British fashion designer Henry Holland has teamed up with Aurasma to create his own augmented reality app called House of Holland, which brings the front cover of InStyle alive this month.

The application allows subscribers of InStyle in the UK to download the House of Holland app and point the camera on their mobile device at the December issue's front cover. The leopard skin print then melts away to reveal runway videos from Holland's Spring / Summer 2012 collection, which was revealed at London Fashion Week earlier in the year. Readers are then able to click straight through to the House of Holland website to buy pieces from the looks. Take a sneak peek at the video of the moving InStyle cover in action.

This isn't the first time we've seen a major publication ditch its traditional glossy front cover in favour of something a little bit different. Earlier in the month, augmented reality app Zappar teamed up with Hearst Magazines UK, the company behind Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar, to bring the covers of their publications to life with augmented reality, which revealed interviews with celebrities and exclusive content.

Over the past few years many industry insiders have been questioning whether augmented reality technologies are here to stay, or just quirky gimmicks that have no real lasting power. Although early adopters and tech enthusiasts may be sick and tired of the term already, the increasingly popularity of apps like Aurasma show that many are still interested.

The fact that both InStyle and Heart Magazines UK have utilised augmented reality technology as part of their covers in recent months shows that this kind of richer, interactive content could certainly hold an appeal with audiences who are growing tired of print media and want something even more compelling. It'll be interesting to see whether this kind of augmented reality integration draws more people in and increasingly becomes a part of printed media, or whether it just confuses and irritates them in the long run.

The House of Holland app is available from iTunes for Free.

Hearst Magazines UK, which is the company behind popular women's titles like Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar, has teamed up with augmented reality app Zappar to bring the December issues of a number of its popular magazines to life.

All readers need to do is buy their favourite magazine, download the free Zappar app and then point it at the cover to see exclusive content, which differs depending on which magazine you've bought. For example, Cosmopolitan readers can watch the cover star, Jessie J, talking about the Cosmopolitan Women of the Year Awards, but if you prefer Company to Cosmo, you can see cover star Caroline Flack giving an exclusive introduction to the title's little back dress issue.

Caspar Thykier, managing director at Zappar said: 

"We are thrilled to be working with Hearst Magazines UK on such iconic brands showcasing exclusive content. The potential for future publishing & content delivery models using Zappar are fascinating. Being able to explore these avenues with such a fantastic stable of brands is a real privilege."

Although we've seen augmented reality integrated into our offline and print publications in the past, it's good to see Hearst Magazines and Zappar bringing this kind of technology well and truly into the mainstream.

The titles will need to work hard to keep readers interested though, if this is going to be a regular feature a short interview with a celebrity isn't going to cut it week after week. But, the partnership will allow Zappar to showcase its app and give Hearst Magazines UK an edge, really building on the run-of-the-mill printed magazine experience, which many are bored with in comparison to just how much content they can see and interact with online.

The December issues of Cosmopolitan, Company and Harper's Bazaar will be available to buy over the next few days.

The Zappar app is available for free from iTunes and the Android Market.

Weetabix has added a fun, colourful new augmented reality game to its cereal boxes recently, further proving that AR is no longer a quirky gimmick but well and truly ingrained in our everyday lives and our kitchens.

The game requires you to download the free Weetakid app so you can run him around his little planet and rebuild his colourful galaxy. To give Weetakid more energy you can point your phone at the cereal box to see it come to life and feed him some Weetabix.

It sounds a little bit cheesy and it's obviously aimed at children, but if you're looking for a morning pick-me-up then give it a go regardless of whether you're four or 40.

The special AR packs will begin to be rolled out over October and the app is available from iTunes for Free.

It has a lot of promise and it has a lot of teething problems, but Augmented Reality could be about to see the improvement that it needs to lift it out of the gimmicky doldrums.

For the past year or two of AR's short life, the technology it uses to fix the virtual layer on the real world has been kind of dodgy.

There have been two ways of doing it: geolocation, relying on GPS which notoriously has a 10metre error margin; or image recognition - nice but usually has to be paired with a graphic to well (a QR code or suchlike).

A Swedish start up 13th Lab has come up with a third way, which cunningly combines both of the above - making the virtual layer much more intelligent and sensitive to the surrounding world.

