments, the extra opportunities -enabled by them- are vast.
Not only will it be more organic and user generated, but based upon the initial augmentated reality, the meta-data can undergo interaction with the user and thus altering the intelligence extracted by the superimposing!

The good news for developers is the following, quoted from the GamesAlfresco blog:

For the first time ever, the core code necessary for real augmented reality “(real” here means precise alignment of graphics overlaid on real life objects) on iPhone 3.0 is available to the public.
To get access to the source code – send us an email ( comogard@gmail.com ).

The precise alignment of graphics on real life object will be an improvement compared to the current abilities to align.
I do wonder what new applications will be developed and how industries will benefit from this.

What do you foresee?

The interest in Augmented Reality is growing which brings along hype and by that, irrelevant applications which misuse the Augmented Reality technology or just hype along concerning the term. When relating this to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, it’s a phase which every technology has to overcome before it diffuses in markets and consumers.

I’ll refer to two kinds of misuses of Augmented Reality, one is with regard to the technology itself, the other is from the utility point of view. Both are equally important as they sustain each other. If one is off, than there’s not symbiotic benefit.
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Due to increasing interest in Augmented Reality, the creative question rises where Augmented Reality can benefit the user?
Theoretically, all is ‘reality’ and all can be augmented with meta-data, but what are the fields that will benefit most?
If one reads the articles and watches the videos on Youtube, one cannot deny the futurisic and science fictional touch that Augmented Reality brings along and fires up creativity and innovativity.

In this article we set out a list of Augmented Reality applications which in some cases are already prototyped, investigated or in use.
This list is probably far from complete, please do complement!

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