Below are the slides of my presentation at AR Devcamp Amsterdam last Saturday April 17th.

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(Note: this article and slides are in Dutch)

Afgelopen donderdag heb ik bij CoworkCompany in Leiden voor een tiental geïnteresseerden een introductie op het gebied van Mobiele Augmented Reality gegeven. De slides van deze gebeurtenis staan hieronder.

Deze workshop werd gegeven in de serie Networkshops waarbij regelmatig interessante workshops voor en door zelfstandigen worden gehouden.

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My first thought about the iPad, triggered by Tim Bray: Nothing Creative.

At the first glance I could not agree more with Tim. There’s nothing revolutionary about this whole iPad thing, it just let’s you “consume the web”.

At the other hand, this looks like the perfect execution of the whole “web tablet” idea which surfaced ten years ago (2000, 2001) and then almost vanished. I think the iPad is the culmination of evolutionary innovation, helped by Moore’s law.

For geeks there’s not much fun, no way to tinker and extend. Then, as soon as you see it as a nice consumer device and have it lying around your coffee table this might be a very nice gadget (at a pretty hefty price).

For me there are also a lot of unanswered questions, like why would I want to have this lying on the coffee table, operating under my identity? Security and privacy anyone? Or is it not meant to share after all?

Finally, why do we (yes, including me) always have such a strong opinion about Apple products? They must be doing something right in marketing (remember: HP launched a very neat tablet, the Slate, only a week ago). Some introspection: why are we disappointed when we get the perfect version of something wished for 10 years ago? Is it because it’s too late and we’re already way beyond with our thoughts?

Update: Mark Pilgrim describes his disappointment about the closed nature of the iPad as Tinkerer’s Sunset – be sure to read this excellent writeup!

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Image via CrunchBase

Today Dennis Crowley from Foursquare gave an excellent presentation at  Mobile Monday, Amsterdam edition (#momoams on Twitter).

If you were there, you now know everything about the city as playground (pacmanhattan.com) and personal metrics.

I’m very grateful and proud that he took the opportunity to announce my Foursquare application for Layar, which allows you to use the most popular features of Foursquare from Layar.

What it is

Foursquare is a very popular social network game which integrates virtual social networks with the real world. Friends meet friends in cafes and bars and let each other know where they hang out. If you haven’t yet, it is definitely worth to check it out.

The Foursquare Layar app gives you access to the most frequently used features of the network.

• Show venues around you, including which people are frequenting them, who is the mayor and user tips what to do.
• Find nearby tips what to do and see at a glance what makes a location special.
• Check in to a venue and let your friends know that you hang out there.

Open Layer with foursquare

A basic version of these views is accessible even when you’re not signed in to Foursquare, which gives you an excellent opportunity to look around before jumping in and signing up (I’m quiet sure you will eventually plunge in and sign up to connect with your friends)!

These views are greatly enhanced when you’re signed-in. Then all venues where you or your friends have checked in are prioritized and highlighted. Tips from friends stand out. And you’re able to view what users have on their profile, which “badges” they earned and so on.

Give it a spin: open the Foursquare Layer on your mobile device.

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Tweeps Around Reality View

Earlier today Layar announced the next all new version of their Reality Browser Application for mobile devices (also known as Augmented Reality application).

This finally lifts the embargo on my work for this platform: Tweeps Around, which adds an overlay of what people on Twitter are saying, right here and now!

Update: I added a short FAQ for Tweeps Around, be sure to check it out for more detailed information.

Basic principle

Suppose you have the all new Layar 2.0 app installed on a supported device (Android, iPhone awaiting Apple’s aprovement). You open the application and search layers for tweeps around (or just tweeps). Activate the layer and look around on the phone’s screen. You’ll see circles popping up, each representing a Twitter user (Twitterers also known as a “Tweeps”, hence the name), selecting it gives you all the details of their message and links to relevant references.

The Layar promise

While the Layar app in itself is already quiet exciting, the most important promise lays in its tiered distribution approach. In fact, the Layar app is indeed a browser which does not contain, nor limit reality content to display. This way, responsibilities are distributed over various parties in the industry.

Some roles include:

• Content owners: make sure the content is marked up with accurate geolocation information.
• Independent developers (such as me): build a wrapping API to interface between content (e.g. a geo database) and the Layar service.
• Layar: negotiate distribution deals with platform owners (Apple, Google, …) and Mobile operators (to have Layar pre-installed on devices).

I strongly believe in this strategy, where domain knowledge, marketing + distribution and development each are in the hands of the respective experts.

Branding and monetization opportunities

Layar allows for a quiet some customization of graphic elements, e.g. company logo and banner on top, custom icons for points of interest (POI’s) and action links to call a phone number, send a text message or go to any conceivable web URL. Here are some opportunities for monetization as well, e.g. by inserting advertisements, call premium phone numbers of have users sign up for additional web services and revenue shares with destination sites.

The future

Of course, this is just the beginning. The beginning of Reality Overlays on mobile devices becoming ubiquitous. The beginning of Layar as platform for easy access of geo information. Many exciting new applications are around the corner to be discovered and become “best practice” in less than no time. Distribution and localization can be local as well as worldwide (e.g. Twitter is a global phenomenon, while your data may well be focused on a single city or country). Any type of data can be visualized, as long as it is somehow relevant to a specific location.

I’m ready to dive into this exciting world with lots and lots ideas waiting to be tested and implemented. The Twitter overlay serves as a test case which was in fact surprisingly easy to implement for the Layar platform.

Please let me know when you have geo data waiting to be explored as reality overlay and we will work something out!

Note that there is no sign up fee for Layar until the second half of September, 2009. After September 15th a one time sign up fee is required (depending on company turnover).

Quick link

Open layar/tweepsaround

Use one of the barcode scanners from your Android phone to open the Tweeps Around layer in Layar: point your camera to this QR code (image to the right) and select “open in browser”.

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Alexander van Elsas compiled an excellent list of 10 reasons why Google just reinvented online communication. You should read that blog post now, if you haven’t already!

I do agree that Google does Wave the right way – it’s all about openness, Alexander’s points 2 and 3 should make most critical users and developers happy.

But then Google still has the business advantage of having all aggregated data in their silo’s – they will be the exclusive owner of virtually all communication data in the world. This gives them enormous business advantages in terms of finding out what people are discussing, right now. All this can be put in perspective with data mining of all previous communication. The logical exploitation is ever more targeted advertising (adding location, local time, mood, communication partners and such to the expression). But being able to watch real time trends in high resolution, fine grained up to the user level in the context of their social network will likely enable entirely new business models, which we can not even imagine right now.

Does this matter for the individual user?
Maybe, privacy is potentially at risk even more than it is now. Whatever will happen, great power comes with great responsibility and the slogan “do not evil” applies more than ever before.

At the same time I’m really excited to see this happen and will most likely join Wave as soon as it becomes available.

What did Scott McNealy say again? “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it” . And that was ten yars ago.

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