Nasa use it to control robots apparently. 13th Lab have got the system down to something they can put on an iPad app.

It uses a computer vision technique known as SLAM -- that's Simultaneous Localization and Mapping which helps a robo look around and understand where it is.

They've built a little game with the technology. It's well fun and it's called Ball Invasion (iTunes). Video above. It's built for an iPad 2 too - a natural home for AR - having a large screen and big battery. This could be taken a lot further though. Watch this space..

Related: Ten Best Augmented Reality Apps

[via gigaom]

Augmented Reality - the ability to access relevant digital information in real time as we're walking down the street - is one of the hottest new areas of technology. Especially the music and advertising industries are excited about this, which is why we can now see music videos played from the backs of cereal boxes. But there are still questions about how relevant Augmented Reality (AR) will be - will it ever be more than just a clever gimmick?

At the moment, the technology is new and progress is hinged on development in other areas. Mobile phones need excellent batteries to perform the complex tasks of AR, and the internet needs to be stellar to provide uninterrupted information. Another hardware issue is GPS accuracy - most mobiles don't have the antennae for perfect tracking. We will need that if we want to walk down Oxford Street and know what the person next to us are tweeting.

Anna Leach delves deeper into the issues surrounding augmented reality in the brand new issue of Technode, available to download free via iTunes.

Augmented reality brings wonders to the car windscreens of the future as imagined by British car glass manufacturers Autoglass.

Autoglass® vision for a revolutionary car windscreen in 2020 with augmented reality, visual sensors & GPS technology.

Will the car windscreen display key information about speed, fuel and any issues with parts of the car. Even combine visual sensors with augmented reality , online maps and GPS technology to provide drivers with live, visual information about the places and hazards around them.

Dr Chris Davies, head of technical research & innovation at Autoglass said, "As well as accounting for up to 30% of a vehicle's structural strength, the windscreen has become an interactive tool for sharing information and improving the driver experience. Essentially the car is becoming more like a laptop and the windscreen will evolve into the virtual information screen."

>> LOVE the comment about cars becoming more like laptops. That's device convergence for you...

More on AutoglassUK

A new announcement by Layar promises to put the tools for making Augmented Reality apps into the hands of everyone.

Layar blogged:

"Layar Connect allows anyone to build what could become the WordPress or YouTube of augmented reality, helping them create and share content in truly immersive ways."

We're on board. Layer have opened up their API with Layar Connect, that lets third party companies create nice user friendly content management systems that non-techies like you or me can use.

Previously it was possible to add your own points of interest to layars, but this will make the process much easier to do and easier to manage. As with hosting programmes on the web, you need to pay for the app to be hosted. And depending on the service you choose there are publishing fees as well.

Layar have officially given approval to four content management systems. Others will probably get made for more specific purposes, but in the meantime here are the top four - and the prices they charge.

1) buildAR
[$10 a month hosting & $295 to publish]

2) Positr
[pricing not yet decided]

3) Poiz
[€9.95 per month or €49.99 - available from 1st June]

4) Visar
[demo free - further pricing to be announced]

So how do you go about making an Augmented Reality app?

All four services largely work through a web browser on your computer. They'd be based on geographical location, which is what Layar uses to anchor its points of interest or POIs. These points of interest are the building blocks of Layar. You, the creator would chose where to put them and then, depending on the app you can choose how your user gets to interact with them - can they add to them? Do they pick up rewards for passing them?

It's the beginning of something big... We've asked our favourite Augmented Reality developer for a comment and we're going to try it out a bit ourselves....

In the meantime - here's a quick diagram showing how these new apps simplify the process of making Augmented Reality apps...

See more on the Layar blog

Want a calorie-free Easter? Swap the chocolate eggs on a Easter Egg hunt with points of interest on Layar - the Augmented reality app.

I'm not sure the kids will fall for it - but you can try anyway.. Geeks with smartphones will go mental for it.

Make the points of interest available only to those nearby, and seekers with the app open should see them pop up when they go near them.

Here's how to make a layer on Layar: what to say about the religious holiday of Easter is up to you...

