Chinese New Year And Kildare Village

It's hard to believe it's been a year already, but Chinese New Year is here again and Kildare Village is right in the middle of celebrations for the year of the Dragon.

This year, for the year of the dragon, Kildare Village has launched a really cool augmented reality smartphone app*, the “Chic Dragon”, to celebrate the festival. The app, which marks the first use of augmented reality by a luxury outlet retailer, is free to download and features an animated dragon that takes users on an interactive journey through scenes of the nine Chic Outlet Shopping Villages. Customers just scan the code on posters around the Village and watch the dragon come to life on their screens. In addition, everyone who interacts with the app and watches the “Chic Dragon” video are in with a chance to win a €500 shopping spree.

Beyond the app and competition, no Chinese New Year would be complete without the official ceremonies that surround the festival. Kildare Village is getting into the spirit again this year by decorating the pedestrian streets of the Village in their festive best. Fortune cookies will also be distributed in the boutiques, restaurants and the tourist information centre from Friday 27th until Sunday 29th January.

Over the weekend of the 28th and 29th January there will be a number of traditional and contemporary entertainment acts in the Village such as vibrant Lion and Dragon Dance displays and Chinese opera performers. For further information on Dublin Chinese New Year Festival please visit www.cny.ie and for events happening at Kildare Village please see www.kildarevillage.com.


* The Chic Dragon app for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android is free to download from the App Store and the Android Market from 16 January 2012.

The Carphone Warehouse 2010 Appy Awards

Last night saw the inaugural Appy Awards take place at the Gibson Hotel at the Point Village in Dublin. The awards celebrate innovation and creativity in the app development industry, rewarding its best practitioners for their hard work and business achievements. The Appys are the only dedicated awards programme in Ireland for app development and design, and are open to anyone who developed or paid for the development of a mobile app, on any platform (iOS, Android, Bada, Symbian, Ovi, etc.). The awards featured 17 categories ranging from Best Branded App to Best Travel/Tourism App, as well as a Grand Prix to the best overall app from the last year.

The first ever Grand Prix winner from last night was the RTÉ News Now iPhone app. RTÉ, who were up against a host of innovative and creative apps, were judged to be the best app out of 170 entries.

“I’d like to congratulate RTÉ and the agency that developed the News Now app, DRG, on the Grand Prix win,” said Stephen Conmy, editor of Digital Times and co-founder of the Appys. “The competition for the top prize was quite fierce, there were some great apps entered and most of the apps that made the shortlist show the creativity and utility now abundant in the Irish app sector. I’d also like to thank all our judges for the hard work they put in.”

The full breakdown of category winners was as follows:

Category App name Company Best Augmented Reality / Location Services app Daft.ie iPhone/iPad App Daft Media Ltd Best Branded app Paddy Power Mobile Paddy Power Best Business Solutions app Smartgrid Redwind Software Best Consumer Experience / Retail app Betfair for iPhone Betfair Best Entertainment / Gaming app Movie Challenge Redwind Software Best Media app RTÉ News Now DRG Best Medical/ Healthcare app Pocket Heart eMedia Interactive Ltd. Best Social Networking app Absolut Fringe eightytwenty/interactive Best Sports app RTÉ GAA Furious Tribe Best Tourism/Travel app Ireland's Blue Book Ireland's Blue Book Best Education / Learning App FIS Training Furious Tribe Best use of the Irish Language in an App Greann Gaeilge Miranda Corp Best Developer Daft - Ciaran Maher Daft Best Andriod app Today FM Communicorp Digital Best Bada app Munster Rugby iMobile Best OVI app Mowbli's Halloween Axonista Best Apple app RTÉ News Now DRG GRAND PRIX RTÉ News Now DRG

While each app was judged on seven different attributes including design, relevance to target market, utility and innovation, Des Doris, founder/organiser of the Appys and MD of Alchemy Events said, “We’ve been really impressed with the standard of entries for such a young media sector, and the app sector is a media sector in its own right now. While this year we’ve concentrated on mobile apps, next year we'd like to see tablet apps, social media apps and even Web TV apps entered. The app sector is changing the media landscape and the way many companies do business and the Appys with The Carphone Warehouse aim to showcase the best Irish apps and their developers.”

