TechTour 2010: Layar'ing it up

So I just got back State-side from a seven week tour through western Europe that included a series of events and video interviews with leading players in augmented and virtual reality technologies. One of my destinations was Amsterdam, Nederlands and besides enjoying the madness of the World Cup finals, I had the opportunity to stop by mobile augmented reality company Layar's office for a chat.

Now this was super exciting for me as although familiar with Layar as a mobile AR platform, I had not had a chance to really grok with the guys, despite being at several events together, to discover what exciting things were going on with this company that is just over one year old and seeing explosive growth.

Now anyone familiar with mobile augmented reality or the AR industry has heard of Layar, but for those that have not, see the video below.



After a short walk on a very warm day from the city's centrum to their office, I met with co-founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald for a great conversation that I got to capture here in this 3 part (Youtube friendly) interview covering the company's platform, growth, ARE2010, AR standards, and more.

Part 1

Part 2


Part 3


Great stuff huh? It has inspired me to develop my first Layar layer, especially now that there are easy creation tools available like Hoppala's Augmentation.

Developed by Layar company partner Hoppala, Hoppala! Augmentation allows for easy Layar layer creation using a full screen map interface to place and edit augments all around the world. Much like the TagWhat interface, users can upload images, audio, video and 3D multimedia content with a few mouse clicks.


I really thank Maarten for taking the time to meet up and hope he had a blast on his vacation that he was getting ready to depart on after this interview. I expect to see more great thing from Layar in the coming years and wish the team all the best in the future.

This interview above is one in a series of video interviews so stay tuned to the MetaverseOne Youtube channel and this blog for more coverage of my mixed reality TechTour 2010.

Comments

Metaverse One said…
Thanks to Mez Breeze for the summary write up here.

http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2010/07/23/interview-with-layar-co-founder-maarten-lens-fitzgerald-part-1/
July 24, 2010 at 6:44 AM
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