If you’ve ever found yourself in an unfamiliar part of town needing that one item (be it a water bottle, allergy medicine or cigarette) so desperately that you feel like screaming it at the top of your lungs in hopes that someone will point you in the right direction, then the “Where Can I Buy?” layer is for you.

Let’s say you’re in Phoenix, AZ and you want to buy some Advil for your pounding hangover headache. Just type “Advil” into the search field and the “Where Can I Buy?” layer finds stores in your vicinity that carry the item.

Hover over the icon closest to you (which will also be the largest) and you see that it’s $7.99 at a Walgreen’s drugstore .25 miles away. Tap the icon and you can call the store, see a full listing and photo of the item, or view the location on a map. If you tap through to the full listing you can even see that the 80-count liquid gels are $2.00 off.

“Where Can I Buy?” is available in the United States, and was created by Howard Ogden, founder of AugmentReality.co.uk and Mobilistar. Ogden is an Amsterdam-based developer and top-tier member of the Layar Partner Network. His Layar portfolio runneth over with some of our most popular layers including the AR Beatles Tour, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Your Street, and Funda. You can contact him at info@mobilistar.com.

Layar has an extremely diverse community of developers creating augmented reality experiences of all shapes and sizes. To give you an idea of the different things that can be done on the Layar platform, we’ve put together a set of case studies featuring some truly unique examples.

Below are five case studies that show the flexibility and capabilities of the Layar platform and our outstanding community of developers. For each, click the “Case Study PDF” link to view the case study in full.

Layar Augmented Office - Case Study PDF
The Layar Augmented Office is an interactive 3D model that you can literally walk into and access information about the company, layer content, job openings and more.

streetARt - Case Study PDF
streetARt is an iPhone application that displays the public art, graffiti, tags and other forms of street art in your neighborhood. The third-party app uses the Layar Player to embed an Augmented Reality view, but it can also be viewed within the Layar app.

Exile on Your Street - Case Study PDF
Exile on Your Street is the official layer for The Rolling Stones, in promotion of the 2010 Exile on Main Street (Rarities Edition) album. Create and add posters in AR, listen to audio tracks, watch videos, purchase music on iTunes, and more.

The Invisible Artist - Case Study PDF
The Invisible Artist is a 3D Augmented Reality guide to 10 of London’s top contemporary art museums.

UAR - Case Study PDF
UAR (Urban Augmented Reality) displays images and 3D models of the past, future and “what might have been” for architecture in the Netherlands.

You can also find these case studies at any time on our Examples page.

We’re very honored that one of the worlds biggest rock bands did their augmented reality campaign on the Layar platform. The layer is the first of it’s kind in the world and was built by Augment Reality in conjunction with Polydor Records to celebrate the succe­­ss of the recently re-released Stones’ masterpiece Exile on Main St. Stones fans will able to fly-post their streets, homes or offices with virtual interactive posters of the rock icons. We talked to Howard Ogden from Augment Reality

The Rolling Stones layer is worlds first augmented reality campaign by a major rockband. How does it feels to create such a layer for these rock legends?
Being a music aficionado, and British, of course the Rolling Stones have been a big part of my life. To be asked to create a layer for them was a huge privilege. Everything had to be perfect – as by all accounts getting approval from Mick Jagger and his management is not a walk in the park. So, throughout a series of meetings at the Universal / Polydor HQ in London we developed this concept and had many discussions on the future of AR in the music industry. The app is a first on so many levels:

• 1st global Layar campaign for a music artist


• 1st to use Facebook to create AR content


• 1st to use AR for music sales (identify iPhone handsets and offer a direct link to Exile on Main St. on iTunes)


• 1st to use AWS as a hosting environment for massive scalability.


• and the one we’re most proud of: 1st project to be given approval by Mick almost instantly!! (”unheard of”)

The Rolling Stones layer will be filled with user generated content, therefore you decided to build a Facebook app which is connected to the layer. Can you tell us something more about this? The Rolling Stones have over 1.4 million Facebook fans so it was a great resource to tap into for UGC. We first realized we could use FB to do this in August last year; long before this project was conceived – it’s taken a while for us to find such a forward-thinking client with good reason to commission the project. I’m sure it wont be the last layar/FB crossover we see.

How do you scale these big projects when it comes to work and traffic towards these high value layers?
For sure we had to think big. So, the only option to consider was a cloud-based infrastructure, especially since there are a lot of audio and video assets within Exile on Your Street. We implemented a load-balanced Amazon Web Service ready to cope with the upsurge in demand expected when the announcement was made on the RS fan wall. We are happy to say that Exile has enjoyed 100% uptime.

What can we expected from Augment Reality in the near future?
The Exile on Your Street app generated quite a buzz, which, in turn, is keeping us very busy! As always we keep up to date with the very latest API changes within Layar in order to get the absolute maximum out of this platform. We plan to consolidate our position as one of the leading Layar development companies with branch office openings in US and Europe. Very exciting times.

>> Official campaign website
>> Official Facebook application