When was the last time you picked up a newspaper? Maybe there was one laying around on the train during your morning commute, but this day and age, a physical print newspaper is a form of media being consumed less and less.

With the countless number of better ways to receive up-to-the-minute news and information, newspapers just don’t stand a chance. The problem for most news organizations is that newspaper subscriptions and advertising have made up a significant chunk of their revenue, and those two areas have been struggling with the rise of new media.

So it makes sense that those interested in preserving journalism are concerned with finding ways for it to connect with readers through new media. Enter Adriano Farano, who spoke at Augmented Reality Event earlier this month about the topic of augmented reality and journalism.

To hear how Adriano thinks these two industries can come together, check out the video of his talk embedded below!

We’re churning out videos from Augmented Reality Event 2011 like a machine, and today we have a rather special one for you. ARE opened again with a keynote from sci-fi author and futurist Bruce Sterling, but this year, things didn’t exactly go as planned (or did they?).

Before Bruce could begin his speech, he was interrupted by an organization calling themselves the Space Liberation Front. Their origins are, shall we say, mysterious. The group rushed the stage dressed in white hazmat suits and preceded to dramatically read their manifesto for the freeing of space.

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s all quite entertaining to witness, so have a look in the video embedded below. Following their brief interruption, of course, is Bruce’s keynote to open the festivities at ARE, so enjoy that as well! We’ll be back with even more ARE 2011 videos as the week continues!

Photo by akihitok1973 on Flickr.

Last week’s second annual Augmented Reality Event featured many great sessions and keynotes on this budding industry, but it also hosted another year of the Auggies. The Auggies is a fun AR demo competition as teams give their quick pitch to an expert panel of judges in hopes of receiving the “Auggies Award.”

This year, judges Bruce Sterling, Vernor Vinge, Will Wright and Jaron Lanier presided over more than a dozen competing teams. One of those teams was BuildAR, a member of the Layar Partner Network.

BuildAR is an augmented reality CMS that allows anyone to quickly and easily create Layar content using a friendly user-interface. To read more about BuildAR, check out our profile of the tool from last November.

In the video below, Rob gives his pitch about BuildAR, one of Layar’s Certified Layar Creation Tools, and receives some excellent feedback from the judges panel.

Augmented Reality Event 2011 was again provided with an inspiring keynote from Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas, creator of Photosynth and architect of Bing Mobile and Bing Maps.

Last year, Blaise provided ARE attendees with a keynote similar to his well-known TED talk on Photosynth. Blaise was equally impressive this year in Santa Clara, providing a keynote on big data and augmented reality - an intersection we appreciate here at Layar.

In his presentation Blaise talks about how Photosynth is evolving and he ends with his latest project: Read Write World. A very impressive project about crunching all available big data to “index, unify, and connect of the world’s geo-linked media. Consisting of a cloud-based geo-indexing, matching and processing services.” All code is intended to be open source, serving an example of what big companies can aspire to.

Once again, we’ve got video for those who couldn’t make it to ARE this year, so check out Blaise’s great talk below!

Last summer, Augmented Reality Event 2010 brought together companies, luminaries and members of the media to talk about the state of the industry and the vision for its future. One year later, the industry is continuing to grow and ARE 2011 is back for the second annual conference in Santa Clara, California.

The event kicked off this week and Layar is there to take part in the action! On Tuesday, Layar’s own Gene Becker took the stage to discuss the Layar platform and with the audience at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and we’ve got the whole thing on video for your viewing pleasure.

Couldn’t make it to California for ARE? Not to worry, we’ll have a couple videos coming your way featuring the Layar team at ARE. Below is the video of Gene’s presentation.