Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Of football and LEGOs...two of my favorite things


It started innocently with a conversation with a friend about football. We were talking about the virtual line on the field that shows where the first down is. Was there some sort of machine on the sideline that shot a laser beam (unseen by the human eye) across the field? No, it's something much more fun than that: Augmented Reality (AR). AR is adding (or augmenting) what the human eye sees with computer-generated inputs. Not to be confused with virtual reality, AR takes an everyday view and adds something to it. In football, you see the play just as someone in the stadium would, but with the addition of the yellow line. It's uses are becoming more common. In the print world, you can "hide" a code in an image and with an AR reader, generate something new. Think about it as a QR code of the next level. Check out what LEGO does in it's stores. An AR code is hidden in the box and when you take it to a kiosk, you get to see the finished product.

Monday, August 22, 2011

The 2012 stamps are coming!

The post office has announced it's 2012 stamps at this link. Keep checking back as they will periodically release designs. I really like the Cherry Blossom one, what's your favorite?