Martin Lechner

The event started with two quick introductions from IBM and Christine Perey, the organizer of the event (thanks again Christine!), followed by the logistic questions how to structure the sessions so that everybody can attend all sessions he or she wanted to take, as we needed to have some sessions simultanously.

Martin Lechner, CTO Mobilizy

The first session was all about User Experience in AR applications. Very well prepared though, every group had to select one of some predefined personas and find out how AR could help this persona in everyday life – from school boys and party girls to nurses, policemen and disabled people. Some interesting ideas came up how people can benefit from AR in their personal and professional life – definitely a mind opener!

The next session was about how to make money out of AR, followed by the CTO of Kooaba talking about Image Recognition in AR apps – very interesting from a technical perspective.

Martin "in action"

Finally, the last session in the event was mine. At first I introduced ARML to the attendees and asked them to think of how ARML might be extended to support Image Recognition as well. Nice discussion, the outcome – very briefly – was that standardizing the response from an Image Recognition process is not hard and could fit well into the ARML format, however, standardizing Image Recognition itself is not really feasible, as many algorithms co-exist and deliver different results depending on the properties of the image. The discussion about ARML took longer than expected from my side, so I had to keep the discussion about the Wikitude API rather briefly. Basically, the attendees knew already about the Wikitude API (which is great!) or were very interested in developing AR applications with the API. Let’s see how many applications will make it to a release!

In the evening, we met again at the University of Zurich for a Mobile Monday and showcased (with yellow sashes :-) ) our applications to lots and lots of people on the street. Finally we went to a nice bar and did some networking. In general, a great event with great people talking about a great topic! Thanks again Christine for the expertly organized event, and looking forward to participate in upcoming events as well!

Find more pics here.

Andreas Hauser

Just like in the beginning with Version 1.0, Wikitude is staying true to being user-centered. It is because of this commitment that we allow users to search for POIs across all Worlds and show the closest POIs right away at startup.  You immediately can see what’s around you, no matter who provided this information (We call this concept “Virtual Discovery”). Since Wikitude is an AR World Browser, it also provides a way to bookmark Worlds, just like you would bookmark a web page in a web browser.

Every user is different – some are traditional vintage car enthusiast, others rent cars frequently, while some don’t even have a driver’s license. This is why we allow users to ignore Worlds which don’t fit their daily lives. Information displayed in an AR app should fit your personal profile, but not spam you every time you launch the app by displaying the latest “off-topic” featured content.

The number of Wikitude-Worlds is growing daily because creating your own World does not require setting up a server or any development skills (see Create your own World). On wikitude.me you can find instructions on how to add content to our system. In the coming days, we will be announcing a dynamic way to add your content. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions on this (developers AT mobilizy.com)

If you have questions or suggestions on UI, user experience or any questions about the information above, please don’t hesitate to contact me personally. I am always happy to get valuable feedback from our community.

Cheers,
Andreas

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Niki Radacher

MTV Austria’s show “Sixpack” is sponsored by Nokia, among others, and one special upcoming-episode will be spotlighting cool apps from the Nokia Ovi Storet.  The MTV Sixpack-guys really liked Wikitude, so we got the amazing opportunity to show them the true potential of Wikitude, live on the Planai slopes.

After taking the “Planai Bahn 1+2,” we met about our filming schedule and discussed the timeline and topics we would cover regarding Wikitude with the MTV Sixpack team-members: the host Markus, director Florian, camera guy Kyros and assistant Bennie from MTV. Since they were filming some general Schladming topics before our interviews, we took the chance to discover a few of the slopes with our personal guide Christine from the Planai Bergbahnen.

Philipp was first up and was interviewed by Markus from MTV Sixpack.  The interview focused on “Wikitude in general.” He did a great job describing our app and how it really works.

I was up next and talked about how “Wikitude helps users in Schladming.” My example was how the Webcam World helps, for example, skiers find out the weather conditions on the mountaintop even when it’s foggy in the valley.

Markus was interviewed about “Augmented Reality” in general at the snowboarding terrain park. Among other things, he focused on how sensors are needed to really bring an AR app to life.

Last, but not least, Wolfgang explained the “possibilities of the app concept and smart phones” and how this new market is creating not only new jobs, but new businesses.

At the end of our ski-day, we had some delicious Kasnock’n at the Schafalm, the same place we had started our journey early that morning.

