The AppToyz solution is a gun shaped holder for your mobile phone. There is no electronics in the device, instead the trigger controls two rubberised fingers (for want of a better word) which tap the screen. Of course games will need to be designed specifically for the AR gun to ensure that the fingers tap in the right places. In the video below you can see the gun in action.

I’m not sure about this one, I worry about my expensive phone flying through the air in the heat of an AR battle. It will be interesting to see if developers begin to build compatible games.
From what I understand the gun will be priced around £15-$20 ($25-$30) mark.

The AR Gun in action

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N64IQN1MtdI

Kafkara is application for the Android that takes that concept a bit further and is most definitely an augmented reality app. Here instead of adding features to a 2D photo, a person’s face is texture mapped onto a 3D avatar and shown in augmented reality. In essence, you can map a face on to a 3D object like a bee. The best way to describe Kafkara is it’s like the Ironman or Transformers demo from Total Immersion but without the huge production values.

You can create the faces either by taking a photo of a person, or by grabbing their picture from either Facebook or Twitter. Once you have the picture, the application also uses the Google Text To Speech Engine and will animate the person’s lips speaking whatever you typed.  Finally to complete the package, the app has a radar feature that shows what other Kafkara avatars have been created near you.

Kafkara is also completely free, so iIf you have an Android and you fancy a bit of 3D face manipulation fun be sure to take a look. If you’re a 3D model expert then get in touch with the developers as they are looking for some assistance with creating new avatars and I’m sure would appreciate your help.
Get it from the Android Market Place or use the QR Code

Effects can be themed, eg snow, music or birthdays and applied to the video feed. The application also has sophisticated facial tracking functionality to overlay video effects in the correct places.

Mosimo Camera

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI2KpZZF_Hw

ARTags is a drawing application for the Android platform that provides the user with a number of drawing tools that can be used to create works of art and then left in cyberspace. Artwork is geo-coded with the creators current location and then viewable in an augmented reality browser. Where ARTags differs from other similar applications is they haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel by developing their own augmented reality browser engine. Instead they focus on the drawing tools, once artwork has been created and submitted they are viewable with either Layar, junaio or Wikitude. ARTags artwork is viewable with any of these browsers so it one of the first cross-browser products that I am aware of.

ARTags is currently only available for the Android, iPhone users for the time being will have to be content with viewing the art.

If you enjoy creating art and want to share your masterpieces with others then ARTags is definitely worth a look.

ARTags in action

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKxOy08POc0

Get it here.

If you are buying an iPad the only choice is, memory size and whether you want 3G. Android Tablets you have to worry about the OS version, chip speed, connections, whether it has access to the market place (not all do) and memory. To confuse matters even more, device go by many different names as they get rebranded.

After a lot of research I opted for an X5A which is a 7” device featuring a Telechip 8902 processor (based on ARM11 apparently). According to what I read, it’s the fastest Android device on the market right now. It also runs Android OS 2.1. The device also has a HDMI out so I can connect it directly to my Plasma TV and watch movies, YouTube videos or surf the web. Note that the HDMI is HDMI out, you can’t connect to your xBox. Battery life seems to be pretty good, I have only had to charge it once so far.

Many complaints I read from users of other Android tablets were about buttons that didn’t work. For example, the home button did nothing, so if you were browsing the web and wanted to go back to the desktop you would have to press the back button repeatedly. The X5A has buttons for home, back, and menu and they all work just fine.

However, if you’re planning on buying one, here are some of my random gripes on the device.

Screen

The touch screen is not that great. It requires a decent touch to register input, you are not going to enjoy typing emails on it. Scrolling is a real pain as it requires so much pressure that the device often mistakes the input for a button press and loads what ever program you happen to have ‘not’ selected. It comes with a stylus which is retractable, the problem is tapping the screen requires so much force that the stylus retracts. I own an iPhone and there is no comparison in quality of the screen.

Speed

While researching the device prior to buying I found a lot of other users saying that this is the fastest device available. I haven’t used any Android devices before and would have to say that its pretty slow. Clicking an icon results in a 1 second period where you are wondering if the device is doing something or if you didn’t use enough pressure. I can only wonder what other ‘slower’ devices are like.