Edward Conmy, event director and co-founder, commented: “We’re extremely happy with the response, not just from all those who entered but also from our sponsors and the general digital media/marketing community. The app sector in Ireland is thriving and we hope the Appys will shine a bright light on this creative and energetic media sector. Well done to all those who made the shortlist, who won their categories and of course well done to the Grand Prix winner. For those who are a little disappointed on the night, there’s always next year.”

A huge congratulations to all those who were nominated and especially to all those who won.

The World`s First "Intelligent Stamp" for Royal Mail

I've mentioned this to a few people recently and found that a lot of folks missed the story. I'll admit that this is probably news that boarders precariously between nerdy and geeky but nonetheless I'm happy to say I thought it was pretty cool and worth a mention.

With the launch of the Royal Mail`s new Great British Railway Special Stamp collection, they decided to do something a little bit different and a little bit exciting. The Royal Mail teamed up with Junaio to create a Royal Mail channel on their platform and to provide online content via smartphones and augmented reality.

By simply pointing your smartphone`s camera onto the stamp when in the junaio application, the online content on the stamp`s theme, which below is a reciting of the "Night Mail" poem by Bernard Cribbins, will automatically launch. RBIT Limited, working with m2end and junaio, has provided a whole new way of interacting with the world of stamps on mobile phones. Following other recent work around smart packaging and the talking magazine, the intelligent stamp is another cool use of the junaio platform to "glue" digital (3D or multimedia) information onto real-world objects.

Philip Parker, Head of Stamp Strategy, Royal Mail, said: "This is the first time a national postal service has used this kind of technology on their stamps and we`re very excited to be bringing intelligent stamps to the nation`s post". He added: "Through Intelligent Stamp technology, our stamps will open up to a whole new world of information, interest and fun to collectors and the millions of people who will receive them on letters in the coming months alike."

Ray Bans & Augmented Reality

Nice bit of extended Augmented Reality from the chaps at Ray Bans. Check it out...

Augmented Reality: “I am Iron Man 2″

As far as Augmented Reality experiences go, this is one of my favourite to date. Based on Total Immersion’s technology, the AR uses a number of functions like Face Tracking and Movement Detection to let you experience the Iron Man HUD (Heads Up Display) used by the Marvel hero. You can also capture the video stream of your experience and share it out through your Social Media channels.

Touchless Interfaces

With all the recent hype around the iPad and the emergence of touchscreen tablet computing I decided to look into what else was on the horizon. I may well be showing my age here but the truth is that it hasn't been very long that touchscreen interfaces have become practically the norm and almost everyone carries at least one touchscreen device in their pocket. So perhaps it's too early to be considering what will come next? Oddly enough, no.

While Sci-fi writers may have long ago dreamt off touchless interfaces, the reality has been a lot less forthcoming. However, it may be close at hand. The latest step toward touchless interfaces comes from John Underkoffler. John was working at the MIT Media Lab when the producers of Minority Report called looking for ideas for their movie. Unsurprisingly, they hired John and his idea. Now, following a long hard slog of development and testing, John and his company, Oblong, brought their new interface to the TED conference. What may surprise you is that this was a year ago, and in the following year the system is said to be close to implementation.

This is an actual spatial operating system.

Something else that this got me thinking about was the massive explosion of the adaptation and use of Augmented Reality. In my mind the two systems are inherently linked - while AR uses coded image identifiers to render interactives and otherwise unseen media within an artificial 3D environment, the spatial operating system recognises your hands as manipulators of objects with an artificial 3D environment. If you also consider the various laser light artificial keyboards that are on the market, I expect the next 24 months of interface development to see some huge changes.

Recognizr

Big hat tip to PlanBStudios for sharing this video...

A TAT Cascades powered prototype of the Augmented ID concept. Accurate mobile face detection and recognition using Polar Rose's FaceLib. Recognizr shows how powerful computer vision and 3D graphics can be used to create fast, precise and aesthetic augmented reality. This prototype runs on Android.

Augmented Reality: T-Shirt

Ever wanted to play Rock, Paper, Scissors with your t-shirt? Well, maybe not, but it's a pretty odd idea at the very least. Well guess what, the clever folk over at T-Post, the world's first wearable magazine, have brought their 51st issue with this augmented reality, 3-D interactive game...

