http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair Thoughts on AR, technology and anything else I feel compelled to talk about Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:03:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I found this blog post interesting, when viewing high tech gadgetry from the viewpoint of mass appeal. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but those of us embedded in the world of high tech sometimes forget that most people don't have the newest gadgets or will take a ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/12/01/sober-mobile-marketing/ First, in the spirit of full disclosure, I will point out that one of the students in my lab built this demo.  So, I'm obviously biased.   That said, I am pretty impressed with what she managed to pull off in a very short time.  Ignoring the work involved in hacking ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/12/01/a-little-iphone-ar-demo/ I just saw this post showing a video of an AR demo done in flash.  It's cool;   I didn't think Flash was fast enough to run the ARToolkit. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2283082[/vimeo] http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/11/22/ar-in-flash-cool/ It looks like there are more reports on the DSi and it's camera.  There is the potential for AR games here, but the big worry is that the device is too slow.  There are some details/rumors on the hardware floating around, but it's not looking as promising as I'd like: ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/11/12/nintendo-dsi-more-reports/ Picked up a pointer to an AR Book being shown at a German book fair.  While this blogger, and the blogger he points at, note that this is a "real" book (meaning, I assume, it will be for sale) rather than a demo, the video leaves the viewer wondering "so what?" ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/10/18/a-real-ar-book-not/ This article on cnn.com paints a nice path toward the eventual deployment of handheld AR games.  Right now, they are not doing AR, just geolocated content, but by focusing on devices and concepts that require magnetic compasses in the phones, they will hopefully help push manufacturers toward creating devices with ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/10/12/mobile-ar-oct12-08/ I ran across at article about some amazing AR art at the TodaysArt Festival when I stumbled on an article here.  Pablo Valbuena makes these very cool art pieces that appear to be created by careful projection onto architectural spaces. It's exactly this kind of work that will push the field of AR forward, because ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/09/30/ar-art-todaysart08/ Engadget has a new article with details on the schedule for when we might see a new Gizmondo.   The Gizmondo when under back in 2006 under dubious circumstances, but it's still got some legs (especially if some of the core chips are updated, even slightly).  I have been using them in ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/09/30/new-teaser-gizmondo/ Over on Wired there is an article about a new Nintendo DS possibly having a camera and other support for creating AR games. Ori also comments on this. I am also really excited by this; anything that pushes handheld AR will be a good thing for those of us currently engaged in it (and ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/09/29/nintendo-ds-and-handheld-ar/ Lately, there have been a lot of folks getting into the "AR excitement", especially with the iPhone SDK becoming available (i.e., all kinds of folks _have_ to have an AR demo on the iPhone, even though the camera sucks and you can't even distribute an app that uses video legally ... http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/blair/2008/09/26/hoping-to-avoid-the-hype-bubble/