The future is wild..and so is the past.

While stumbling about to absorb as much as possible of consumer AR, I found some related stuff, some new, some "old", all of it augmented. Let's start with the new: The Future is Wild, originally a British tv series for Animal Planet, chronicling speculative anthroplogies/ zoologies of the future.. I've seen the show, and enjoyed it. What I hadn't seen was the AR that has sprung up since.. Augmented reality for education, in the form of a 'living book" and  t-shirt.

And the futuroscope theme park, attraction: "Les Animaux du Futur" (this is in 2008 ):

Go, and see.

Let's do the Time Warp again

The vennerable Museum of London has a cool new app of it's own : Streetmuseum. This cool geospatial app allows you to look back in time, as you stroll London's streets, seeing a locale "as it was", via 200+ archived images, some dating back as far as 1666.

This app is Free. Yup, this is about education, and perspective windows, frozen in time, overlaid in the 'here and now'.

This app is kinda cool, in a couple ways, to me. First of all, it's about education, not commerce. Ever wonder who Emmeline Pankhurst was? What it looked like seeing her hauled away from Buckingham Palace? You can stand in the actual spot where the image was taken, and it will overlay in a kinda phantasmal window frozen in time.

Or, how about a music festival in Hyde Park, circa 1970? (Pink Floyd?)

I,. myself , think this is a great way of implementing historical documentary into AR. I'd like to see more.

Original article at Metro

Go, and see..

AR and Learning

Yeah, I'm putting off the marketing and advertising potential of AR off, for as long as possible, so let's take a look at the educational possibilities with Augmented Reality.

I'm gonna go out on a limb, and say that having an AR device on you raises your potential for knowledge.

 Sorry..learning won't be that fast.

Okay, okay, maybe AR won't make you inherently smarter... but it can help you learn. Here's some existing examples of AR education, as it exists today:

The Barber of ARville: Air Hair.
Ever wanted to sculpt your art in the medium of human hair? Do you want to make your clients a human topiary garden? Well, you gotta start somewhere, and that old Barbie head in your closet ain't gonna "cut it".
Lo, and behold: AIR HAIR..


I'm surprised Air Gutiar hasn't been made, yet.

"Cut a little Deeper" - Virtual Surgery

 Because doctors are all practicing medicine, because nobody's perfected it.

"Fear is the Mind Killer" : Cockroach Phobia

"There is no spoon"

Okay, maybe roaches aren't your phobia, but with AR, you can confront your phobia of choice: clowns, heights, Ultra-Conservative Right Wing Republicans, whatever.

"Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it" - Civil War AR

Because War can be a powerful learning tool.

"Whoa..I can fix cars!" BMW Auto Repair

Because if you've ever looked under the hood, you know you have to fight wire with wire.

"Whoa, puedo asesinatos única!" - Virtual Murder mysteries. "Mentira"

 Using a fictional murder case to immerse students in the real world environments, not the classroom.

Chalk up a C0deHex on this, and *poof*, it's Augmented.

Sure, all the above examples are specific, but the concepts and applications they give way to are near limitless.


As always, there's so much more out there. Go, and see!

Stay Augmented.