After a successful edition of our NEXT event back in June we’re now organizing two similar events in the US. Claire Boonstra (Co-founder), Matt Miesnieks (Head of Customer Development), Maurice Groenhart (Community Manager) and Marc Rene Gardeya (CEO Hoppala, member of the Layar Partner Network) will visit the US in the second week of August.
During this trip we will visit New York and San Francisco and in both cities Layar will host an event. The events will give you more insights on the conceptual, commercial and technical possibilities of the Layar platform, distribution, plans for the future and anything else you always wanted to know. Target audience are brands, agencies and developers who are already now or plan to be active on the Layar platform.
We’re still looking for venues but reserve these dates.
The layer of this week is the first layer that has been published on our Augmented Reality platform which has 3D texture animations. Quiznos, a big fast food restaurant in the United States and Canada, is specialized in toasted sandwiches used the Layar platform for their campaign. The Quiznos layer includes a store locator, several videos, animated 3D and location based coupons. We talked to Mathijs Gajentaan from Winvolve who developed this layer for Quiznos.
We’re very honored that one of the worlds biggest rock bands did their augmented reality campaign on the Layar platform. The layer is the first of it’s kind in the world and was built by Augment Reality in conjunction with Polydor Records to celebrate the success of the recently re-released Stones’ masterpiece Exile on Main St. Stones fans will able to fly-post their streets, homes or offices with virtual interactive posters of the rock icons. We talked to Howard Ogden from Augment Reality
The Rolling Stones layer is worlds first augmented reality campaign by a major rockband. How does it feels to create such a layer for these rock legends? Being a music aficionado, and British, of course the Rolling Stones have been a big part of my life. To be asked to create a layer for them was a huge privilege. Everything had to be perfect – as by all accounts getting approval from Mick Jagger and his management is not a walk in the park. So, throughout a series of meetings at the Universal / Polydor HQ in London we developed this concept and had many discussions on the future of AR in the music industry. The app is a first on so many levels:
1st to use AR for music sales (identify iPhone handsets and offer a direct link to Exile on Main St. on iTunes)
1st to use AWS as a hosting environment for massive scalability.
and the one we’re most proud of: 1st project to be given approval by Mick almost instantly!! (”unheard of”)
The Rolling Stones layer will be filled with user generated content, therefore you decided to build a Facebook app which is connected to the layer. Can you tell us something more about this?
The Rolling Stones have over 1.4 million Facebook fans so it was a great resource to tap into for UGC. We first realized we could use FB to do this in August last year; long before this project was conceived – it’s taken a while for us to find such a forward-thinking client with good reason to commission the project. I’m sure it wont be the last layar/FB crossover we see.
How do you scale these big projects when it comes to work and traffic towards these high value layers? For sure we had to think big. So, the only option to consider was a cloud-based infrastructure, especially since there are a lot of audio and video assets within Exile on Your Street. We implemented a load-balanced Amazon Web Service ready to cope with the upsurge in demand expected when the announcement was made on the RS fan wall. We are happy to say that Exile has enjoyed 100% uptime.
What can we expected from Augment Reality in the near future? The Exile on Your Street app generated quite a buzz, which, in turn, is keeping us very busy! As always we keep up to date with the very latest API changes within Layar in order to get the absolute maximum out of this platform. We plan to consolidate our position as one of the leading Layar development companies with branch office openings in US and Europe. Very exciting times.
Today Hoppala, one of the members of the Layar Partner Network, launched a tool called Augmentation. Augmentation provides an easy way for non-technical creatives to start experimenting with Augmented Reality on Layar.
HOPPALA! Augmentation comes with a full screen map interface to place and edit augments all around the world. Upload your images and icons, audio, video and 3D multimedia content with just some mouse clicks and add it to your personalized inventory in the cloud. HOPPALA! Augmentation even does the hosting for you. It simply runs in your browser, there’s no software installation required and no coding needed at all. We talked to Marc Rene Gardeya from Hoppala.
Yes, we reached another milestone. Last week we reached the mark of 1000 published layers. We would like to thank all developers who are making this possible and published all their layers over the past year. Unfortunately not everybody can publish the 1000th layer and the lucky one who published it, is SystemK. We talked to Scott Halcomb from SystemK.
People all around the world share their adventures using Mobypicture to all their social networks. From their mobile phone they easily upload photos, video and audio to their friends on networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, their blog and numerous other social sites and services.
Indraneel and Ronald, the first two developers at Layar thought that it was time for some fresh air last weekend. What better way then to take to the skies and then jump out of a plane with a parachute!
We have a new rule now at the office: Only one developer can do a parachute jump when the others are standing on the ground. You know, just in case..
The Dutch Architecture Institute (NAi) launched their Urban Augmented Reality platform called UAR (pronounced “you are”). UAR is a state of the art application of Augmented Reality – not only providing information on the buildings you’re standing in front of, but also shows you in 3D how it will be, how it was or how it could have been – if the alternative design would have been chosen. A truly immersive experience. A great example to show what AR is all about! Read more
This latest video shows scenarios of how Layar is used in everyday life: to find a place to eat, to get to know the city through history, to play games and to see which bands are playing around you. This video also premiers Floaticons, the cool 3D objects which we all can use to express ourselves in this new world of Augmented Reality.
Feel free to use this video. Here is the downloadable version for offline viewing (its around 300 mb, use ‘right click’ – ’save as …’).
A project at the MediaLAB for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam resulted in some amazing art work in Augmented Reality. We said it before and we’ll say it again: you can create ANYTHING in Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is the biggest canvas you can work with. These artists know this already. Read more
