On July 11th, Layar is hosting a seminar in Amsterdam for members of the media and publishing industries. This seminar will introduce the Layar Creator and interactive print, providing an opportunity for anyone interested in the Layar Creator to see an in-depth presentation and try it out themselves.

The event is free and kicks off at 1:30pm. Check out more info (in Dutch) below or click here to register right now!

Woensdagmiddag 11 juli a.s. organiseert Layar, wereldmarktleider in augmented reality en interactive print een seminar voor uitgevers, redacteuren en print professionals die meer toegevoegde waarde willen leveren aan hun lezers en adverteerders. Op het seminar leer je hoe makkelijk je print kunt combineren met digitaal, wat de toegevoegde waarde voor lezers is en hoe het meer biedt aan adverteerders.

De hoofdredacteur Jildou van der Bijl van LINDA en de Interactive Paper Maker Leonieke Verhoog van VPRO delen hun ervaringen en lessen in Interactieve Print. Ontmoet de experts van Layar en leer anderen collega’s kennen die reeds begonnen zijn of gaan beginnen. Het event is kosteloos, er is echter beperkte ruimte dus registreer snel!

Neem een laptop en de PDF van jouw laatste uitgave mee zodat deze tijdens de seminar, begeleid door onze experts, verrijkt kan worden.

The following is a post from Layar co-founder and BizDev head Claire Boonstra.

Earlier this week, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak at TEDxBinnenhof. It was truly amazing!

450 people were present in the “Ridderzaal,” with HRH Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima of the Dutch royal family sitting in the first row. 39 Dutch embassies across the globe even had their own livestream viewing party. On Twitter, #TEDxBinnenhof was the #2 trending topic all day!

My talk was well received - I even performed a live demo of the Layar Creator. The crowd seemed very excited and surprised as I added content to the event’s program and it instantly became viewable in the Layar Creator.

Watch the quick, 8-minute video above to see my presentation and the demo of the Creator in action!

Attention travelers and adventure seekers!

As of today, the massively popular Lonely Planet travel guides will be able to help you with your travels even more! Just open the Layar app on your smartphone, hold it over the cover of one of the guides and you’ll be able to see tons of practical and up-to-date information to help you on your way.

The print guides now feature live weather, updated event listings and even hotel prices and availability. What other print guide can provide that? But that’s not all. Editorial and Product Development Director Matt Swaine says exclusive content awaits those who view the guides with Layar.

“We’re offering travelers access to hundreds of additional points of interest reviews, video content that they can only get through Lonely Planet’s Layar service and easy ways to book hotels and activities,” says Swaine.

So far, Lonely Planet has enhanced 42 guides from its European city titles. Paris, Rome, London, and (of course) Amsterdam are just a few of the popular tourist destinations with augmented guides.

For Swaine, the opportunity to add digital content to the printed Lonely Planet guides opened up new channels of communication and interaction with customers.

“We very quickly saw the potential for Layar to enhance our books by giving travelers access to content we couldn’t put in the books and by linking to other Lonely Planet services, products and online content,” he says. “There are lots of opportunities out there to chase with print, but clearly digital is going to play an increasing role in people’s lives, and this is where we are focusing the larger part of our product thinking.”

Lonely Planet is looking for your feedback! The first 50 people to email online.editor@lonelyplanet.com will receive a free copy of a Lonely Planet European City Guide, Pocket City Guide or Discover City Guide of their choice. To qualify you must own an Apple iOS or Android device, provide a valid shipping address and agree to provide feedback on the using Layar in conjunction with Lonely Planet books. Use “Layar Trial” as your subject line, and let them know which European city guidebook you’d like them to send you.

Check out the guides today and view them with Layar!

Read our full press release here!

Many months of hard work have finally brought us to this moment, so today we here at Layar are beyond excited to finally introduce to you … the Layar Creator.

