The Layar Open Source creation tool will be released next week, the name is OHLSK.

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Mobile, Open Source by openhanced on March 26, 2010

Right now OHLSK is the short name for Openhanced Location Starter Kit. It can be used as a backend for any mobile location client but right now it supports Layar out of the box.

In between business – we are working on: a big sports activity Layar, location based SMS services, mobile app., several new Mobile 2.0 concepts – i’m glad to say that there has been a lot of progress in the OHLSK. We needed to extract a Freemium set of capabilities from the total solution and that has gone well. Below are some screenshots of the final Freemium solution:

There are some things still to add or change:

• creation of Layar actions in multiple languages;
• authentication;
• spatial search optimization;
• URI types.

However, these are minor changes and it will not postpone the release. The release will contain extensive help on how to configure and install the solution on your own PHP/MySQL environment.

The total solution (with more capabilities) that we are working on serves as a base backend for all our concepts and projects in the future.

How to use the ZXing Open Source barcode scanner in combination with a mobile web app.

Posted in: Android, Blog, Open Source by openhanced on March 24, 2010

One of the great things of Android is the Intents functionality (An Intent is a simple message object that represents an ”intention” to do something) and some smart applications have implemented an even easier method to startup their application, an http URL.

After doing some experiments with the ZXing package we discovered that there is a way to launch the ZXing barcode application by using the URL http://zxing.appspot.com/scan For this to work ZXing needs to be installed of course.

We used this approach to show a small barcode demo to a few people. The demo is about scanning a barcode and starting our own customized mobile web application. When that is done we have the option to scan another barcode, that is using the ZXing URL to start the application.

To get this working you need to do a few settings in the default ZXing application.

1. Goto settings…

and select Custom search URL.

There we will fill out the URL of our mobile web application.

Of course you can replace this by your own custom URL. If you use this URL it will not work for you because we have only one barcode in our database right now.

Now we scan a product and then click Custom search.

Our product in the database is a box of stamps. Our database contains media that is related to stamps (Youtube video, Photo etc.).

Here we have the option “Scan new object”, this feature supports the ZXing option to start the application by an URL.

With ZXing you can build your own barcode database if you want!

Preview of a complete POI/Layar backend, frontend and browser based mobile solution

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Mobile, Open Source, iPhone by openhanced on March 8, 2010

Layar client

Last couple of weeks we have done some extensive development to get a complete working concept (some will be used at current projects) around POI’s, Layar and backend integration PLUS Jquery based clients for Android and iPhone.

After analyzing some of the solutions available I think there is a lot to improve and also ways to extend the experience. A lot of layar developers for example focus just on the Layar client (which is perfectly fine) but we took this approach and extended it into an approach where Layar actions (available in the specification) kick of Jquery clients (Android and iPhone) where you can even execute more location based services. Below is a sample screenshot of how this looks inside Android (in Dutch):

By linking these almost native clients (nothing to install) for example the Layar experience can heavily be extended. When people select an action in Layar above screens can be opened from within Layar:

POI/Layar backend

There are a few POI/Layar backends available but again we think they are not flexible enough. We think that one infrastructure can facilitate both Layar data but also any other location based information. On top of that we are working on:

• a commenting system for POI’s/Layar;
• location based advertising;
• invitations by SMS for location based surveys or ads;
• generating coupons and a way for users to claim a coupon (location based);
• a retailer interface where store owners can add ads;
• and may other interesting solutions…

Below some screenshots of the backend:

The backend is suitable for multiple users and user groups. Users that register as a retailer will have an option to create location based messages or coupons.

All above work is in development and some will be rolled over to a live environment. A freemium version will be available so that you can create your own Layar in an easy way. We plan to release this around April.