Augmented Reality presentation by William Perrin & Mike Rawlins from Talk About Local. The Augmented Reality project was funded by Nesta & Nominet Trust as part of the Nesta Destination Local program.

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2. Augmented Reality
NESTA and Nominet Trust
Webinar for Destination Local and TSB Projects
25 July 2012
William Perrin
Mike Rawlins

3. What is Augmented Reality?
• From Wikipedia –
Augmented reality (AR) is a live,
direct or indirect, view of a physical,
real-world environment whose
elements are augmented by
computer-generated sensory input
such as sound, video, graphics or
GPS data.
• We use it as markers on screen on
your mobile corresponding to web
content that has a specific place
coded into it.
• But see also Moonpig.com
• Video http://youtu.be/VeJ9m0qrNog
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

4. Very nice but what does this mean for me?
• Displays and orders
content based on
location – rather than
time or topic
• Consumed in real
world on location
• For publisher - allows
connection of content
to a location
• For reader – helps
orientate in real
landscapes
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

5. What we’ve done
• We first looked at AR in early 2010
• It was cool but quite a new platform – didn’t work
well enough
• We kept going back to it
• In 2011 we approached Nominet Trust to see if
they were interested in doing something
geolocated public service content – as opposed
to PR content
• They said yes if they could partner with Nesta for
the project under Destination Local
• Nesta said yes
• Seek to make it easier for bloggers to get stuff
into AR environments and to test user cases
• Experiment to see if this stuff works and what it
can do
• Now have easy way to get content into AR
platforms
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

6. Platforms,content and stuff
• We knew there were platforms out
there…
– Wikitude
– Layar
– Aurasma
– Wallit
– Tagwhat
• Wikitude and Layar seemed to be
leaders (tho unclear who will
prevail)
• No platforms supported RSS-in
feeds from the web
• We needed to have some
geolocated content to send to these
platforms
• We use blogs to originate content
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

7. Geotag content and feed it out– GEO RSS
• GEO RSS – standard for feed with
content and geo tags
• Blogger and Wordpress.com
provide good geo-rss feeds
• Wordpress.org market leader for
local blogs
• There are literally dozens of
geolocation plugins for
WordPress.org sites
• None we tested provided location
data in a way that could be used by
our preferred platforms
• We found other services with geo
rss feeds.
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

8. WordPress.org new Plugin
• Developer Adrian Short forked
the Geolocation plugin to make
it Geolocation Plus
• Provides clean geo rss feed
from self hosted wordpress
blog
• Get the plugin here
http://tal.me.uk/gb
• Next problem to get this feed
into an AR platform
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

9. Apollo - Layar
• API development required to get a feed
into Layar
• Adrian Short created new middleware
‘Apollo’ to feed into Layar via API
• The Apollo software works with any RSS
feed that has geolocated data included in
it.
• We are currently using it to import
– Fix My Street
– Rate My Place (food hygiene ratings)
– N0tice
– AudioBoo
– Planning Alerts
– Blue Plaques
– Blogs!
• These all surface in a single layer for T&D
purposes – we can do bespoke Layers
with more work

10. RADAR
Info window will
be either blob
you have tapped
Blobs – big ones or central blob
nearer, small far on screen
away
Distance and
direction can be
Excerpt from eeerily accurate
FMS entry, if blog
content either Tap – fires up
excerpt or first map with walk or
few lines drive directions
Tap to go to site
via in app
browser

11. I want to JFDI…
• Geo tag some stuff in your platform
and deliver it to an RSS feed
• Test the feed by pasting into Google
Maps search box – should show map
pins
• Go to http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/
• Paste your RSS feed into our form and
we shall stick it into Layar via Apollo
• Any updates appearing in the feed
should flow through automatically to -
• Layar – hypARlocal Apollo Layer
• http://www.layar.com/layers/hyparlocal/
(click this link from a phone)
• Works on iOS and many Android
phones

12. Wikitude
• Wikitude uses different approach than
Layar
• Various ways you can import content
• KML files for flat, slow moving content
• php script for dynamic importing of
new content
• SDK if you are a developer
• Quick and dirty method – paste GEO
RSS feed into Google Maps, save as
KML, upload via Wikitude web
interface. But manual, not dynamic –
won’t update
• (Too) fiddly Wordpress install –
requires FTP, time, confidence, server
knowledge
• TAL might develop Apollo style RSS
loader
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

13. User feedback
“I like showing it off to people when out and about
in the city as it makes us look very high tech, and
much more technically advanced than we really
are. I think it will be more useful as it gets to be
more popular.”
“I think it will undoubtedly raise our public profile
and perhaps increase our traffic but only in a
limited way until AR is used more widely.”
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

14. Issues with third party geo-location
• The Google Geo Gap
Server location (through the IP address of
the server) is frequently near your users. • Google ignores your geo tags
However, some websites use distributed
content delivery networks (CDNs) or are (for now)
hosted in a country with better webserver
infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the
server location alone.
• Yahoo and Bing don’t
Other signals can give us hints. This could
• Google might shift
be from local addresses & phone numbers
on the pages, use of local language and • Google mobile search based
currency, links from other local sites,
and/or the use of Google's Local Business upon Google+Local – you need
Center (where available).
to be there
Note that we do not use locational meta
tags (like "geo.position" or "distribution")
or HTML attributes for geotargeting. While
• Deeply tech? see Points of
these may be useful in other regards,
we've found that they are generally not
Interest schema
reliable enough to use for geotargeting. http://www.w3.org/2010/POI/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co
.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-
websites.html

15. We need to talk about….
augmented reality
• As well as blogging about our
tests, successes & failures we
have been promoting AR in
the press.
– The Guardian -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/1
9/geotag-google-mobile-search
– Today on BBC Radio 4
– BBC Breakfast TV
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18840183
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

16. How can we help you?
• Happy to work with Nesta & TSB
awardees who have Augmented Reality in
their proposals
• Want to hear from you as you develop geo
tagging and problems you encounter
http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ar/

17. Talk To Us About
Augmented Reality
William Perrin
william@talkaboutlocal.org
Mike Rawlins mike@talkaboutlocal.org