Youtube

Youtube works ok, video plays full screen and look great on the device. The speaker is enough so you can hear the audio at a good level. It’s really annoying that you can’t change the volume level once you start playing a video, you have to close the video first, change the volume then restart

There is also something strange about the Youtube search. To test I tried searching for the IT Crowd which is a UK comedy. The device returns Youtube content for 1 and 2 minute clips as well as various parodies, not the full length videos I am after. There is a setting to affect the timescale of the search but it doesn’t seem to do anything, always showing the newest videos first. To find what you are after you need to be really specific with your search. Otherwise trying to scroll though the list to find what you are after will result in you inadvertently starting several videos in your futile attempts to scroll the list

While on the subject of Youtube, connecting the HDMI cable up to your big screen plasma TV enables you to watch videos. You’ll need to switch to the relevant 1080p output and remember to change it back after you’re finished or you’ll get no Youtube picture on your device. I only tested this briefly and found that the sound seemed to alternate between the TV and the device. That could be a result of my internet which has been playing up recently so I’ll need to try this again when I have more time.

Android Market

Obviously a big selling point, surprisingly a lot of Android tablets have problems connecting to the Android Market and to begin with I had problems with an error message complaining about being ‘unable to establish a reliable connection’ to the Google server. I solved the problem by doing a factory reset. If you are going to do this then unless you read fluent Chinese, write down the menu options to switch the device back into English because as soon as you do the factory reset the device boots back to Chinese.

Flash support

Flash support is something I wanted as I like the games on gamesforwork.com. The X5A doesn’t support flash, but you can install the Skyfire browser that does, the X5A is also upgradeable to Android OS 2.2 which has flash support. In reality though, the device doesn’t have the processing power required to load flash games and flash games at gamesforwork.com don’t load.

Verdict

I paid £150 for the Android X5A to satisfy my iPad craving. I knew that there would be no comparison between the two and ultimately wanted something I could use to surf the web and do a little email without having to boot a laptop.

I got something that is pretty good for surfing the web, once you learn to live with the level of pressure required to tap the screen, but will never be used to do any real email. It’s not as polished as the iPad. There is a world of difference between the two and I could not give this to the wife to use. Some things will annoy the hell out of you, like the fact that some things are landscape, others are portrait and auto rotation doesn’t really work. I don’t regret buying it, but I am glad I didn’t buy one for the wife as well. She would not see it as an iPad replacement.

The X5A is not going to replace my laptop but will probably become that device I travel with in the future to stay in touch.

To keep the guys over at Metaio on their toes, Popcode is a new free SDK that has been released by Extra Reality Limited here in the UK.  The Popcode SDK contains everything that a developer needs to build their own natural feature recognition applications for the Popcode client available on: Google Nexus One, the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S. They are adding support for more devices so the list will continue to grow.

Currently the SDK is in preview but it does look like fun and easy to use. Check out video below of the interactive tee-shirt for an idea of the powerful features the SDK contains.

For more information about Popcode and to download the SDK, visit their website:  www.popcode.info

Interactive tee-shirt demo

Building your first Popcode application

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5f6cbiyGCA

Multi Search Topics

Aside from landmarks, Google Goggles supports other searches, if you are in a museum and see a famous picture and want to know the artist, just take a picture and it will search Google for the picture and artist name. In your local supermarket and see a bottle of wine and wonder is it a good year? Just take a picture of the label and Google Goggles will tell you.

A good year?

It looks pretty exciting. Google Goggles has been released as a Google Labs product so it’s very much in a beta phase. iPhone owners don’t panic. Google plans on releasing a version for the Apple iPhone once the application is out of beta.

Google Goggles offical video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4

Parallel Kingdom is a massively multi-player online role playing game that takes place around you. The game uses GPS to figure out your location and places the character directly in your neighbourhood where you can explore, declare war on other players or just fight the many creatures that live there. It’s interesting to see your surroundings plotted with monsters, trees, caves and other exotic items. I had never noticed that there was a castle at the end of my street before.

I have only just installed the game and it seems to be pretty complex and loaded with options so it is going to take a while for me to figure out what the hell I am doing, but like all MMORPG’s the object is to kill, collect gold and build up your level.

Given it’s complexity it’s hard to give a full review but I guess the question is, is it really an augmented reality application? Well that depends on your point of view.

If you are a traditionalist who believes that augmented reality is defined by using the camera and blending computer graphics in the camera feed then you probably won’t see Parallel Kingdom as a true augmented reality game. If however you take the wider view and believe that augmented reality is being aware of you surroundings and enhancing them then you’ll see Parallel Kingdom as the first true augmented reality MMORPG. Either way, Parallel Kingdom is free so worth an install and making up your own mind.

Game Trailer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WGM37bWQzs