Special thanks goes to the MTV sixpack-team, Christine Witting and the Planai Bergbahnen for a wonderful and exciting day (including a Kasnocken dinner, Bananensplit und Kaiserschmarrn).

See the show from March 14. 2010 for one month, every Monday and Tuesday at 8pm and Sunday at 6pm on MTV Austria! http://www.mtvhome.de/

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Development and testing of the application has been finished 2 weeks ago. We only face small issues with the Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian which is required to deploy Qt applications in the OVI store. We expect the application in the Ovi store within the next days.

Andreas and I arrived in Barcelona on Thursday. So we had the whole day to settle in Barcelona. We used most of the day to work and to prepare our presentation for the judges.

Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis

Saturday we did a run-through.  We all met at Poble Espanyol, City Hall and the Navteq representatives explained to us once again the schedule of events for the big day.  We also had the opportunity to practice the presentation once in front of Navteq staff. At this point, we realized that we were not at all prepared and that our presentation barely presented the ideas that were the focus of the judgment criteria.

Over 250 companies from Europe, middle East, afrika (emea) have submitted their applications. 12 finalists made it to the final presentation last weekend in Barcelona. The judgment criteria were: Commercial Appeal (25%), Indispensability (25%), Innovativeness (20%), Aesthetic Appeal (20%), Effective use of the Navteq maps and content (10%).

On Saturday evening we took our laptops to a Tapas bar and dove in searching for the right arguments and ideas to support each of these criteria. We also prepared good answers for tricky questions. We knew they will inevitably come up. Also, we tried to address the criteria being judged in the presentation in a non-obvious way. For example we made sure the presentation contains lots of evidence as to why our solution has commercial appeal.

At 1am and after a couple of Kas (a local version of Fanta Lemon) we were done.

On the day of the judging everything went very well. There were 3 groups of 4-5 judges and we had to give our presentation to each group. We chose to do our own so-called “Panoptikum-Style” presentation, which means we switch speakers after each slide. Many people advised against that, but for us it works just great: while one of us is speaking, the other one has a moment to relax. If one of us misses a good point, the other one can jump right in to fill in the blanks.

Here are the judges:

AZO – Thorsten Rudolph, Managing Director
Bing Maps – Chris Pendleton, Bing Maps Technical Evangelist
BlackBerry – Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, Research In Motion
BMW – Dr. Thomas Muller, Department Manager, Navigation & Connected Services
deCarta – Marc Prioleau, Global Marketing Strategist
Deutsche Telekom – Alexander Landwehr, Head of International Partnerships
DeviceAnywhere – Leila Modarres, Vice President of Marketing
DigitalGlobe – Jim Beckley, Director of Global Account Sales
HTC – Philip Blair, Product Director, HTC Europe
Intel – Pankaj Kedia, Director, Global Ecosystem Programs, Ultra Mobility Group
Samsung – Byongjoo Kwak, Manager, Media Solution Center Group
Tanla – Harri Myllyla, Vice President, Business Development
Telefónica – Igor Gonzalez Martin, Genasys Positioning Platform Manager

Andi at Poble Espanyol

One important part of the presentation was a 2 minute movie I made a few weeks ago in San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate bridge and driving down into Sausalito. I had no idea where I was going, I just entered “Main Street 1, Sausalito,” just to have an address at the opposite side of the bridge. Check out the movie to see where it took me to – it looks scripted.

The presentations were as good as it gets and of course there were some of the usual “in-door GPS issues.”  After each presentation we had to step out to give the judges a few minutes to fill out their forms.  After one presentation, we forgot to turn off Wikitude Drive and we constantly heard a computer voice saying, “Turn right now” through the door.

We spent the afternoon walking around in the area of Poblo Espanyol. I badly needed this walk in order to recover. The presentations were very exhausting. We could not write that, but just for the heck of it: After an hour walking, we were lost. A bit embarrassing for developers of an industry-changing navigation system – luckily we saw a Navteq Shuttle bus that took us back to Poblo Espanyol.

Well, it was really great to be on stage like that. Not only did we receive the Grand Prize we also received an award for the Navteq Best-API usage.

Later in the cab we were laughing with tears in our eyes when we reminisced over our childhoods trying to answer the question: “Did you ever win anything in your life?”  First skiing race – age 4: disqualified. Next skiing race – age 11: 4th. Well, it was really great to win the grand prize!