If you’ve followed our recent activity, you already know that we’ve partnered time and again with magazine and newspaper publishers to help enhance the static pages of their publications with digital content. We aided publishers by offering to produce these layers ourselves, but what you may not have known is that some of our more recent projects have been built completely by the publishers themselves.

The last two issues of LINDA. Magazine, including the L’HOMO issue, all enhanced with dozens of buttons? They did that. The vtwonen magalogue with all of its “Buy” buttons? They did it all themselves as well. The same goes for the latest Eppo comic from Senefelder, the VPRO Gids, the NRC.next newspaper and more.

So how did they manage to build augmented reality layers and make their print interactive without any external development assistance? The answer, simply, is the Layar Creator.

Check out some screenshots of the Creator! Click the thumbnails to view larger photos.

The Layar Creator is a self-service web application for activating print pages with digital AR content. Now anyone can upload images or PDFs, drag-and-drop any of a number of digital buttons onto the pages and publish them on the Layar platform - all in a matter of seconds. No fancy code work needed, no developers. Absolutely anybody can do it.

There’s no software to install, and the Layar Creator’s intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to start activating pages right away. The Layar Creator takes advantage of Layar Vision technology, recognizing existing images from the pages of magazines and newspapers without the need for special markers like QR codes.

How to use the Layar Creator:

“I loved how simple it was to use the Layar Creator with our magazine,” says Monique van Beekhoven, web editor for Sanoma Media’s vtwonen magazine. Using their smartphones, readers could instantly order items in the magazine by tapping “Buy” buttons placed on the pages with the Layar Creator by Monique herself. “I really believe that anyone can do it!”

As we explained in our whitepaper on the subject a few weeks ago, early interactive print campaigns with the Layar Creator have already shown promising results. Roughly 1% of readers who discover activated pages are converted from print to digital by using Layar to interact with the pages. And on average, 20% of all digital content displayed in print through Layar is clicked by the viewer.

Having seen these results, several publishers have already signed on to incorporate the Layar Creator into their publishing process going forward. And with such a low barrier to entry, who can blame them?

“At every editorial meeting, we discuss what will be in the printed magazine and how we can connect that content with Layar,” says Jildou van der Bijl, editor-in-chief of LINDA. Magazine, which has already published three issues with pages activated using the Layar Creator.

Today, anyone can get started using the Layar Creator and all of its features for free. Starting August 1st, pricing for top level features will kick in, but for now, anything you create before then will never be charged. A free, ad-supported tier for the Creator will remain as well.

So, please, be our guest! Give the Layar Creator a try and tell us what you think! We hope you’re as excited as we are.

Sappi is the leading European producer of coated fine paper used in magazines, catalogues, books and high-end print advertising. The Belgium-based company has come up with some really cool examples of print AR by augmenting it’s promotional magazine, What’s Next, with Layar.

“At its heart, the purpose of What’s Next Magazine is to show publishers what they can do to add texture and depth to their publications, through paper choice in particular,” says Sappi.

For this edition of What’s Next, Sappi has turned to Layar to show how publishers can enhance their print products. And we’re really impressed at what they created using Layar.

Pages can be scanned with Layar to make the reading the magazine a one-of-a-kind experience. Our favorite addition has to be the translation feature. Articles in one language can be translated to another, and vice versa, suggesting the possibility to truly universal content in print magazines.

Readers can also view videos, follow links to websites and social media, and even fill out reader polls to instantly weigh in on topics. Now that’s a pretty cool and unique use of Layar!

“From a publisher’s perspective, the beauty of using this technology is that readers never stop reading their magazines,” says Sappi. “Scanning the Layar logo with a smartphone immediately brings the reader various forms of complementary content about the subject either in the form of an image, text or even a small movie. Not only that, the technology also enables publishers to provide additional product information for readers, as well as suggesting possible purchases through the app. No need to go to a website; the content appears on your smartphone.”

Have a look below at a video produced by Sappi to show off the new magazine and its Layar integration. And after the jump, give it a try yourself on some example pages from the magazine. You can vote in the poll and try out the text translation!

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