Layar has just entered the market seeking to standardise augmented reality - a good thing from everyone’s perspective.

It appears they’ve discarded the option of becoming a business-to-business service brand such as Intel, but rather opted to become a consumer facing brand in their own right.

I’m sure their ultimate desire is to do what Google has done for search: to become a known brand in themselves, to be synonymous with, and become THE default augmented reality technology.

That all comes naturally with critical mass, but Layar will need to win those audience percentages in the first place to achieve this.

So the question becomes: how does Layar become this consumer facing brand in its own right with an active audience to boot?

As I’m sure Layar knows all too well, brands hold the key to its success because they own the coveted audience relationships. When a brand invests in the technology by producing branded content using Layar, it introduces its audience to Layar as a by-product. Over time Layar achieves critical mass via multiple brand introductions across the range of business sectors.

If it gets the user experience spot on it will meet its aspirations to become a brand in its own right that we grow to know and love.

So if that’s the solution to achieve its long term goal, short term it needs to get brands on board in the first place.

Timing-wise it feels like a natural evolution for Layar to enter the market: People have been exposed to and are now used to layered interfaces such as GoogleMaps. Layar simply presents these within an intuitive augmented interface.

Functionally Layar is in a good place: It’s a proven, stable platform that admittedly is in its embryonic stages, but even without being a techie you can see the potential in the service. That said, the business model they’ve opted for essentially creates an app store within an app store which may confuse. Whilst not exactly the same, it’s not the first attempt at creating a market place structure: the likes of Mobizines and Nokia’s Point & Find product have yet to set the world alight.

And technically there are a variety of augmented reality solutions out there that developers can opt to choose (think the RightMove or NearestTube apps).

Conversely brands will recognise that it’s in their own interests to hop on board early as this is the very start of a new technology. The rules are still being written and consumer habits have yet to be defined. If content impresses, it will help formulate the way we use these types of services, and once those habits materialise it’s much harder for other brands to enter the market and change them.

But until Layar is known in its own right, will brands want to risk complicating sales messaging with ‘Layar’ the platform rather than focus purely on promoting their own branded content? It’s a big question that brands will need to answer, and as the stakes for Layar are so high, I’m sure could become more palatable for the brands via the introduction of short term incentives.

Three frames. Don’t miss it here. Via @creativeapps

There’s now variety augmented interfaces out there. Some more successful than others.

The one’s that impress are those that achieve the illusion of responsiveness - of feeling like they’re interacting with the content underneath, and which update themselves according to movement.

This technique is very much in it’s infancy, and all still a little primitive as devices are yet to be capable of doing real time image recognition. When they can I’m sure we’ll see some outstanding executions.

That said, current analysis is fairly arbitrary as nothing is public yet - the more exciting executions are still just YouTube clips and you’re never quite sure how much is real and how much is PR.

Here’s one that is out there (ironically still demo’d here as a Youtube clip), which has some nice interface elements:

More on that here. Via Gibo.

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See here.

The new idents by CHI / Blink Ink for Talk Talk broke last week. They use the light trail graffiti technique that’s fairly prevalent on the web (also used in an ad for Sprint in the US). At first glance I thought oh no, another one for Copy C*nts. But on closer inspection is an impressive campaign. Here’s the TV spot:

Being an ad for a telecoms related firm the plinky plonk sound track comes as standard. But the visuals are stunning. And more impressive is the fact CHI went to source and produced the piece in collaboration with German outfit LichtFaktor rather than think they could mimic themselves.

The only version on YouTube I could find is the generic ad, the ones that run within X-Factor itself carry an unobtrusive little web address, and those inquisitive enough are in for a reward (as Tron here pointed me towards).

The site is a brilliant example of how digital can extend and bring to life the campaign and the linear TV format:

It gives you the ability to create your own light trails using your webcam and a torch with a coloured gel on it (ok, I’ll get that out of my desk), or more cunningly your mobile phone that illuminates a colour once you’ve taken a pic.

The effect works a treat and the results are stunning. People can then proliferate the campaign in the now obligatory multiple mechanics: facebook / twitter / email / mobile / embed. Those that pass the ‘I haven’t drawn a penis’ moderation go into a gallery where other people can view and show appreciation via an appreciation rating.

All this is supported by an informative How To video which is peppered with the odd bit of slap stick, and a dynamic screensaver enabling your colleagues to enjoy the fruits of other peoples labour.

And it doesn’t stop there.

You can compose a message using a library of pre made letters that dynamically string themselves together depending on what was typed. Sadly the automated moderation doesn’t allow you to even write penis, but don’t worry, I tricked it with p e n i s. You can then layer on a track. This was sent to my mobile and here’s the response:

What’s impressive is the dynamic video rendering that’s going on in the background enabling it to be viewable on a mobile - something we at glue pioneered with our Navy campaign back in 2007, and something we feel is the future of video. Once each message appears it then displays the whole sentence on one screen. A nice touch but I feel it falls slightly down on the fact it seems to choose un-illuminated frames on some letters.

Back to the gallery: the How To video also alludes to the fact that submitted BrightDances could evolve into the TV idents themselves. Crowd sourced content. Tick. Here’s hoping

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Concert Hands, a new product for teaching music, hopes to assist musicians struggling to learn the piano by gently guiding fingers to the correct keys with a system of finger sleeves, pulses and software. The rather cumbersome series of wires and wrist pilots will introduce music to those that learn best through direct muscle memory.

The system uses software that converts a song file into a key combination for the piano that a controller box then distributes to the wrist and finger pilots. The repetitive motions stimulate muscle memory and apparently work well with anyone from 8 to 80 years old who doesn’t want to learn a song through understanding music or having to hire an instructor. For a slightly retro explanation of the “Augmental Musical Instrument Technology” check out their promotional video below:

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