In spite of my personal status as a shameless Trekkie, I appreciate not everyone is as into the geeky stuff as I am. But even those misguided folks out there who fail to worship at the altar of Roddenberry will still appreciate the excitement of the technologically augmented future. Even Stephen Hawking once said it: "The physics that underlies Star Trek is surely worth investigating."

Progress is taking place all the time, such as yesterday's announcement that computer scientists are working on gadgets that can feel regret. Apparently, an understanding of this basic human emotion would make computers better at predicting the future, the Google-funded scientists think. To measure the distance between the desired and actual outcome, the computer could become better at minimising this gap, which is in essence a way to measure regret.

While the boffins are pondering away at the robot brain, we take a look at how things are progressing with a few technologies which may well just make the world a bit more like life on the starship Enterprise.

1. Replicators
"Tea, Earl Grey, hot." You tell'em, Captain Picard. On the Enterprise you simply tell the replicator what you want and it makes it for you. Wonderfully simple, isn't it - no more cooking - and the replicators even make other things too, like clothes and books. Captain Janeway of the starship Voyager somehow managed to keep burning her replicator food though, so clearly it's not foolproof. The same is certainly true for the first efforts from a team at Cornell University in the US, which have been working with 3D food printers. Foods are made into pastes, which are carefully squired through nozzles to create little food "sculptures". Not quite what the Captain ordered, but it's a start.

2. Robot skin
Artificial skin that can feel touch - that's a stretch even for the Star Trek universe's favourite android, Data. He got it in the end, courtesy of the Borg Queen, but it's possible researchers at Stanford University could beat her to it. Ultra-sensitive electronic skin is currently under development, and this highly sensitive skin should even be able to detect disease markers.

3. Universal translators
The aliens don't all speak English on Star Trek, that would be silly. What's happening, you see, is that the communicators all have incorporated an universal translator, which helps our heroes understand what's being said. Here on earth, there are already several mobile phone apps that will translate text for you, but Google has recently launched an app which does this orally. If you speak into your phone, the app will translate into 15 languages if spoken, or 50 if written. An excellent beginning.

4. Holodecks
On the Holodeck, our heroes can step into a completely different world, programmed to their specifications. This means the opportunity to visit the past or a holiday destination, and then there was that time Tuvok, Voyager's Vulcan resident, underwent the "pon-farr" in the depths of space and had to seek a little, eh, relief. 3D technology is coming along rapidly here on earth, with the visual effects becoming increasingly better. The touch-and-feel part of virtual reality is yet to manifest, but give those 3D film buffs some time and it may well still happen. As the first 3D porn film opened in China last weekend, maybe some clever producer will take a leaf out of Tuvok's book?

5. Communication
We've come very far on this one already, in fact there isn't much of what they have in Star Trek that we don't have available to us now. We have widespread use of mobile phones and the ability to make video calls sorted. The only thing missing here is to make the communicators cuter and more intuitive - get rid of the buttons and get it all done by voice, for instance. Judging from all those ads for Google Voice around town right now, that shouldn't take too long.

6. Computer interface
Increasingly better touchscreens are coming along like speeding bullets, and with speech control now high on the agenda, it seems like computer interfacing is fast approaching Star Trek levels. But we can still get better; for example Tobii Technology has developed a tracking technology that means the computer will be able to follow the movements of your eyes. This means scrolling pages once your eyes reach the bottom of the document, and looking at points at the screen constitutes clicking. Lenovo has already created laptops with this technology.

7. Tractor beams
The Enterprise can drag objects in space - now it's looking like we can soon do this in real life too. Granted, it only works with very small particles so far. Basically it works because the light falling on an opaque object is reflected back in the direction it came from. These bouncing photons will then push the object, moving it away from the light source. This is the opposite of what happens in Star Trek, where the tractor beam pulls, not pushes. Researchers at Fudan University in China are working on pulling beams, however, thought to be possible because the light waves in question also contain electric and magnetic fields. This means the particles can be excited to emit light, reversing the direction.

8. Phaser guns and photon torpedos
"Set your phasers to stun," said Captain Picard - those phasers could evaporate someone too, but did the Capital ever authorise that setting? Oh no. The technology itself may well be possible, but the problem is the energy requirements, and the resulting massive size. A US company has patented a design using laser light, and could potentially be on its way to create a working phaser. The patented laser generates a path of ionised air between the weapon and the target, acting as a conductor for electricity which can stun the victim.

