Katy Perry isn’t the only eye-catching thing in this month’s Elle UK.

Inside the popular women’s magazine, readers will find they can scan pages with the Layar App to discover bonus materials, including links and behind-the-scenes videos.

Here’s what Elle had to say about its latest issue:

“You can bring the web page (pg 40) to life so you can get to the online content direct via your phone, including our behind-the-cover Katy Perry video.

See the Chanel page with the whole world on it? You can scan the page and see every look from that show while you’re on-the-go.

And that’s not all – you could also win a beauty goody bag, worth £200. All you need to do is head to pg 314 and find the hidden beauty video using your Layar app. Tweet @ELLEUK using #ELLEsept and the name of the video for your chance to win.”

With the Layar Creator, brands can easily add digital interactivity to print in just minutes! Learn more here!

Check out what readers can see with Layar in the September issue of Elle UK below. To see more great examples, visit our new Inspiration page!

Perusing London’s wide array of art museums, a personal tour guide is the ultimate way to augment your experience; so when a charming British artist dandified in a variety of custom suits appears before you at each of London’s top museums offering commentary about its history and architecture as well as a list of exhibiting artists, you find his “presence” pleasant and helpful despite his disarming lack of flesh and bone. 

As you progress from museum to museum, however, you begin to question this “invisible artist’s” motives. 

Artist and Derby University professor John Goto came up with the concept for The Invisible Artist in a period of frustration after being dropped from a gallery’s books. Ruminating over the politics of the art world, where an artist’s visibility requires the approval of a small group of “gatekeepers,” Goto began sketching the headless figures that would eventually become the 3D models in his Invisible Artist layer.

The nature of Goto’s frustration fit perfectly with Augmented Reality’s open space platform because Goto could place his art at any location—or in this case, at any museum he desired, without permission, and anyone (with the Layar app, that is) could see it. The result was a subversive layer satirizing the bureaucracy and lack of diversity of London’s contemporary art scene (notice how the list of exhibiting artists contains the same few names at every museum).

While its derisive nature is clever, the “must-see” factor in this layer is its exquisite 3D modeling. Peering through your mobile phone at these life-sized figures, you can see the shadow behind every fold in the artist’s clothing, the texture of each material, and the soft glow of London’s cloudy sky gently reflected off of each garment.

The Invisible Artist is an excellent example of what can be achieved on the Layar platform with the right combination of skills in the artistic as well as the technical fields. In order to build this layer, Goto utilized his artistic talent to create the 3D models, then colleague Matthew Leach (from whom Goto first learned about Augmented Reality) used his development skills to set up a server, place the models, and program functionality to make for the best possible user experience.

The Invisible Artist is Goto and Leach’s second layer in their Augmented Reality repertoire; their first, West End Blues, explores the history and sounds of London’s jazz and blues musicians. The two have recently become Pioneers in the Layar Partner Network, and you can look forward to more groundbreaking AR content from them in the future.

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!

Today, we are very proud to present to you version 3.0, with fantastic new tools to enable the already more than 1000 active independent content developers to create AR experiences that go far beyond answering the simple ‘where is…?’ question. This new version allows everybody with basic web development skills to create rich immersive experiences that cannot be replicated on a map, in a traditional browser or in a mobile location based application.

This blogpost explains the new features on a technical level; read on to see five cases to show you what Layar 3.0 can mean for people, organizations and brands.

Architectural showcase: the new Market Hall in Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the Dutch capital of modern architecture. The latest eyecatching project by Provast is the construction of the ‘Market hall‘, a U-shaped building designed by renowned architects MVRDV. Completion is planned for 2014, but visitors and inhabitants can already see how the Market Hall looks like, simply by pointing their phone at its construction site. The 3D model enables the visitor to walk around the building and look inside - as if it was already there.
Layer developed by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) and in cooperation with IN10