Some impressions:

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Within the scope of the Mobile World Congress today, Mobilizy introduces Wikitude 4.0 for the iPhone, making the most up to date version of the augmented reality browser for smartphones accessible also for the Apple phone. The new app can now be downloaded directly from the iTunes store. Wikitude 4.0 is also available for Android and Symbian phones and showcases the Mobilizy concept of a native browser integrated augmented reality application for the first time.

By using Wikitude 4.0, the user is now able to see even more real-time information through the view finder on the screen of his phone. Geocoded data from services such as Flickr, Qype, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, user generated content and the variety of 50 further so called „Worlds“ broaden the view on reality. Users have the ability to edit and configure these Worlds or fade in or out of them. That way, each user can create their own individual augmented reality on their iPhone. By visiting the website www.wikitude.me, individual augmented reality „Worlds“ can be created – simple and without having to apply any programming skills.

More information, clearly presented
It is vital that the large amount of information of Wikitude is made available in an intelligent and easy to use way. That’s why Mobilizy designed an entirely new user interface for the Wikitude 4.0 browser that convinces through its self explaning structure and easy handling. Toolbars, bookmarks and search history help each user to organize his personal augmented reality.

„Wikitude 4.0 is a very big step for us and for augmented reality as a whole. This version is very close to being a totally native integration for a web browser. AR is a lot more than just another marketing or navigation tool – it exists since people use technology to create worlds by using media, just like time stamps on photos, sound tracks of documentary films or special effects in movies. These are all examples of how aspects of reality are enhanced by adding additional and relevant information. Through the technological development of smart phones, factors like mobility, geological position and real-time computing play an important role as well,“ mentions Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, CEO of Mobilizy.

Mobilizy drives standardizing of augmented reality
Being the provider of the leading augmented reality browser Wikitude, Mobilizy has set itself the goal to drive the standardization of augmented reality further. „Since augmented reality will be an essential influence on the way we perceive reality in the future, we are currently working on setting standards that define AR within the World Wide Web Consortium. That includes creating a special augmented reality mark-up language,“ says Breuss.

About Wikitude
Wikitude World Browser presents the user with data about their surroundings, nearby landmarks, and other points of interest by overlaying information on the camera-view of a Smartphone bringing information from the internet into context with the real-world.

Wikitude drive wins NAVTEC award
Just two days ago Mobilizy won the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge with their mobile LBS application, Wikitude Drive, which is a turn-by-turn navigation system based on NAVTEQ® maps that utilizes an augmented reality camera mode and text-to-speech instructions.

The Wikitude World Browser can be downloaded in Apples App store for free.

Wikitude World Browser for the iPhone:
Wikitude.me – Create your own world
Wikitude Press Infos

About Mobilizy:
Mobilizy is a pioneer in commercial augmented reality and the creator of the Wikitude World Browser, which is one of the first practical augmented reality (AR) mobile applications available world-wide. Wikitude Drive, an Augmented Reality Navigation System based on the Wikitude Browser, just won the EMEA 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge. Mobilizy GmbH engages in the research and in-house development of location-based services and augmented (mixed) reality experiences for smart-phones. Mobilizy is one of the leading innovators in developing new methods and applications for data acquisition and exchange in the emerging market of mobile augmented reality. Wikitude is sponsored by the Austrian Wirtschaftsservice (Impulse Programme).

Media Contact:
i5comm for Mobilizy
Bernhard Lehner
bernhard [at] i5comm.com
+43 664 439 86 09

Mobilizy was the top winner over eleven other finalists who were each evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges comprised of executives from leading wireless and technology companies.

Special Recognition Awards

In addition to the overall winners, special recognition awards were presented by NAVTEQ for outstanding achievements in specific categories:
Best Use of Location-Based Advertising: Telmap™, Israel -  Telmap5
Best Touch User Interface (UI) Application: ZorroGPS®, China – ZorroGPS Live
Best API Creation: Mobilizy GmbH, Austria – Wikitude Drive

Read more about it here.

“Wikitude Drive is surely a prime example of disruptive technology. It is a light-weight navigation system which takes a different approach than all the other navigation systems: You see the real street on your mobile phone, instead of 2D or 3D maps.  Wikitude Drive integrates natively with our core product Wikitude World Browser, which gives you access to millions of POIs and your favorite travel guides like Lonely Planet, as well as gives Wikitude World Browser a link to a light-weight navigation system. There is a lot of room to grow in this area when you imagine the possibilities by having access to the huge number of mobile services and points of interest that are already available on mobile devices. Imagine driving by virtual bill boards of your favorite fast food chain, or simply having an alert when one of them is nearby. This is going to happen within Wikitude Drive. The Wikitude platform offers numerous opportunities for monetization. To mention only two: Wikitude Drive and Wikitude World Browser offer a fantastic base to sell premium content or to display location based ads.” – Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, CEO of Mobilizy.

