*Yeah, I was a judge. The cool part about being a judge is wading your way through the slushpile. That's how you learn what's actually out there.
Commerce winning category in Layar Creation Challenge
Expert jury awards $55,000 in total cash prizes
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – October 20th, 2011 – Layar, the largest open platform for mobile augmented reality (AR), announced today the winners for the Layar Creation Challenge. ‘AR Posters’ emerged as the winner of the $15,000 grand prize, while ‘Buy it!’ and ‘Food2You’ were awarded second ($10,000) and third ($7,500) place prizes.
The winning concepts show that augmented reality has a natural fit with commerce, adding real value to existing businesses. The top three winners were chosen because they show the potential to fundamentally change the way consumers purchase goods and services while on-the-go.
With ‘AR Posters’ people watch previews, win tickets and more by scanning a concert poster. This concept also comes with an online content management system. The ‘Buy it!’ layer allows customers to buy and compare prices directly on top of product packaging, and ‘Food2You’ enables interactivity on top of a menu, such as recipe information and ordering food for delivery.
The concepts completing the top 10 are:
4th Place: Fan Vision - View sports stats, highlights and scores, and purchase souvenirs.
5th Place: FoldAR - View 3D models of items in a product catalog.
6th Place: DIBBS - Call "Dibbs" on ad items for a chance to score great in-store deals.
7th Place: They Live - Scan movie posters for more information and related materials.
8th Place: Bath Life Magazine - Enrich articles/features with audio, video and more.
9th Place: Who Killed Guido? - Search scenes for clues to solve a murder mystery.
10th Place: AR Cards - Send personalized cards with audio, video and 3D animations.
A video of the top three winners is available or you can watch a mashup of all winners. A pdf document containing detailed descriptions and images to experience the layers yourself can be downloaded as well.
“We encouraged developers to think big and they showed they were up to the challenge by coming up with creative, smart business ideas that have lasting value for both the user and layer publisher,” said Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Layar co-founder and General Manager.
“Augmented Reality, in my view, is the next GPS; i.e., it will become a standard, no-brainer technology used by most consumers,” said Gerd Leonhard, Media Futurist and jury member. “Among the applicants there was a lot of creativity and innovation. Applications such as AR Posters could very well become widely used and integrated into many services within the next 18 months.”
“I've often wondered why posters for techno music aren't more ‘techno.’ With the ‘AR Posters’ concept, that will no longer pose a problem,” said jury member Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author and AR wizard (((that's a new one.))) “The idea of buying objects instantly through image recognition isn't just clever. It's so clever that it's diabolical.”
The Layar Reality Browser including Layar Vision is available for download in the Android Market and will be coming soon to iPhone. Layar Vision is an extension of the Layar platform enabling visual search on the mobile phone, recognizing real world objects and showing digital content on top of them. Users can view and interact with digital experiences by holding their phone over objects like posters, magazines and newspapers. Layar is already installed on more than 10 million mobile devices, offering brands and publishers an extensive reach across multiple platforms.
Visit Layar.com for more information about Layar Vision and the Layar Creation Challenge.
About Layar
Layar is the world's leading mobile augmented reality platform with 10 million installs, 10,000 developers and the largest content catalogue with over 3,000 layers. Layar brings impactful augmented reality experiences into people's everyday lives. The Layar application is available on Android, iPhone, Symbian and Blackberry devices, comes globally pre-installed on millions of phones and is promoted by leading handset manufacturers and mobile providers like Samsung, Verizon and Sprint.
Layar was named as a 2011 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, a Disruptive Innovator at the 2010 Deloitte Fast50 awards, and received a Meffy Mobile Entertainment Award 2010 for Technology Innovation.
Video links:
mashup of all winners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATNuMoS9_oY
video with just the top 3 winners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQTXosSx-U
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Bernice Thijm
Marketing Communications Manager
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m: +31 620 54 24 26
e: [email protected]
s: bernicethijm
t: http://twitter.com/bernicemw
Layar B.V. | Rietlandpark 301 | 1019 DW | Amsterdam | The Netherlands
Join us at: layar.com | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | SlideShare
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Layar, Get more out of AR!
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