Storytelling: Beatles Tour

Abbey Road in London has become famous for housing the studio where the Beatles recorded most of their albums, including their final and most successful one, “Abbey Road“. Now it is possible to see Ringo, Paul, John and George back on Abbey Road, simply by pointing your phone at the zebra crossing. After having taken some screenshots with your friend standing next to the Beatles in 3D, you can proceed to the next location on the Beatles discovery tour, which covers 42 locations. The next destination only appears after the previous location has been visited.
Layer developed by AugmentReality.co.uk

History comes alive

How often did you wonder ‘how would this place have looked like hundreds of years ago?’, while standing in Rome, Paris or New York. Layar enables re-creation of a long past reality, by displaying ancient photos overlaid on their current location or even by re-constructing the original building. Imagine you can experience the Colosseum back in its original state, see the audience sitting on the benches and hear the lions roar - as if you were teleported to a scene 1000 years ago, simply by holding up your phone and looking around you. Many of such layers are now in development and will go live in 2010.

Art, messages & fun objects

Hold up your phone and see new pieces of art, specifically created for Augmented Reality. Various artists are creating new art and new ways for people to interact with their work. Experience existing or old pieces of art in a completely new context: not in the museum but outside on the city’s main square or in a park. Or see fun objects like zeppelins and UFO’s or even messages and graffiti in unexpected locations.
Layers in development by Winvolve,  Superimpose, Hoppala, Muzar.org

B2B & personalization

Layar v3.0 features easy login through cookie support, which enables personalization of your layer. This is useful in various ways. Business-to-Business purposes include a closed fleet tracking layer by Masternaut, only visible for employees. It is also useful for social layers: show only the twitterers you follow, tweet from within the layer, or see check-ins from your friends in Foursquare.
Masternaut own layer, Tweeps around layer developed by Squio

We are extemely proud of what Layar content developers across the globe have already created with Layar v3.0 - in very little time. This sets the stage for a future in which many dreams come true. Where our reality will be enriched with new objects, specifically designed for Augmented Reality. And where completely new worlds will be created.

We are only at the start of a long journey where developers, users and brands can start to explore the possibilities of this new medium - developing engaging experiences with new ways of interaction and service provisioning.

Layar v3.0 can now be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market and is available for all Android 1.5 and 1.6 devices. We will release a compatible version for the Droid as soon as possible. We have almost finished testing for Android 2.0.
A version for the iPhone 3GS is to follow after Apples approval.

See which version 3.0 layers have been launched today

JustBought.it

Description: View what and where people are buying in your area using http://justbought.it
Geographical spread: International
Developer Name: James Cole
Developer Company: Pallian

Action plan Canada

Description: This Layer shows all project that receive funding from the Canadian government as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan. The
information used for this application comes from www.actionplan.gc.ca
Geographical spread: Canada
Developer Name: Andree Toonk
Developer Company: NetKnowledge.ca - info@NetKnowledge.ca

Pubs Galore

Description: pubsgalore.co.uk - community run website, join in with reviews and corrections
Geographical spread: Great Brittain
Developer: Conrad Heard
Developer company: Novamarque Ltd

Product Finder

Description: Find the products you want to buy from nearby shops in the UK.
Geographical spread: Great Brittain
Developer Name: Paula Abrahamson
Developer Company: Thundre

Apartments For Rent

Description: Find the best Apartment. Official prices, pictures and floorplans. Get accurate, up-to-date and detailed information on apartments. Check Today’s Availability.
Geographical spread: US
Developer Name: Micah Nolte
Developer Company: Apartment Home Living

Alhambra

Description: Touristical information about the Alhambra. Select your language with radiobuttons: Spanish and English (Italian, French and German will follow)
Geographical spread: Spain
Developer: Pablo Garcia
Developer Company: ELIPSE AD

Hospital finder

Developer: Pablo Garcia
Geographical spread: Spain
Developer Name: Pablo Garcia
Developer Company: ELIPSE AD

Elipse Pharma

Description: Encuentre las farmacias más cercanas a su posición actual.
Geographical spread: Spain
Developer Name: Pablo Garcia
Developer Company: ELIPSE AD

Resolving Door

Description: Crowd Powered News happening around you.
Geographical spread: Boulder, US
Developer Name: Dan Schaefer
Developer Company: Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, School of Journalism and Mass Comm