Posts Tagged ‘Augmented Reality’

Happy Year of Me, Pub Style

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

My buddy Sean keeps saying “this is the year of Tony” but I didn’t realize how prescient he was until we went to Downtown Los Angeles for the Chinese New Year Parade and saw that it is in deed The Year of the Tiger.

(thanks to Clelio for first giving me that nickname)

And how better to celebrate my year than with an iPhone augmented reality app from Thai beer maker Tiger that helps you find suds in the UK.

AR_Bar-Locater_Tiger-Beer.jpg

Yeah, I know, that was a stretch of a segue but you see how I went from Tony to Year of the Tiger to Tiger Beer to an iPhone app I can’t use because mine is so old plus it only working in the United Kingdom… hey, cut me some slack. I just got over a terrible flu.

Anyway, here’s a video showing how the app works.

Any of my UK readers w/ iPhones wanna tell me if the app works?

(Brien, you don’t have an iPhone, do ya?)

Friday Fun: More Than Reality

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Earlier this week I went to see Pee Wee’s Playhouse Live (for a real treat check out Pee Wee’s Official Website) and while trekking through Downtown LA hunting for a place to eat, my friend Cece kept drilling me with “but what’s augmented reality?” For some reason I was incredibly incoherent (I blame the two Manhattans coursing through my veins) but then she pulled out her iPhone, opened her Yelp app, shook her phone vigorously and then looked at a live video feed through the phone that also showed tags for restaurants ahead of us.

I grabbed her shoulder and said, “Cece, that’s AR!”

She had that “ah-ha” moment. She got it. For me, I had that moment when I dug into this issues of Esquire magazine (For the record, I’m a subscriber).

Let me back up. I received this issue of Esquire but didn’t even bother to open it (November was a busy month) until I heard this piece from On The Media (an awesome public radio show).

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I then whipped out my Esquire, downloaded the required software, engaged my webcam and BOOM, Robert Downey Jr was talking to me.

If you missed that issue, worry not. First, download this software. Next, download these AR pages and enjoy.  FYI, you’ll want to hear/see the joke both during the day and after midnight.

On a final note, by the time you read this I’ll be on the east coast for a quick trip to see some friends. Expect the next handful of posts to be chock-full of dude adventures from the big island of Manhattan and the swamp that is DC.