If you ask me—not that you did but let’s just pretend—what the hottest topic in the Portland startup scene is, I would be compelled—nay obligated—to say “Mobile.” And I would probably punctuate that with something terribly intelligent like, “… duh.”
But it’s true. Portland is crazy about mobile development. As such, it has managed to carve out a community that is doing some incredibly compelling things. And one of the most interesting new facets of mobile development? Augmented reality. So it simply makes sense that Mobile Portland—the best user group for mobile types—is providing some insight into augmented reality, tonight.
Oh. What is augmented reality, you ask? Well, according to Wikipedia, augmented reality is:
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time.
And the folks talking about it tonight? Two augmented reality pros.
This month at Mobile Portland, we’re lucky to have two speakers who are early innovators in augmented reality. P. Mark Anderson is the platform architect for Spot Metrix which provides an augmented reality library for iPhone called 3DAR. Tim Sears created Robotvision, one of the first augmented reality applications for iPhone.
Sounds cool, right? Of course it does. So join the Mobile Portland folks tonight at 6 PM at AboutUs to get hear from these developers and to start thinking about how you might apply augmented reality to your latest project.
For more information or to RSVP, see the Mobile Portland page on Upcoming.
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