It’s no secret that interactive print is exploding across the globe.

From real estate agencies in Australia, to big brands and publishers in Canada and the United States, to the biggest publications in France and the Netherlands, and even a boom in downloads of the Layar App in Saudi Arabia – Layar is a truly worldwide company. We’ve even taken it upon ourselves to make sure content is distributed across dozens of servers worldwide for greater speed.

As the international market for interactive print emerges, it’s time for us to take the next step in providing the best possible user experience to as many people as possible. Available today for iOS and Android, version 7.2.2 of the Layar App  includes support for the following languages:

Combined with English, these languages make up a large portion of Layar users around the globe, but this just the beginning. To provide the best experience to more users, we will add more languages based on usage and demand over time.

The inclusion of native language support within the Layar App makes it easier for publishers to create seamless and engaging experiences for their readers. Publishers could already tailor their interactive print content into the language of their choice, and now the Layar App itself follows suit to provide an immersive experience in a user’s native language. It’s simply a better all-around experience for users.

Want your language supported in the Layar App? Let us know in the comments section which one we should do next!

Outside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

As we mentioned last week, Layar is attending the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress conference/exhibition in Barcelona from 14-17 February, and we weren’t about to show up empty-handed.

Each afternoon at MWC Fountain, Layer is holding an Augmented Reality meetup where we show off our new Augmented Office layer, an interactive 3D model that you can literally walk into and access information about the company, layer content, job openings and more.

This layer was created especially for MWC, so it is only visible from Barcelona, but there is also a public version that can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

The 3D office combines elements of virtual reality with AR, enabling a 360 degree view of the space. You can look up at the multilevel ceiling, down at the tile and wooden floors, and around through the many windows where you can still see the “real” world.

Turn or walk around in the office and you see posters on the walls of some of our Layar Partner Network members, where you can touch the pop-up screen to visit their website, email them or follow them on Twitter. You also find portraits of our co-founders and our reps at MWC that you can contact or connect with on Twitter right from the layer.

Inside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

Continuing the office tour, you see posters on the windows for five of our coolest international layers that you can launch directly from inside the Augmented Office layer (A layer within a layer? Now we’re approaching Inception theory—be careful!).

Finally, near the doorway, you see a monitor on the wall that says “Layar News & Jobs” where you can see the current job/internship opportunities and read the latest news on our blog.

The concept of an “augmented office” allows any company to become an international company. You can place an office in the heart of Tokyo, Dubai or at Time Square in New York City.

But just as easily as you can place an office, you can place a store, selling merchandise through Paypal in AR! Case and point: Hostage Wear Shop. Hostage Wear is Layar’s first AR store, selling hats, t-shirts and other urban skate/streetwear products directly from the layer—there’s even a half-pipe in the store! (Although we don’t recommend trying to skateboard in AR… yet).

Outside view of the Hostage Wear shop.

Funnily enough, the Hostage Wear Shop layer actually started out as a joke. Herve Pellarin, creator of both Layar’s Augmented Office and Hostage Wear Shop (and the concept of virtual commerce in general), originally made the layer for his best friend to, in Pellarin’s words, “shut his mouth” about the frustration and expense of constantly having to make the tradeshow circuit to gain brand recognition and sell merchandise.

As anyone working in AR knows, monetization is a major issue at the moment, so virtual commerce is an exciting and much welcomed new element to the platform.

Pellarin is the man behind French development company HPSC, a member of the Layar Partner Network. He has made virtual commerce his primary focus, embarking on several new [mostly confidential] projects, and continues to push the boundaries in AR. Pellarin may still wear the coding hat, but assures us “I’m not a programmer. I’m a dreamer; an AR-chitect.”

You can contact Herve Pellarin at nocomp@gmail.com or follow @nocomp on Twitter.

We are very proud to announce that earlier this week the 300th layer has been launched: Places.

The layer enables you to discover tourist locations around you. You can add your own places, send your pictures and post your comments. You can also vote for your favorite POIs.

The layer is available in Australia, Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.

The layer was made by Pablo Garcia-Morato, Jefe de proyectos, from Elipse AD in Spain. We asked him a few questions:

You have made the 300th layer, congratulations!! What is your first reaction on that?

Well it was really a surprise because although I follow all Layer posts and new coming layers, I did not realise about the counter. And it’s good to see how Layar is growing so fast with all those incredible developers working hard every day!

What do you think is the coolest part of your layer?

I tried to join many of the Layar new features with the traditional geo-location, so apart from just knowing which places he can visit in the area, the user can also interact adding his comments and recommendations, voting for places or creating custom POIs of cool places to visit.

What are your plans for the future layer plans?

In particular with this layer, we hope to improve 3D sceneries, I mean, by now only the POI is a 3D object, but we would like to show how lived people in some places and maybe why not, imagine which could be the future of a certain location.

In general in this Layar world, I think 3D+AR opens for us, developers, a huge world of opportunities trying to let users experience things that until now have been considered science fiction.

Pablo, thanks for your answers and we wish you and Elipse good luck with your plans! Of course we want to thank all of you who developed and launched their layers before as well for publishing such cool content, making the Layar Reality Browser what it is now. Keep up the good work!

We are very proud to announce that today the 200th layer has been launched: Le Vélo STAR layer in the city of Rennes, France.

Le Vélo STAR is a bike rental service with bike stations throughout the city of Rennes. The layer shows you where is the nearest rental station around you and how many bikes are available at this station.

We spoke with Amiel Lavon, Directeur de projet from In Cité Solution who developed the layer, just before he went off for an official photo shoot to make wonderful screen shots of the “Le Vélo STAR”-layer.

Well, you are the 200th layer, congratulations!! What is your first reaction on that?

Surprise, we have this idea in mind for several weeks, but just found the time to develop the layer this week. We found that Layar is a great technology and we are happy to provide the 200th layer, and we hope to provide a lot of layers in the future.

What do you think is the coolest part of your layer?

The real time information of bike availability. Our layer provides not only the position of the bike station but also the number of bikes on each station in real-time.

Watch the video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asEpv_Imfb8

What are your future layer plans? And will that next layer be nr 201 or will it take some more time ;-)

We plan to provide a layer for a social network on Rennes city and we work a lot with the transportation sector in France and we plan to provide some layer with us around bike, bus and metro.  And a last word, we use Typo3 cms for development and we plan to release an extension for it in open source to share with the developer community.

Amiel, thanks for the nice chat and we wish you and In Cité Solution good luck with your plans.
Off course we want to thank all of you who developed and launched their layers before as well for publishing such cool content, making the Layar Reality Browser what it is now. Keep up the good work!

From Magazine to Mazda in 80 Seconds. Powered by the Layar Reality Browser.

Find the closest Mazda dealer by scanning a QR-code in a magazine ad. The link in the QR code starts up the Layar Reality Browser in the Mazda content layer. When you find the one you want, select more information, directions or simply call them with one click. A great example of how the Layar Reality Browser can be used in a relevant manner in traditional media.

Production: Lemonade.nl & DSRPT.COM, Music: www.jessekoolhaas.com, Agency: JWT International, Client: Layar.com

Layar Man Episode 1

Layar in Japan, the series…. by Systemk.co.jp, also see layar.jp. Episode 2 coming soon.

Why we love Developing our Brightkite Layar
Video: Brightkite

Brightkite on Layar

Video: Brightkite

Tweetmondo on Layar

Video by Tweetmondo

Developing the Stuttgart layer

Video and layer by de.hoppala.eu

EyeTour Tourist Guide and Layar

Video of the tourist guide layer of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Video by EyeTour.

Real Estate Prices in France

Layer & video by Meilleursagents.com