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!

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!

Earlier this week, Amsterdam hosted its very own TEDx event at the Stadsschouwburg (City Theater). TED, for those unfamiliar, is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the spread of ideas. Conferences are held around the world filled with talks from people with “Ideas Worth Spreading,” and this week the event came to Amsterdam.

30 speakers took to the stage to share their ideas, and one group created an online photo book to browse through the speakers. The project is called TEDx Portraits and features sepia Polaroid-style photos of each speaker displayed in a digital flip-book.

The folks over at TAB Worldmedia (makers of the Tweeps Around layer) caught wind of this project and teamed up with the group to bring the TEDx Portraits to Layar! If you open up Layar and search for “TEDx Portraits,” you will be able to browse through the TEDx Amsterdam speakers using Augmented Reality.

“We were totally inspired by this concept because we believe that this is exactly the kind of storytelling idea that needs to be brought to a mobile augmented reality concept,” writes TAB Worldmedia on its blog. The portraits are displayed in a circle around you, and turning in place will display information about each individual.

To see me about this project, head on over to the TEDx Portraits homepage, or check it out yourself in Layar!