Tag: AUGMENTEDREALITY

Augmented reality is fun but -- let's face it -- kinda gimmicky. Kids, though, they love gimmicky. The 'Helicopter Taxi' iPhone app lets children fly a virtual 3-D helicopter around the real world, picking up and dropping off virtual passengers along the way. It should be said that 'Helicopter Taxi' is not a game, as there are no points to earn or goals to achieve. This is a $1.99 digital ...

It is no secret that Switched staffers do not number among the Black Eyed Peas' fan club. We've just never bought into the self-indulgent seriousness of Will.i.am and his "band's" atrocious, confounding videos. (And we still haven't forgiven them for unleashing the phrase "lovely lady lumps" onto the unsuspecting public.) In his continuing quest to assault human senses and linguistic decency, Mr. ...

Esquire has crowned fashion model Brooklyn Decker as the sexiest woman alive. In an effort to promote the magazine (which, like the rest of the print world, is aching to compete with the increasingly digital media world), Esquire is taking Decker on a whirlwind tour of Barnes & Noble stores across the country -- over 700 in total. How is the model going to cover so much ground before the next ...

Speaking a foreign language in a foreign land can sometimes be fun, but every now and then, it just gets annoying -- especially when you're tired, hungry, and don't feel like decoding an entire tapas menu, or worrying about whether you should order in the subjunctive. From now on, though, you may never have to, thanks to a new app called 'Word Lens' from QuestVisual As TechCrunch explains, ...

Yesterday's midterm elections gave Americans an opportunity to get out and have their voices heard in Washington. For CNN, on the other hand, the election circus was just another opportunity to show off more of its unbelievably unnecessary graphics. In 2008, the network underwhelmed us with holographic teleportation and multitouch displays. The stars of last night's election coverage? iPads and ...

The famous Macy's in Manhattan's Herald Square will debut a so-called Magic Fitting Room next month, which will allow shoppers to virtually try on clothes. A 72-inch mirror display will digitally swathe you with the latest styles from Marc Ecko, Alfani or whatever it is they sell there. (We don't like to go, because the staff literally corrals shoppers into one-way, single-file lines during the ...

iPhone geeks can now indulge their inner air-traffic controller, thanks to a new app that takes all of the guesswork out of the classic 'Bird-Plane-Superman' trinary. The app, called 'Plane Finder AR,' combines augmented reality with data from virtual radar maps to track commercial planes passing overhead. All you have to do is point your iPhone at an aircraft, snap a photo, and the app will ...

The United Kingdom's Royal Mail is offering a unique take on digital postage. Instead of just using the tech to quickly print pre-paid shipping labels, the national mail service is issuing a series of commemorative stamps, embedded with special codes, similar to QR codes. When an Android handset or an iPhone running the augmented reality app 'Junaio' reads the stamps, a short film of actor Bernard ...

Japanese gamers, specifically male ones, are downright obsessed with 'Love Plus.' In case you've never heard of it, 'Love Plus' is a dating simulator in which players get a virtual pet girl to chat up and (hopefully) kiss. The DS title is getting the sequel treatment, 'Love Plus +,' and, to promote the new installment, Konami created an augmented reality iPhone app. The app allows users to ...

We were very impressed (and only slightly disturbed) by architecture grad and filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda's 'AR Kitchen' video earlier this year. Matsuda has been exploring a possible future of augmented reality interfaces with his videos, imaging a world when AR is less a gimmick than an integrated part of daily life. Matsuda has said, "The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply ...

To a certain extent, racing games take after one another in concept, so it would seem that true innovation would be difficult to find in a car game. But not for Designer Malte Jehmlich, whose game 'Racer' fuses an arcade booth, a remote-control car outfitted with an onboard camera, and a track constructed of old refrigerator boxes. All in all, it's an augmented reality version of a game you ...

We understand that SIGGRAPH frequently exhibits the most outre and ridiculous tech experiments -- the ones that could be useful on a larger scale and within a different context. But Takuji Narumi of Tokyo University may be the winner of the Most Insane Research award for his Meta Cookie System, which seems to serve no purpose but to advance the idea that our future lies in a simulated reality ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. A pixelated orca (statue) recently appeared outside Vancouver's convention center. [From: Engadget] YouTube ups the video ante with new support for 4K video (yes, ...

We're suckers here for 'Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots,' and, really, who isn't? Before we were plunking down hundreds of quarters on 'Street Fighter II' or 'Mortal Kombat,' we were making little plastic bots launch haymakers at each other, trying to literally knock their blocks off. But kids these days aren't content to play with plastic figures and board games anymore, so 'Rock'Em Sock'Em' must update ...

So there's this cheeky new app concept that's been floating around the Internet lately, and it's raised the question of how trademarks are protected in the virtual space. "The Leak in Your Hometown," an augmented reality app for the iPhone that hasn't yet been approved by Apple, captures any BP logo that the phone's camera detects, and superimposes an animated pipe, billowing some kind of miasma. ...