9. Faster-than-light speed and time travel
"Warp" speed is a key obstacle for any Star Trek-resembling reality. Time dilation is a problem for real-life scientists, whereas the Enterprise whizzes along at light-speed without any problems occurring. Time travel is also possible in the Star Trek universe, although highly frowned upon and violation of the Temporal Prime Directive got Capital Janeway into trouble more than once. Thinking they know better, researchers at Vanderbilt University have started tinkering at the problem, believing they may be able to use the Large Hadron Collider to send a type of matter called the Higgs singlet into the past. There are some problems, however: it is not yet certain the Higgs singlet actually exists.

10. Beaming technology
"Beam me up, Scotty." This one may be the neatest - the ability to move things in the blink of an eye. Bye commuter trains, hello daytrips to Kiwi. Also here we are making progress; yesterday researchers from Japan and Australia announced they had successfully teleported waves of light. In the first instance, this could revolutionise information transfers, but we are hopeful. Oh and while they are at it, someone should look into making a Sonic Shower, which cleans without water. Now that's time-saving for you.

This art project is a cute take on Augmented Reality. Amsterdam-based artist Ben Heine's pen and paper drawings give a surreal twist to the idea of layering an imaginary world on top of the real world.

He's bang on the interface of the real and the imaginary.

As the Augmented Blog says:
"If you a.) think augmented reality needs a human touch b.) look for inspiration because you are working on concepts at the interface of real and virtual or c.) just love to look at good, creative work you definitely should bookmark Ben´s stream!"

Ben explained in an interview how he considers his work.. "I somehow consider the surface of the image as a battle between drawing and photography and the tools of this fight are my « pencil » and my « camera ». So I usually choose photos with a striking subject and a specific action. It can also be nice to use a background scenery with a very simple or low semantic effect and make everything happen inside the small piece of paper."

The great thing is that photo and drawing are 2 different ways of expression but they go well together and they definitely have the same purpose: share an idea, an emotion, a concept or a message.

Browse Ben Heine's continually updated set of photos on Flickr.

[via Augmented Blog]

Uh, wow. Appmakers Questvisual have invented an app - on sale now - which can translate words within in images, in real time. That means that you can point your phone at a poster or page in Spanish and it will translate it into English as you look at it.

It even keeps the translated text in roughly the same size and font and uses AR to superimpose them on the image so it literally looks someone has magicked a translated rewrite out of thin air.

It's exactly the sort of app that people always imagine would be great, but that seems impossible to make. But, taking advantage of the quality of image recognition now available and putting in two and a half years of hard work the creators - Otavio Good and John DeWeese- have produced this excellent app. I'm stunned. It even magically leaves numbers unchanged. And even better, it works with the internet off, so you won't need to burn through ££s of data on your travels abroad..

This is going to work better with printed words, rather than handwritten ones, and probably with big ones rather than small ones. Good says that it doesn't accurately translate everything... but still this a fantastic app and really user-friendly. Currently it only does English to Spanish and vice versa but they're looking to include more languages in the next update. Check out the neat reverse type demo too..

This is possibly the most useful application of AR that I have ever seen.

Word Lens is free on iTunes, languages cost £2.99

An augmented reality app that lets you see UFOs hovering over the streets and shoot 'em down with your iPhone takes phone gaming to a new level. The game is not just on your 3.5 inch screen, it's floating above your head, it's on your right and it's coming straight at you firing flaming missiles.

On the downside, the game makes you look like a right twat. See the video above. To someone not able to see your iphone screen, it looks like you are flinching, ducking and waving your arms around in response to **nothing**.

In days gone by, this sort of behaviour would have got you locked up in a mental asylum before you could explain to anyone that you were fighting the invisible alien ships.

Still, though it makes you look a crazy, I'm sure this will take off. People sing along to music only they can hear on MP3 players, and those people with hands-free phone headsets will walk around the streets looking like they are talking to nobody.

And hey, it just looks like a bunch of fun.

Look-Up: the Augmented Reality space game is $1.99 on iTunes

Amsterdam-based Augmented Reality platform Layar have just scooped 10million Euros in funding from venture capitalists.