“Born out of our curiosity to see if the Wikitude framework would also work for navigation, it started as a shaky proof-of-concept and became a sincere example for disruptive technology. We won a once-in-a-lifetime prize, a check physically the size of towel, with a nice number printed on it. We are looking forward to working together with Navteq and Navteq’s partners in the coming months. The mission is to make the most out of this opportunity.” – Andreas Hauser, Wikitude Product Manager.

Read “The Inside Story”

ANDROID:

HTC Dream
HTC Magic
HTC Hero
HTC Tattoo
HTC Droid Eris
Motorola Droid
Samsung Galaxy
Huawei RBM2

Nexus One

iPhone 3GS

SYMBIAN 5th EDITION:
N97
N97 mini

The following Symbian 3rd/5th-edition devices will be supported from beginning of March 2010:
Samsung I8910 HD
Nokia E72
Nokia N86 8MP
Nokia 6788
Nokia E52
Nokia 5730 XpressMusic
Nokia 6710 Navigator
Nokia E55
Nokia 6720 classic
New: Nokia 6210 Navigator

We are also targeting further platforms in the near future.

Wikitude Drive is a turn-by-turn navigation system based on NAVTEQ® maps that utilizes an augmented reality camera mode and text-to-speech instructions.

Read more about it here.

“Wikitude Drive is surely a prime example of disruptive technology. It is a light-weight navigation system which takes a different approach than all the other navigation systems: You see the real street on your mobile phone, instead of 2D or 3D maps.  Wikitude Drive integrates natively with our core product Wikitude World Browser, which gives you access to millions of POIs and your favorite travel guides like Lonely Planet, as well as gives Wikitude World Browser a link to a light-weight navigation system. There is a lot of room to grow in this area when you imagine the possibilities by having access to the huge number of mobile services and points of interest that are already available on mobile devices. Imagine driving by virtual bill boards of your favorite fast food chain, or simply having an alert when one of them is nearby. This is going to happen within Wikitude Drive. The Wikitude platform offers numerous opportunities for monetization. To mention only two: Wikitude Drive and Wikitude World Browser offer a fantastic base to sell premium content or to display location based ads.” – Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, CEO of Mobilizy.

“Born out of our curiosity to see if the Wikitude framework would also work for navigation, it started as a shaky proof-of-concept and became a sincere example for disruptive technology. We won a once-in-a-lifetime prize, a check physically the size of towel, with a nice number printed on it. We are looking forward to working together with Navteq and Navteq’s partners in the coming months. The mission is to make the most out of this opportunity.” – Andreas Hauser, Wikitude Product Manager.

A complete tutorial and the API itself can be downloaded from www.wikitude.org/developers.

A wonderful Showcase is “Location Scout” by Jeff Gilfelt

Of course we have been curious about Jeff’s experience with the Wikitude API:

Jeff, how did you develop your AR camera-view? Was it difficult?
With the Wikitude API I don’t have to deal with any of the complexities of device positioning, orientation or camera UI. Instead I just focus on providing the geo data and let Wikitude take care of the rest. I would say most existing geo applications on Android can become AR enabled using the Wikitude API with just one or two hours of development and testing.

What do you like about the Wikitude API?
While there are alternatives available that allow you to display you own data as “Overlays” within Wikitude and other AR browsers, what I really like about the Wikitude API solution is that it provides true on-device integration that adds real value to your own app. The intent mechanism that facilitates inter-application communication is one of
Android’s most unique and powerful features. It is great to see Wikitude embracing this within their API.

What about the new features of Wikitude 4 that have just been released?
The great thing about the API is that it also enables your application to automatically leverage the continual improvements to Wikitude itself. When the new camera view enhancements were delivered in Wikitude 4, those same enhancements appeared automatically in Location
Scout.

Thanks for the interview!

About Location Scout

Location Scout is a mobile application that helps you discover filming locations for thousands of movies via information compiled by the Internet Movie Database. Location Scout has had over 16000 downloads from the Android Market. In December 2009, Location Scout was selected as one of T-Mobile USA’s “top picks” in their Android market channel and was even part of a special promotional event that took place during the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Congratulations on this big success!