For those asking themselves, what's T-Post? Here you go!

Cheers to Nick to this one :)

adidas Originals - Star Wars Collection

Back at Christmas I posted about adidas's new range of clothes and shoes inspired and featuring Star Wars. Taking the most iconic moments and favourite characters from the Star Wars story, adidas have translated them for the streets. To do this, the sports brand launched a virtual 3-D world that is accessed through the new line's men’s shoes through three Augmented Reality games. Basically, each shoe design gives the user access to the virtual world and acts as the controller for interacting with it. Chris Barbour, head of digital marketing for adidas Originals, described the new initiative as, “[taking] a real world item and adding a fantastic virtual world on top of that." He added, "We are not trying to mimic a real-world look, we have a more stylized, pop-up book creative approach.”

For the next stage in the new Originals 'The Street where Originality Lives' ad campaign, adidas is kicking off 2010 with three fantastic developments in the campaign. Not only is the adidas Originals site packed with a whole heap of exciting (and exclusive) videos from Estelle, the Ting Tings and Method man & Redman (just to mention a few), not only will the Star Wars range of clothes and shoes be launching in the Irish market through Champion Sports, but there is also a new addition to the online campaign in the form of a seriously cool, Facebook Connect enabled, online app that lets you take control of the Death Star and blow up the homes of your closest friends.

For all the information you'll need, just go to the official adidas Originals Facebook Page and check out this video of the Imperial March remix; featuring Snoop Dogg, David Beckham, Calle 13, DJ Neil Armstrong and Daft Punk...

Augmented Reality: Adidas

The next few months will see Adidas release a new range of shoes. What sets this range apart is that Adidas has created a virtual 3-D world that is accessed through the line of five men’s shoes. On top of this, Adidas will also introduce three Augmented Reality games as part of the new virtual world. Each pair of shoes will give the owner access to the virtual world and act as the controller for interacting with it. All you have to do is go to the Adidas website and hold up a code embedded on the shoes tongue to your webcam. The virtual world then pops up on your screen as part of the shoe.

“The foundation of augmented reality lies in adding a layer to the real world,” says Chris Barbour, head of digital marketing for Adidas Originals. “That’s what we have done. We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic virtual world on top of that. We are not trying to mimic a real-world look, we have a more stylized, pop-up book creative approach,” says Barbour. “The neighborhood is displayed on a two dimensional computer screen, but you can use your shoe to control the angle and depth of view and zoom in and out, giving a 3-D sense of perspective.”

The campaign will offer a skateboard game, played around the virtual city’s alleys, a Star Wars-like game and a music-based game. The games have been developed for Adidas by xForm.

Augmented Reality: Avatar iTag Toys

James Cameron's new film, Avatar, is without doubt one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Between Cameron's own goliath status and ability to make record-breaking movies, Twentieth Century Fox Film's global marketing activities, and the overall promise of new, never before seen, ground breaking fully immersive next generation special effects, this movie is going to be BIG. There has been more talk and speculation about this film then probably any other in the last 24 months. Special extended trailers were shown to select audiences around the world. Strategic partnerships were developed with leading technology providers. Basically if there was something that could be done to promote this, it was.

So with the film now in the cinema, what's next?

In my opinion the coolest thing coming next is the Avatar toy line. Mattel’s Avatar toy line is set to revolutionise toy play. The Avatar range of toys marks the industry’s first range of toys to incorporate i-TAG technology. This is essentially Augmented Reality enhanced toys. When held up to a webcam, each toy's unique i-TAGT creates a three dimensional, Augmented Reality image on your computer screen.

Here is a video of exactly how the system works...

Augmented Reality: Shopping (Part 2)

A while back I wrote about Zugara's Augmented Reality Shopping experience. Pretty nifty. As suspected the technology has now been adapted and put into full use. This is the Fashionista Augmented Reality dressing room service developed by Tobi.com...

Fashionista describes itself as a new social shopping tool combining the benefits of the fitting room with the convenience of online shopping and the power of the social web. Fashionista shoppers virtually model clothing via their own webcam, being able to instantly switch into recommended clothes and immediately share favourites via Facebook.

