Twitter 360 Augmented Reality Application

Posted by augmentedplanet under General

Pesselite today announced their latest augmented reality application for the iPhone. If you are a Twitter fan and  wonder where all the people you follow are tweeting from, then Presselite latest application titled Twitter 360 will show you their location on a map.  The application also has 2 augmented realtiy modes, point the device down it switches to show you arrows that show the distance of the tweet, when you hold the device in front of you the applications switches to focus on the tweets by placing them in circles.

If you have used any previous Presselite product to help you find tube (metro/subway etc) stations then you’ll find this application looks very similar as it shares the same augmented realty engine. Personally I am not a huge Twitter user, I just don’t seem to have the time to keep up so I tend to read more than take part, but I know it will appeal to many Twitter addicts.

Since I had a rant about privacy the other day I should refer you to this post. Augmented reality and geotagging is fantastic combination when you are at an event and want to see who is around you and what they are saying. But remember to turn off the feature when you don’t want to be found, unless of course you want everyone to know where you live.

Watch it in action

iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=330158239&mt=8

Pandemica Augmented Reality Game

Posted by augmentedplanet under General

Pandemica from XMG Studios is the latest augmented reality iPhone game that uses the camera and accelerometer to produce an entertaining arcade style shooter that you can experience with full 360 degrees of movement. Pandemica transforms your iPhone into a sub-field bio-scanner that can detect the invisible alien organisms that are around you, and like all alien organisms they are not friendly. Armed with your sub-field bio-scanner your mission is to eliminate the alien threat before they have the chance to get you and cover you in goo.

Like most arcade games, as you progress you’ll have the opportunity to unlock better weapons to help you fight off the alien hordes, weapons such as Missiles, Continuous Electron Beam and the Bosnoic Field Bomb produce the necessary firepower to survive some of the games harder levels. As with the other augmented reality games that fall in to this new genre, the game requires you to be active, it’s not the type of game you’ll be playing while sitting on the sofa or the train to work. As the game takes place in reality you’ll constantly be looking behind you for the next wave of alien attacks.

If your worried about what the neighbours will think of you running around screaming incoherently about aliens fear not, Pandemica also has two multi-player modes where you can team up with a friend and fight cooperatively against the threat, or you can compete for the highest score. Pandemica is the first multi-player game of this type and it adds a new twist on the game play. If you can get a few friends together I think there is endless fun to be had with these modes.

Pandemica costs $1.99 or £1.19 and is available from the app store.

MMORPG Augmented Reality Game

Posted by augmentedplanet under General

In my daily scan of the iPhone application store I noticed that Parallel Kingdom -- Age of Emergence has arrived. It’s has also hit the the Google Android.

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

FutureTek – Holographic Phones

Posted by Lester Madden under iphone

I stumbled on a spoof demo yesterday that showed an iPhone displaying a hologram. The idea was you receive a call and just like something out of a Star Wars film you see a hologram of the caller emerge from the screen. Of course it’s not possible but it got me thinking and I did a little bit of digging and found that to some degree you can create a hologram for the iPhone.

The first video is a rather ambitious look at the year 2012 but I think it will be more like 2020 before we see anything like this

iPhone 2012

Next is an interesting take on why it wont be a good idea to answer your holophone.

Finally to prove that there’s an app for just about everything, there is an hologram creator application for the iPhone. The images don’t leap out the screen but it’s still an interesting application.

Essential iPhone Apps – Part I

Posted by Lester Madden under iphone

My iPhone is almost a week old so I thought it would be a good time to look at some of the applications I have installed that I consider to be essential.

Welcome To The Darkside

Posted by Lester Madden under Smartphones

It was only a matter of time before I went out and got myself a new phone. For the last 6 years all my phones have been Nokia devices, before that they were all Windows Mobile Devices, so I needed a change. My brother-in-law recently got himself an iPhone and a few ex-colleagues got themselves Android G2 Heros, both of which looked pretty good. So which way did I jump?

We’ll eventually after a lot of ‘oh look at this’ from my brother-in-law I opted for the iPhone.
My shiny new device arrived on Saturday morning in a tiny box. Apple don’t supply you with any form of instructions leaving you to fend for yourself. I had to do a Google search just to find out where the sim card went.  The only instructions were from O2 that simply said download iTunes and activate your phone.

Getting the contacts off my Nokia and into the iPhone was no easy feat either, no phone swap wizard here. o2 mumbled something about looking at their help pages on how to do it, but after wasting time I decided to do it my own way and backed-up and imported into Google Contacts. This works really well as the sync between Google and the iPhone is seemless. After I was setup I spent the weekend installing some apps. I love the appstore, it’s possible to spend hours searching for things to spend money on.

There are a few things I don’t like however, well one really. I have always heard people say the battery life on the iPhone sucks. I can’t really tell as at the moment it’s not out my hands for more than 20 minutes at a time, and during that time it has background process running that are connected to the web retrieving email and what not. Time will tell when I am away from home and using it for lots of calls, but for the time being the battery is lasting a day so it’s not a problem.

People complain about the call quality, I can’t judge call quality yet but I did get cut off on my last call. I’m hoping it was a one off experience. I didn’t care so much about being cut off, it was only O2 doing their welcome call and trying to sell me upgrade packages and insurance so it actually did me a favor.

My biggest gripe is iTunes. iTunes is awful, it’s up there with Lotus Notes in the bad software league. I installed a load of applications from the appstore and today when I tried to copy music to the device iTunes deleted most of the apps. iTunes actually apologised for the fact that it couldn’t delete all of them which was a nice touch in the same way a user friendly virus might apologize if it was unable in infect all of your files. iTunes is so awful, having tried to copy music over for the best part of the morning I’m considering carrying an MP3 player in future just to listen to music.  I can’t figure out how to move just a few tracks over as I seem to have to create play lists for every album I want copied. My last attempt resulted in all my wife’s music appearing on the device so now I have the added bonus of trying to remove them. In general it’s really annoying having to use 3rd party software just to copy things to a device. I prefer a device being treated as mass storage so I can do what I want.

But all that aside I love the iPhone and have a heavy dose of iPhone love (that stage were you start looking around for accessories that you don’t really need but feel you should have) but iTunes is that dark secret that iPhone owners don’t talk about, it’s the app that must not be named.