With fast expansion going on in all areas of Augmented Reality other names have started to emerge and techniques as well.

The money will be funnelled into Layar's app, software and platform and finance its continued geographical expansion. The investors are Intel Capital, Prime Ventures and Sunstone Capital.

Alexander Ribbink, partner at Prime Ventures said: 'Layar's growth is an astonishing sight. Other investors recognize the possibilities of both the product and firm. The number of active users is also growing very fast, now well into the millions. The new investment will support that."

Layar are currently the leading name in AR, but they need to keep moving fast to keep their position. Their location-based approach to Augmented Reality is also being challenged by AR technologies that use image recognition rather than GPS location-based ones

One different approach to AR is to judge the placement of the computer graphics through image recognition rather than by GPS like Layar does. Layar and other location based stuff is still held up by the accuracy of the GPS system, which can be up to 10m out. It's due an accuracy improvement in 2014, but they need to keep things fresh till then.

See also:
Top AR Developer Howard Ogden on the big names interested in AR ...

We know Augmented Reality is popular right now, but we can now officially say it has gone mainstream with the arrival of AR in breakfast cereals. Nestle have launched a thing with their Chocopic range of cereals in France where 3D glasses you cut out of your cereal packet will let you open up and control a web game, it's also a collaboration with kids' film called Arthur 3.

It uses the same simple web-cam and image recognition tech that we saw on the front cover of Grazia magazine a while back. All you ever wanted to know about it is in the video below..

We had a European first in the office today with this demo of Vuzix's Augmented Reality spectacles. Combining augmented reality with 3D images they let you see three dimensional characters pop out of objects in the real world.

So looking through the glasses, dragons pop out of pages, volcanos erupt on a book in front of you and globes orbit your mug. A prototype was seen on the Gadget Show back in April, but this is the finished product now available for developers.

At £1500 the AR specs are not exactly for consumers and until 2011, only 200-300 models will be made. Till then Vuzix are selling them to developers (many universities have placed orders) bundled up with the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the device which will allow the developers to build apps and content for the new hardware... and those could be anything from architectural models to engineering manuals to the most exciting children's book you've ever seen. In the New Year, Vuzix will sell the specs without the software which will bring the price down to approximately £900.

Give them a little longer and we hope there will be affordable versions on the market.

Yes, they're expensive, clunky, and make you look a bit like a weevil-eyed weirdo but my god, this stuff is really exciting. I didn't film the five minutes I spent moving a virtual troll around the desk, but let me tell you, it was great.

We have literally seen the future... watch the video to see the demo with David Lock, the European head of Vuzix

Vuzix Wrap 920AR, £1499.99 on Vuzix

Fashion has really picked up on Augmented Reality - we've seen it on the catwalks a few times and on the covers of fashion magazines - but the big growth area seems to be virtual changing rooms.

AR lets you superimpose a computer image on top of a picture of the real world - ten years ago that was being used to help engineers assemble motors - but now it's being used for much more consumer purposes - letting people virtually try on clothes for example.

The best example recently was American department story Macy's Magic Mirror - an augmented reality screen which shows you an image of yourself standing in front of it then lets you try on any item of clothing from their store so you can see what it would look like on.

eBay have also got in on the act with their new fashion app letting you put pictures of clothes you like on top of an image of yourself.

A jewellry website is now doing the same thing - letting you try on their pieces via an augmented reality link on their website. They ask you to stick little bits of barcoded paper onto yourself to make sure the images anchor in the right place. Nice idea, even though we don't really dig their description of augmented reality...

"Gaze at yourself in the magical mirror and change our creations as many times as you wish. The most beautiful jewels and watches are just waiting to reveal themselves to your hearts desire. What you experience is not a dream. No need to pinch yourself to make sure you are not dreaming: it is real!"

See it here on the Boucheron website.

Augmented Reality is a sexy and very visual technology so it is a good fit for fashion. Expect to see a lot more of this kind of innovation..

American department store Macy's have introduced Augmented Reality into their changing rooms with touch sensitive "magic mirrors".

