Gazettes Newspapers, a group of newspapers in Long Beach, California, has discovered the Layar Creator, augmenting the front pages of its sports sections with bonus videos for readers.

Sports editors Mike Guardabascio and J.J. Fiddler recorded the video embedded above that explains how readers can use their smartphone to access the bonus content with Layar. Here’s a excerpt from an article about the project that appeared in the Gazettes.

Gazette Publisher Simon Grieve said that as digital consumption continues to grow, the Gazette is dedicated to embracing the advancements of a tech-hungry world, and finding ways to integrate familiar and trusted forms of news media with these new developments. […]

“Newspaper pages can only hold so much,” Grieve said, “but the opportunity to have an array of digital content hiding just beneath the surface, ready to be brought to life with a simple scan from a cell phone, opens a lot of exciting doors for both newspapers and their readers.”

Mike Guardabascio, co-sports editor at the Gazettes, shared his excitement about the new technology:

“When (co-sports editor) JJ Fiddler and I first got to the Gazettes, we joked about how great it would be to put our video highlights in the newspaper, should that technology ever exist.” Guardabascio recalled. “We weren’t serious, but now someone has come along and invented a way to do just that.”

We love that pioneering journalists have started using the Creator to enhance the static print pages of their newspapers. This project is a prime example of how any publication, big or small, can quickly begin creating interactive print all by themselves with the Layar Creator.

Gazettes also plans to continue using the Creator with it’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Depending on where you live, if you’ve ever wanted to hear from the founders of Layar up close and in person, this week is a good chance to do just that! This week, both Maarten Lens-FitzGerald and Raimo van der Klein will be speaking at events in both Europe and North America.

Tuesday and Wednesday this week is the third annual Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, California. Maarten will be making his third appearance at the event, and will be presenting in the business track about the augmented reality market.

Maarten’s talk, dubbed “Where the Money Is,” will be an overview of lessons learned by Layar as we strive to make our technology ubiquitous, secure a strong hold in existing revenue streams and make money for ourselves.

“It is about what lies beyond today’s AR with geolocation, games, 3D campaigns, animation, etc.,” says Maarten about his talk.

You’ll also be able to watch a demo of a new product coming soon from Layar which aims to achieve these goals. The talk is at 10am on Tuesday, May 8th at ARE2012 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

As for Raimo, he’ll be much closer to home at Mobile Convention Amsterdam (MCA). After a highly successful sequel event last year with over 800 visitors, MCA is back again for the third time to bring together the best and brightest in the mobile world in Northern Europe.

On Tuesday, May 8th, Raimo will be speaking with Anita de Beijl, marketing manager for Sanoma Media’s vtwonen. You may remember our project with vtwonen not long ago in which they used Layar to enhance the pages of their magalogue with extra content and direct buy buttons.

Anita and Raimo will discuss the process of partnering up to create this project and the results of the experiment. You can see the discussion live tomorrow at 12:45pm in the Media & Publishing track at MCA.

Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects!

In this video, Bruce Sterling talks about his goals and experience of teaching the first-ever Augmented Reality Design class. His students also comment on their experiences within the class and their views on AR in general.

Read all of our posts related to the design class and watch all of the student project videos here.

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Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing videos of these projects as well as footage from last week’s class presentations with Layar strategist Gene Becker making a guest appearance to offer comments and feedback. You can read all our posts related to the Design Class here.

These next two videos were made by students Shi Jie (CJ) Lim, Shih-Hao (Tony) Chiu and Ailun (Karen) Chiu for a mobile app concept called Dobu Dobu. The first video is a demo of the Dobu Dobu virtual pet-making layer (not yet public), and the second is a concept video for a magical 3D Augmented Reality experience centered around interacting with your virtual pets. 

Perhaps Dobu Dobu is the Tamagochi of the future…

Dobu Dobu Prototype Video from Zooproot on Vimeo.

Dobu Dobu from Zooproot on Vimeo.

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Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing videos of these projects as well as footage from last week’s class presentations with Layar strategist Gene Becker making a guest appearance to offer comments and feedback. You can read all of our posts about the AR Design class here.

This first video is for a concept called “enlitenar”, and it features students Ryan D’Orazi and Jennifer Rosetto (as well as a cameo from Bruce Sterling and his wife, author and filmmaker Jasmina Tešanović), who use Augmented Reality to cross over to the spiritual dimension.

In addition to this otherworldly concept video, the students created an enlitenar layer (currently still in testing) with Hoppala that uses audio and visual elements to facilitate a connection between physical reality and the invisible forces that influence everyday life.

If that sounds a bit heavy for you, we’ll leave it at this: if you’ve ever wanted to see Bruce Sterling perform an initiation ceremony dressed as a cyberpunk cult leader (goodness knows WE have), watch this video!

enlitenar: augmented spirituality reality from RYAN DORAZI on Vimeo.

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