Originally introduced for the Formula 1 racing circuit, energy drink company Red Bull have introduced The Red Bulletin, an innovative printed magazine, that enables readers to ‘interact with the printed copy’.
In the words of the magazines editorial team:
This magazine sings, dances, flies and even scores a touchdown…
Here’s how it the interesting initiative works: By simply holding the magazine up to the webcam on your computer you can take it ‘beyond the page’ and into the world wide web. The cover for example will link through to a video package explaining exactly how augmented reality can enhance your reading experience in a way you almost certainly never imagined, with music, film, animations and more.
The Red Bulletin is a global magazine published each month in eight countries with a total circulation of 4.3 million copies (!). Labelled as an ‘almost independent magazine’ it is a modern lifestyle magazine covering news from the world of Red Bull, including a recent feature with Clint Eastwood.
Austrian-based Imagination has worked behind the scenes to create the webcam augmented reality experience. A close look at the URL also reveals that FatWire Content Server is powering the website. If you don’t have a copy of the printed magazine, you can even download it (link to August edition) and print it.
I’m not sure how many actually uses this and whether other companies with less circulation could benefit from it as well, but it certainly provides for a nice wow effect.
Meet FatWire customers
To learn more and meet with FatWire customers, consider joining our vendor-neutral European FatWire User Group.
Stan Timek August 3rd, 2010 20:38
Janus,
Excellent story about Red Bull and Imagination. We’re seeing many exciting and innovative uses of augmented reality out in the world today. SAP is exploring tying enterprise data into an AR display to give businesses competitive advantage. Brilliant!
My own company has combined augmented reality and other technologies to create a patent-pending system called EVX that allows people to send personal and private video messages inside our Atomic Greetings greeting cards.
When you look at the totality of projects and research in the area of augmented reality it’s easy to see that it will reach ubiquity in a relatively short period of time.
Stan Timek
Atomic Greetings
http://atomicgreetings.com
Kai Kurihara August 3rd, 2010 20:38
Thanks Janus, this is an interesting article. I have been keeping a close eye on this technology for the past 2 years and I have to say it did evolve a lot.
Let me share my overall experience with Augmented Reality (I will leave some URLs so that you can see it for yourself and experiment):
Actually, Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for some time now and I guess it is the time for the “early majority” people to adopt this concept.
At first, I saw it this feature in the car industries, like Toyota, Nissan and Mini who used the AR to show their latest model (Toyota: http://bit.ly/2IOu5R ; Mini: http://bit.ly/rghn0).
Then I noticed the fire catching on movies such as Transformers 2, or Iron man (Transformer 2: http://bit.ly/IRPn8 ; Iron Man 2; http://bit.ly/9hxE1M). As you can notice, there is no more “markers” (the square bar code) but only a “face recognition” mechanism.
“Marker-Free” AR is becoming more and more common (like in the Red Bull example) and easier to integrate in printed materials, but the marker AR is still i the race with very impressive examples like BMW displays for the latest Z4: http://bit.ly/vzA8y
Either way, AR is going to be more and more recognised by end users and I do think that it is a good time to investigate how to benefit from it (obviously 2 years ago, it was a little bit too “ahead” of time…).
I have heard interesting ideas of AR being used in after sale services, instruction manuals or even tutorials… the question is still to be answered as to whether or not the AR is here to stay or just a fad. The only thing I know, is that it is pretty expensive at the moment !
I hope it helps.
K.
Silvia August 9th, 2010 20:38
Great article. This technology seems to be very nice and could be a solution to bring together print and video… however I find that a few simple things are missing from the Red Bull solution… you cannot read the text online nor pause the video (unless you move to another page). So I feel that the initial “whoa” effect is great but interaction could be improved.