The one-off experiment in their flagship store in Herald Square has introduced a mirror hooked up to a tablet computer. Customers can flick through store products on the tablet and then call up an image of the product on the mirror, superimposing it on webcam footage of themselves. It lets you try on lots of stuff very quickly... and without having to get undresssed...

Obviously you're not going to get the right fit from a computer-simulated image... but you will get a gist of what a piece of clothing would look like on and whether it's worth hunting the piece out in the shop and trying it on properly .

If you fancy *sharing* the images or just saving them for reference then you can send images of the whole experience to your Facebook page, cell phone or email. .

It was made in conjunction with marketing agency LBi. "As the role of retail changes and the lines between physical and digital continue to blur, agencies are tasked with providing innovative solutions that help marketers enhance the customer experience," said Christopher Enright, Chief Innovation Officer of LBi.

[from Retailing Today via Howard at Mobilistar]

I remember a time when cards were cards. Now they're portals into augmented reality. Well you'd expect Buzz Lightyear cards to be sort of whizzy, and the new ones are pretty impressive. Wave the playing card in front of your webcam on the dedicated Buzz Lightyear site and instead of seeing yourself waving a card around, you'll be controlling a moving model of the Toy Story hero, magically superimposed on top.

You can play an "addictive flying game" with Buzz where you control him by moving your card, or just watch him bumping around, taking pictures of yourself with your virtual friend.

Then of course you can just play normal card games with cards too... like the 2-in-1 Toy Story 3 Trade Up & Happy Families Card Game. Or that game where you just flick them at your sister.

The Toy Story 3 Buzz Lightyear Gift Set Tin will be available from all good toy retailers at
£9.99. For more information visit www.cartamundi.com/buzz.

We do love Augmented reality a lot. As emerging technologies go, it's probably one of the sexier ones, with the strong visuals and the general feeling that you're in a computer game making it a bit more exciting than say the structured data web, another hotly tipped trend.

However Augmented Reality is still a little awkward in some respects. In terms of the AR technology - there are hurdles to overcome. We talked a bit to our favourite AR developer Howard Ogden of mobilistar and augmentreality and he mentioned a couple of the issues Augmented Reality has to overcome to go mainstream...

• Accuracy
- currently the margin of error is large. It's 10 meters on today's GPS systems and when you're trying to superimpose an image on another at close range, that is not accurate enough. Techniques like skyhook and image recognition can be used today to mitigate this - in 2014 a new GPS satellite network will be launched giving a much higher degree of accuracy.

• Standards
- there are no open standards amongst the current crop of AR browsers which means you have to make a judgement call on the platform of choice. As in other walled garden scenarios, that means data can't be shared between platforms

• Availability of AR capable devices
- AR is currently limited to smartphones right now as the complexity of displaying AR content requires numerous bits of smartphone hardware such as GPS,Camera, Gyroscope or Accelerometer + compass, 3D rendering capability and so on. This is found in only the latest handsets right now but the technology will filter down throughout the mobile landscape.

I'm looking forward to headpieces, head-up displays in cars and of course, AR-enabled contact lenses, but realise I may have to wait for a while....

Related: Top AR Developer Howard Ogden on the big names interested in AR and those damn limited internet deals

Location, location, location. Augmented Reality on mobile phones has always been about location. What with all the other whizzy stuff involved that sometimes gets forgotten, but it is mostly used as a really visual and simple way of telling you more about where you are.
With Facebook launching Places last week, location is now red hot. Facebook Places isn't Augmented Reality since it doesn't overlay an image of the real world with computer generated information... but it's not hard to see them introducing it at some point in the future.

The big player at the minute is Layar, a Dutch company that have a created a platform also called Layar for Augmented Reality apps(or layers as it calls them). Layar comes pre-installed in most Android phones and is available on iPhone 3Gs and 4. It's still the most advanced platform out there (see our article here) though lots of other big names are making moves in that direction... Foursquare is one. Facebook & Google are both potentially interested.

Anyway, before we get carried away with all this talk of the future - here are ten great Augmented Reality apps out now. Most of them are doing interesting things with the medium. Some are just a bit bonkers.

[A lot of the links are to the iPhone store, but most apps will be on Android as well ]

Related: Interview with Howard Ogden, Britain's leading Augmented Reality Specialist