In a kind of augmented reality / virtual reality mix, Marc Owens’ Avatar Machine puts the user into the center of a video game-like experience.

Piers Fawkes presents some thoughts about the hype bubble around Augmented Reality.

Musician John Mayer has released a new augmented reality video called Battle Studies that places viewers right in the action.

Nintendo DSi’s upcoming title, Ghostwire, uses the embedded microphone and camera to augment reality.

New augmented reality goggles are helping Marine mechanics perform vehicle maintenance almost 50 percent faster than the current method — using technical manuals on laptops.

The US Post Office recently launched an augmented reality application named the ‘Virtual Box Simulator’ that ensures that you won’t have to worry about whether or not your shipping items will fit into standard USPS boxes.

Synesthesia is the neurological phenomenon where stimulating one sense triggers a response in another, resulting in experiences like tasting scents or seeing sounds.

Scientists at the University of Washington are working on a new breed of contact lenses with embedded LEDs which allow information to be displayed to the wearer.

Gizmodo reports that the Yelp iPhone app has a special Easter egg program hidden inside of it. Named Monocle, it’s an augmented reality app that is only accessible by shaking the device three times.
After the AR feature is unlocked, icons of Yelp-reviewed establishments will begin to pop-up on your screen, showing locations, ratings, and reviews for restaurants in your surrounding area.
Gearlive has a video demo:

[via Gizmodo]

Metaio, a software development company focused on augmented reality, is developing a mobile application that allows users to drop or tag locations with personal messages, websites or even complex 3D models.  With an interface similar to the augmented reality tweet viewer, the forthcoming application makes it possible to leave their virtual messages to be picked up by specific people or even create augmented graffiti on public space.
The possibilities of general commenting could integrate with Yelp to help see recent comments on nearby restaurants or alert friends of your whereabouts in an augmented reality view…with a dragon.  It is not known when [...]

Navigating the line between augmented-reality-as-buzzword-of-the-moment and the technology’s genuine utility can be tricky of late, and Jonas Jäger’s new Augmented Business Card technology is indicative of the problem. On the one hand, the concept is certainly cool—enriching a traditional paper business card with a rotatable quasi-3D image of yourself along with live Twitter updates, contact links, and gesture-controlled media. But beyond the undoubtedly slick presentation, we have to ask ourselves; will this have any relevance once the gleam and polish of augmented reality wears off, and the crumpled shrink wrap is on the floor? Augmented reality is melding functionality and [...]

Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe are currently developing Augmented ID, an augmented reality concept for mobile phones. This utilizes facial recognition software (supplied by Polar Rose) to visualize the digital identities of those around you.
By simply aiming your mobile device at someone, you would be able to access that individual’s pre-selected information through floating icons that would appear around their image. These could contain anything from a phone number and email address to links to their favorite content or social networking platforms.
Here’s a short video demonstration:

[via Engadget]

Yesterday we showed you an iPhone application that overlays indicators pointing to the nearest London Tube stations upon the phone’s video field of view. TwittARound, a new augmented reality app from German developer Michael Zoellner, works in the exact same way—utilizing the iPhone 3Gs’ integrated compass in conjunction with GPS and video data to mix data with what we see. TwittARound provides a 360 degree view of tweets made in the vicinity, so that, ideally, they could act as “post-it notes for the world,” as Wired’s Charlie Sorrel puts it—you could not only see a tweet regarding a great sandwich [...]

Though much of the work being done in augmented reality has thus far been of the gimmicky, flashing, ad-centric sort—more proof of concept than truly functional—the clever iPhone developers at acrossair are putting it to fantastic use with their new app, Nearest Tube. Taking advantage of the iPhone 3GS’ integrated compass, Nearest Tube merges GPS, compass, and video camera data to create a real-time overlay of the position and proximity of, as the name implies, the nearest tube stations. The application is still pending Apple’s approval for the App Store, but the video below speaks for itself.

[via Tuaw]

Metaio—the technology vendor behind the augmented reality retail experience for LEGO (“Digital Box”)—has produced an augmented reality cover for July’s issue of Popular Science. By visiting a page on Popular Science’s website with a computer equipped with a webcam and microphone, visitors are able to see a 3D wind turbine. The piece is also interactive; by blowing on a mic visitors are able to make the blades on the tiny wind turbine spin.

We’ve previously mentioned some potential usability issues with Augmented Reality, and with this execution we ran into a few hiccups as well. To begin with, for one reason [...]