-----UPDATE-----

While this isn't an Augmented Reality application persay, this is a great example of online shopping striving to deliver a richer experience, and to offer shoppers a better way to see exactly what they are buying. KnickerPicker.com have created a flash interactive that allows the shopper to choose between a range of different virtual models so that they can view their product range on someone of the same figure as themselves. This is a great idea and something I really think adds to the online shopping experience. Admittedly the service is limited at present but with the right retailer this could easily be done for a large range of clothing, for both men and women.

Augmented Reality: LG Chocolate & Avatar

As part of LG's strategic partnership with the new James Cameron Avatar movie, the company has teamed up with T3 and Total Film to bring a little bit of Augmented Reality to their December issues.

As part of their global partnership with 20th Century Fox, promoting the launch of Avatar, LG Electronics have teamed up with media group Future (publishers of T3 and Total Film) to feature an exclusive augmented reality gatefold ad in their December issues. The campaign is designed to promote both Avatar and LG's new Chocolate BL-40 widescreen mobile phone.

LG's own media agency, Mindshare, were responsible for brokering the deal.

The 6 page ad promotes the stunning widescreen cinema-aspect of the new LG handset by offering users a sneak peak at video from the movie. By holding the ad's AR icon up to your webcam, you can access a special Avatar trailer that plays on an onscreen 3D model of the new handset. Coupled with this is a host of in-magazine features that bring to life both the movie and handset.

John Barton, sales and marketing director at LG, said: "We're delighted to be working with Future on such an exciting campaign. Both 'Avatar' and the new LG Chocolate BL40 represent innovations in their respective industries which this campaign will bring to life by delivering a cutting edge platform to interact with our customers."

Malcolm Stoodley, sales director at Future, said: "As Future's first augmented reality campaign in the UK, this is an exciting new format for advertisers that really brings this campaign alive for our readers. With an audience of influential movie and technology advocates, the exclusive 'Avatar' footage showcases this pioneering new film and LG's new mobile phone to T3 and Total Film readers like no other medium can deliver."

Augmented Reality: Esquire Magazine

Last Monday Esquire revealed that they would once again be pushing the boundaries of print. As I'm sure everyone will remember, Esquire's first foray into enhanced print was with their ePaper 75th Anniversary issue, and following that they did their brilliant split cover. This time, however, it's Augmented Reality that is their enhancement of choice.

For their December issue Esquire have developed an Augmented Reality cover featuring none other then Robert Downey Jr.. Downey introduces the issue and does a brief plug for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. The real fun comes in with a host of bonus content that is accessed and controlled on the Esquire website by installing an app and interacting with the Augmented Reality marker.

In the following video, Editor-in-Chief, David Granger, runs through the features. An example given is for the issue’s fashion features, which, by tilting the magazine in different directions, allows you to adjust the the weather in the shots with the model's changing to suit the new conditions.

Lonely Planet Google Wave App

Google Wave has exploded in the last month with round after round of invitations growing its user base rapidly. However, one thing has alluded the service and driven a charge of companies to be the first to overcome it: the introduction of a Wave App.

Following a number of beta trials, it looks like Lonely Planet may be the first to get there. The guidebook maker has created a trip planning tool that works through Google Wave, to allow users to create trip itineraries in real time with advice and collaboration from other users.

The application, Trippy, loads a map that contains Lonely Planet recommendations and reviews. Then using a drag and drop interface, points of interest can be selected and assigned dates and times for your trips.

Chris Boden, Lonely Planet's director of mobile and innovation, said, "The Trippy gadget turns trip planning into a collaborative activity, enabling a group of users to create itineraries together in real time."

Lonely Planet has also recently launched a series of augmented reality apps for Google Android handsets. The apps provide Compass Guides that highlight points of interest in various cities, through a visual real time interface. Combined with Android's GPS, the app detects your exact location with the internal compass determining where you are looking. These apps are, unfortunately, only available in the US via the Android Market.

Augmented Reality: Tele Scouter

The Japanese consumer electronics company NEC have unveiled something seriously cool. You probably know how excited I got about Nokia's recent Augmented Reality concept, and even the slightly more bizarre Augmented Reality Contact Lenses I recently wrote about, but this is a practical everyday application of AR that actually works, and that's better then anything concept.

