Hasta La Gadget!

Shopping can turn into such a chore sometimes. It’s great and all if you have unlimited funds to spend, but shopping turns into an unending quest of deals, sales, and coupons if you’re working on a tight budget.

Augmented Pixels wanted to give shopping and bargain hunting a more enjoyable spin, though, so they came up with WarBot, which is an app that turns shopping into an action-packed first-person shooter.

What you’re supposed to do is fire up the app and point it towards an item that you’re interested in. Once the tablet recognizes the packaging, it launches an augmented reality first-person shooter game. If you win, then you get a discount on that item. If you lose, well, you’re free to try again.

Vitaliy Goncharuk, CEO of Augmented Pixels, explains: “It’s getting more and more challenging for brands to stand out from the competition to attract and keep customers’ attention and love. Augmented reality has proved to be one of the most effective ways to engage customers at the point of sale.”

It’s mighty clever of them to try to do this through a game. What do you think?

[via Dvice]

While Google Glass might be the darling of the augmented reality wearable market, other companies like Vuzix and Epson have had skin in the game for much longer than the folks in Mountain View. One such firm to have caught the AR bug early is Optinvent, which debuted an early version of its ClearVu head-mounted display way back in 2009. Fast forward to 2013, and Optinvent is ready to move on to the final production stage of what it’s now calling the Ora, which it hopes will give Google Glass a run for its money, not just with superior optics but a softer blow to the wallet as well. We had a chance to sit down with CEO Kayvan Mirza at the Glazed conference in San Francisco, where we learned more about the Ora and had a chance to try it on ourselves.

One of the first things Mirza told us was that the Ora offers “true AR,” which overlays the entire display in front of your eyes much like a heads-up display unit. This is unlike Glass, which he says offers more of a “companion display” where you have to look up to view it. Don’t be concerned about the Ora completely blocking your sight however, as it has a very unique feature we’ve yet to see in wearable optics. It’s called Flip-Vu, and it lets you pivot the display downward into what’s called dashboard or glance mode so that it’s now more of a companion display rather than one that dominates your entire field of vision (You can see a demo video of this after the break). Mirza says glancing downward is a much more natural position than looking up, as we tend to look down at our phones and other devices anyway.%Gallery-slideshow99628%

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: Optinvent

Finding a college internship that isn’t soul-draining can be tough, but Nokia wants to help with that. Today, the Finnish company is announcing a joint effort with Internships.com to release Internships Lens, an app that leverages augmented reality and your social circles to point you toward the nearest gig that hopefully pays more than just school credit. It’s similar to JobLens in that it displays employment info over the top of wherever your Lumia’s camera is looking — again using LiveSight tech — and is exclusive to Nokia’s line of Windows Phone 8 handsets. What’s more, you can research an employer from within the app, which could calm those pre-interview jitters. If you still need a ‘ship for the upcoming winter semester, maybe this could help.

Filed under: Mobile, Nokia

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Source: Internships

Google has just released a version of Field Trip for Glass Explorers, meaning the Niantic Labs project that offers users fun destinations, tips, facts and other information about the world around now has a very logical place on the computer you wear in your face that constantly whispers in your ear.

It’s so logical, in fact, that Field Trip was actually originally designed for Glass, according to Niantic Labs boss John Hanke speaking to CNET. In a video demoing the Field Trip on Glass experience, you can see how the app works in action as you day trip around and do fun things like hike through Napa Valley. It seems like a pretty good fit based on that demo, though how it works in person is likely somewhat less idealized.

Field Trip launched on Android about a year ago today, and the Glass app was the original target, but the platform wasn’t ready for it at the time, Hanke told CNET. He also added that a future convergence with Google Now might be in the cards (that’s an amazing pun), which also makes sense given how similar Field Trip’s functions are to the omnipresent Google Android assistant.

The Glassware for Field Trip is essentially a stripped down version of the Android app as-is, and allows people to get more or less information on a more or less frequent basis about the world around them based on customized settings. It’s a passive experience that presents Cards, and can even read them to you automatically depending on your location, and it shows one of the ways in which Glass’ unique design could give it a definite advantage or traditional devices like smartphones.

Both Metaio and Audi have worked together to deliver something which will definitely appeal to modern day drivers who want nothing but the most up to date technology around them – an interactive augmented reality manual, now how about that? Metaio happens to be a world leader in augmented reality (AR) software and solutions, while Audi – ‘nuff said. Both of them has just announced the release of the Audi A3 eKurzinfo augmented reality mobile application, which is available as a free download on iOS devices, so owning an iPhone or an iPad would be compulsory.

This is not the first time the Audi eKurzinfo app has appeared, as it did make its way for the Audi A1 before which happened to be one of the nominees for the 2013 GSMA Global Mobile Awards for Best Mobile Solution for the Automotive Industry. Seeing such success, Audi AG decided to make it available to the spanking new Audi A3, where this app can recognize more than 300 individual elements of the Audi A3, ranging from the insignia on the windshield wipers and entertainment system to actual engine components that are located under the hood, delivering relevant how-to information as well as virtual overlays of maintenance instructions that are animated in real-time 3D. You need not worry about app updates, since Metaio’s cloud-based architecture will push all the latest digital information directly to your device. [Press Release]

Interactive Augmented Reality Manual By Metaio And Audi original content from Ubergizmo.