The Augmented Reality Blog

And it has one. Robots taking you to meeting room, a huge augmented reality scenery and an even bigger interactive wall. Wow.

Adidas announces (via Wired) a line of shoes that will contain AR markers in their tongues such that when you hold your shoe for a webcam a virtual world. Nice gimmick, but I wonder if you’d do this more than once.

The more interesting part is that they couple this with some games they will announce in which the shoe (the marker) is used to play the game.

It would even be more interesting if it augmented my product experience, for example if the marker helped determine the percentage tear and wear of the shoe: ‘it seems you have made good use of your shoes, better get yourselves some new ones right away’.

Next to Coke and McDonalds, Stella Artois decided to jump onto the AR bandwagon too.

In the US, it will ship “Le Bar Guide”: an iPhone app that offers US lager drinkers an augmented reality app that helps them find the nearest Stella-dealing pub or bar. The database is 80.000 bars strong. Btw, it is not only bars in the US. It’s bars all over the world. It even has the phone number of the local cab company if things get a bit blurry. The app is developed by AcrossAir.

Its second augmented reality initiative is published on stellaartois.com. The Christmas “Send a Card, Save a Tree” campaign lets consumers send a free, branded, beer-themed augmented reality Christmas eCard. For every card send, Stella will ensure that one tree is saved. The goal is to help protect an endangered South American rainforest by saving 1 million trees.

Well done Stella!

The Mercedes AR campaign has been in the news a while ago, but it was noteworthy anyway in being my first AR marker that came by the mail.

Enter the virtual store url, activate your webcam, and show your entrance ticket.

Next step could be to add some personalisation to the mix, after all they are sending a personal invitation.

In search of the real sustainable business opportunities we understand that things must by tried out. One-off campaigns serve as good test beds. They pave the way, so to speak. So, I Admit, the title’s a bit exaggerated.

However, at the Augmented Reality Blog we strongly believe that AR is here to stay for a while. That it’s more than a gimmick.

And we’re very happy to see that the people over at We Are Organized Chaos think the same way.

They wrote a post about the 3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Using Augmented Reality In Marketing And Advertising.

Here are their questions:

1. Is this something I can already do on my site within a normal browser?
2. What am I trying to communicate or accomplish with AR and what is the experience I’m providing for my consumer?
3. How will Augmented Reality interact with or enhance other aspects of my Integrated Campaign?

I would add two more:

1. Are the consumers in my target audience web cam owners? Are they comfortable using them?
2. Will people go through the trouble of starting up their computer to use the application?

All good questions to avoid using AR for the sake of using it.

Chocapic, the chocolate cereals from Nestlé, is promoting its sponsorship of the new movie “Arthur and the revenge of Maltazard” with an onpack AR application that turns the pack into a gameconsole. Well done by Nestlé.

Here’s the Ray Ban AR app “Virtual Mirror” from last year:

And here’s the Glasses Direct AR app from this year:

They are pretty similar (they’re actually the same :) ) and may very well be starting a larger trend of “virtual product sampling”: try shoes, pants, glasses, hats, bags etc. No more unrepresentative quircky 3D models in flash, just wear them virtually first.

I expect Amazon and other big retail companies to adopt this kind of virtual sampling soon.

Configuring these kind of AR apps can be a bit tedious, but it’s a promising start.

A very slick AR application.

Unfortunately you need to install software (yikes). But fortunately there’s a youtube sample video :)

Note the interesting sharing feature:

1. paint:
2. save:
3. share it on facebook or youtube:

Nice. Even nicer is doing it in the real world!

I like the apps that are more than merely objects on markers. Especially if they make you discover and interact.

That’s exactly what KIA did with it’s Cee’d AR app.

Cee'd application screenshot

The plot:

1. print four ‘magic’ markers (which illustrate the position of a manual gear stick).
2. keep two cards at a time in front of your camera
3. discover a feature of the car

The funny thing is they don’t tell you up front which card combination will result in which car feature being shown.

There’s a combination which shows you a rear-viewing mirror in which you can see yourself :) and a steering wheel which you can turn (by moving the cards).

This is indeed fun, interactive way of discovering the car.

The first one is an article from the Independent. It gives you a good overview of what value Mobile AR can bring.

The Economist also talks about Mobile AR. The article gives an overview of how it works and what you need.

The first Wiki on Augmented Reality is also a fact. You can browse applications, business, list of blogs, events, … . Most of the applications we all talk about are listed here. Cool initiative!