Meet the NEC Tele Scouter...


The Tele Scouter is NEC's Augmented Reality glasses, which project real-time language translation directly into people's eyes!

The system translates conversations in real time, and projects the translations directly onto a user's retina as a stream of 'subtitles'. Using built in voice recognition,the self-contained translation programme allows you to complete cut out the need for human translators. The system is also capable of delivering audio translations. Tele is due for release in Japan next November, and will be sold (initially at least) in packs of 30, at a cost of €65,000.

Augmented Reality: Daft.ie iPhone App

Back in August I wrote about my mate Tim's company MercuryGirl, who are developing an Augmented Reality layar for the Layar browser system.

Just last month, however, a new layar arrived the iPhone 3GS, from Ireland's leading property search site Daft.ie. The layar allows users to search through the site's entire suite of properties, for sale, to rent or to share, through a visual, location-based augmented reality interface. Pretty cool!

Basically, as you view your location through your iPhone's camera, properties within view, that are available, are indicated by blue dots on the screen. The size of the blue dot, with larger dots appearing close to you, indicate how near a property is. The dot at the the centre of your screen will show an image of the property, and give a summary of the property detail including; the address, the rental price, and a summary of the details e.g. “single bed, studio apartment".

If you then press the image you can see any photographs and directly contact the advertiser. The service utilises all Daft.ie sale, rental and shared properties listed on their site. With all new listings automatically updated as soon as they go live on the site.

The Layar app is free to download here.

Online Shopping & 3D Body Scan

Back in June I wrote about a nifty online shopping experience that Zugara had developed to allow customers to "try" clothes on, online. Essentially by using an Augmented Reality interface between their site and a customers computer and webcam, Zugara are providing a service whereby you can see an Augmented Reality version of the clothes you're interested in, projected onto your image on screen. This of course followed the fantastic use of Augmented Reality by Glasses Direct in which customers can "try on" different glasses before purchasing them online. So here we have two great examples of real-world applications of Augmented Reality, and I mused, how long will it be before we can stand in front of our webcams and have perfectly fitting clothes delivered to us everytime we shop online? Think about it, it's just a case of software to determine your measurements, surely not something that would be too difficult?

So when I read on Revolution Magazine that the UK fashion company InnovaClothing has developed software that uses body scanners to capture a 3D image customers to produce perfectly fitting clothes, some part of me just wasn't surprised. This is the world's first online shopping service that features a 3D body scan to fit clothes to each customer's unique body shape.

Ok, so admittedly this isn't quite as far along as you'd hope; the service currently requires customers to undergo a consultation scanning session in Glasgow, where the company is based. Although they do have plans to roll out the service to new locations over the next two years. From that point, customers can log on to InnovaClothing's site to view their clothing collections and get personalised style advice from the company's image consultants to choose a style that suits.

It does however beg the question, how far away are we now from having the same service provided directly through a website?

This is a research project by the University of Cambridge called ProFORMA. It's only in the very early stages of development but already the results speak for themselves. This video shows how easy it is to scan an object with only a standard webcam. Considering that this is a conventional 2D camera it certainly may spell the end of super-expensive 3D scanners and open the doors to a whole new realm of customised clothes shopping online.

Augmented Reality: RSPCA Elephant

The latest RSPCA campaign has just launched with a pretty cool Augmented Reality element. The Big Stop Circus campaign is calling on the British Minister for Animal Welfare, Jim Fitzpatrick, to ban circuses from keeping wild animals. The Augmented Reality element allows users to print out a mask, which appears on camera as an elephant's head. Simple but pretty cool none-the-less.

The campaign is being primarily being seeded through Twitter, to drive users to a campaign microsite encouraging them to retweet the campaign and share the campaign through Facebook and other Social Media sites.

87 Cool Things

I found the following presentation over on If Only We'd Thought of That and I had to share it. It's a collection of cool things, put together by Google Creative Lab, that are just extremely inspiring and creative. Basically it's fairly comprehensive list of the most recent mashups, location-based games, video annotation, augmented reality, digital light displays, photomosaics and collaborative projects.

If the below SlideShare is too small to view, check out the full presentation on Google Docs.