A complete tutorial and the SDK itself can be downloaded from here.

A wonderful Showcase is “Location Scout” by Jeff Gilfelt

Of course we have been curious about Jeff’s experience with the Wikitude SDK:

Jeff, how did you develop your AR camera-view? Was it difficult?
With the Wikitude SDK I don’t have to deal with any of the complexities of device positioning, orientation or camera UI. Instead I just focus on providing the geo data and let Wikitude take care of the rest. I would say most existing geo applications on Android can become AR enabled using the Wikitude SDK with just one or two hours of development and testing.

What do you like about the Wikitude SDK?
While there are alternatives available that allow you to display you own data as “Overlays” within Wikitude and other AR browsers, what I really like about the Wikitude SDK solution is that it provides true on-device integration that adds real value to your own app. The intent mechanism that facilitates inter-application communication is one of
Android’s most unique and powerful features. It is great to see Wikitude embracing this within their SDK.

What about the new features of Wikitude 4 that have just been released?
The great thing about the API is that it also enables your application to automatically leverage the continual improvements to Wikitude itself. When the new camera view enhancements were delivered in Wikitude 4, those same enhancements appeared automatically in Location
Scout.

Thanks for the interview!

About Location Scout

Location Scout is a mobile application that helps you discover filming locations for thousands of movies via information compiled by the Internet Movie Database. Location Scout has had over 16000 downloads from the Android Market. In December 2009, Location Scout was selected as one of T-Mobile USA’s “top picks” in their Android market channel and was even part of a special promotional event that took place during the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Congratulations on this big success!

Content (“Worlds”) in Wikitude

The new version of Wikitude (out now for Android, iPhone coming soon), Wikitude is able to handle arbitrary geo-referenced content sources. Companies can use Wikitude itself to display the content with customized icons in the Augmented Reality camera view. This is completely free of charge.

The content can be integrated via a HTTP-Interface (Mobilizy will connect to this search-interface, provided by the company; the content can reside on any server, not necessarily on the Wikitude server) KML or ARML file (the files can be uploaded via a web interface, or the URL to a KML/ARML file can be registered to be crawled continuously; in either case, the content will be stored on the Wikitude server)
The main advantage of this option is that Wikitude already has a broad user base, so the content will be available to hundreds of thousands of users. Also, as Wikitude supports various platforms (currently Android, iPhone, Symbian), content will automatically be available on all platforms Wikitude supports, without any costs to the company.

Learn more about how to add your Overlay

Wikitude API

Mobilizy offers an API where developers can easily build their own AR application without reinventing the AR-wheel. The AR code itself is encapsulated in the API, the only thing the developer needs to do is adding the geo-referenced data (Points of Interest) to the API.

A complete tutorial and the API itself can be downloaded from www.wikitude.org/developers.

The API is currently available for Android and iPhone.

White Label Solution

This is the most customizable and extensive option. Mobilizy re-uses the Wikitude core functionality to build an entirely new application for the company. Nearly everything is customizable (content, splash screen, appearance of camera/map/list screen, enabling/disabling of Wikitude-features etc.), Mobilizy will charge the development costs per man day (for each platform requested), based on the specification of the application developed by the company and Mobilizy.
Examples of White Label Solutions include the Lonely Planet Compass, the IBM Seer and the Red Bull Hotspot Viewer.

If you are interested in a White Label Solution please do not hesitate to contact us via info (at) mobilizy.com

C2youtube (“Close 2 YouTube”), the new iPhone app on the basis of the Augmented Reality platform Wikitude by AR pioneer Mobilizy, displays YouTube videos in the users’ close surroundings. Thus, users can experience small and big cinematic works at original sites all over the world. The app is a prime example for the possibilities that will soon be available for iPhone app developers with the release of the Wikitude-API.

C2youtube users view videos at the places where they are set. On the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the cyclists of the Tour de France can be followed closely in their sprint finish. Users can re-experience the successful splashdown of the US Airways 1549 while resting on the banks of the Hudson River. The NHL finales of 2009, Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Detroit, were the highlight for all hockey fans. Every C2youtube user can witness these nail-biting matches and relive the key scenes quasi on-site. On the city’s many historical sites, visitors of Berlin can reconstruct the atmosphere and people’s emotions at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 on their screens. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to Barack Obama is not only a newspaper headline – it is made visible in the form of a video for all interested C2youtube users.

A compass shows the videos as “points” in their respective distance to the user. In the camera view of the smartphone, YouTube videos overlay reality and they are shown at the exact geographical place where they were recorded. This view is called Augmented Reality.
When the user clicks on one of those “points”, a.k.a. POI (Point of Interest), which in this case is a video, details about the video come up, e.g. the title, a short description and the number of views. Another click and the video can be played directly on the mobile phone. Film fans can easily rate videos and send them to friends.

A sophisticated system, operating in the background, determines which videos are relevant and which are not. Among other things, the number of video views is considered. The distance of the POIs can be controlled with a slider. Besides the AR view via the camera, C2youtube can also display the contents in form of a list. By the way, the video demonstration of Wikitude comes second among the most viewed videos in Salzburg!

iPhone developers can secure their own Developer Key for the development of their own AR applications based on the Wikitude API by sending an email to developer [at] wikitude.org (Subject: “iPhone”).

Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) unites reality with computer generated data. Additional information enhances the displayed camera picture on the smartphone. The exact position information is provided by new components of the modern smartphones: the position is calculated using GPS, compass and accelerometer.

For the iPhone 3gs, C2youtube can be downloaded from the iTunes Store for the price of 0,79 €.
Press photographs about C2youtube

About Mobilizy:
Mobilizy GmbH has a leading position on the world market of the development of Augmented Reality (AR) applications for smartphones. The company has developed the AR Browser “Wikitude” which is the first publicly accessible AR application worldwide. Along with customer projects and the development of location-based applications, the main focus is on research projects which are the basis for Mobilizy’s pioneering position in the field of Augmented Reality. Wikitude is sponsored by the Austrian economic service “Austria Wirtschaftsservice” (Impulse Programme).

Media Contact:
Christina Rittchen
christina.rittchen [at] mobilizy.com
Mobilizy GmbH
Phone: +43 662 45 45 55 – 425
Web: www.mobilizy.com
www.twitter.com/wikitude

In my conversation with Nicholas shared that he not had the time really dive into the WIKITUDE API to do anything with it yet.  After our conversation, within about a 24-30 hour time span, Nicholas sent us/me a wonderful twitter surprise which arrived in our tweetbox : @wikitude you might be interested in this: http://bit.ly/HT8Db Wikitude / Geocaching – blog post to follow 11:55 PM Aug 5th from web.

“Mobilizy, the creators of WIKITUDE, have released an API (currently in closed Beta) and I requested to get on board. My intention was to mashup GeoBeagle and Wikitude as a means of learning Android development. Yesterday evening I started experimenting. This evening I finished it off and managed to find enough time before sunset to run to my nearest geocache for testing, the results of which can be seen in the video below:”

We encourage you to read Nicholas’s blog posting about his WIKITUDE / GeoBeagle development experience with us.

“Over the past two evenings I’ve had a lot of fun. I suppose the reason for this is both applications share the same outlook expressed in Wikitude’s tag-line:    “The World IS the Platform!”

…and who wouldn’t want to develop for that platform..?”

Thank you Nicholas H.Tollervey for sharing!