ARYS - augmented reality messaging system startup

[minko mihaly]

Hello!

ARYS is a brand new project from Hungary.

Hope you will enjoy to take a look.

We would really appreciate if you would share the following information below on your social platforms.

Thank you!

1. Link to our post on Facebook about the ARYS project that you could share:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=504549342986268&saved

2. Longer descrpition about the ARYS project:

ARYS, a brand new mobile device app represents Hungary in the final round of Global Startup Battle by winning the  Startup Weekend Budapest a week ago.

ARYS is a geotagging-based app that lets you add and see photos, music, text and videos to any real place wherever you are.

Check out the teaser video of the working prototype here and if you like it, Vote for ARYS!

http://startupbattle.agorize.com/en/juries/11/votables?votable_id=901

In this new communication platform you get notified by a buzz when you get close to a specific location with content. Then you can find it through the camera of your phone, let it be text, images, videos or music. View, listen, like and share it.

The app itself came alive after 54 hours of frenetic sprinting at the Startup Weekend Budapest, and now there is a working prototype to show how you can change the perception of the city you live in with the help of ARYS. Potential users of the product are designers and artists who are open to find a new revolutionary way of presenting their work of art, companies who are looking for new perspectives in advertisement, and most of all people who just want to leave their virtual mark at their favourite spots and share it with anyone to inspire each other.

The prototype works already and in a few months time ARYS will launch a new social network layer upon the reality surrounding us.

If you like the idea, share it with your friends!

The ARYS team is now working heavily to make the application available in the app stores within a few months from now.

3. Twitter:

http://bit.ly/1eG8O41

4. We uploaded some key art of our project to the following Dropbox links, we’d really appreciate if you’d choose one of them for the publication.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rfqmcxuwb94vzqn/uIHqScmg_3

If you need further information for sharing some info about our project, please let me know.

Best Regards,

Noemi Varga

Founder

ARYS

no...@arys.me

00 36 70 432 4900

arys.me

[Jan Ciger]

Hello Minko,

Well, since you have spammed this group with your product advert, what is exactly the difference between what you are trying to build and existing apps like Layar or even this:
http://readwrite.com/2009/12/01/new_twitter_ar_app_powered_by_geotagging_api

or this one:
http://wallitapp.com/ ?

And that has turned up in just 5 minutes of googling, I am sure there are plenty more of such applications around already.

Apart from the novelty, I am not sure whether this is so great when it comes to actual communication - you get a buzz in your pocket and then the user is expected to go "hunt" where the message actually is in the world with their phone? With the phone location being often off by kilometres (Wifi/GPS off by default due to being a battery hog and a privacy problem ...), this could turn into a geocaching expedition instead ...

I can see a potential of this as a geo-gaming platform or perhaps localised advertising (which has been done several times over - e.g. Google Maps, Waze, etc.), but it doesn't seem very usable for actual communication.

Regards,

Jan

[minko mihaly]

Hi Jan!

Thank you for your questions and comments.
You are absolutely right, at this moment, this is a spam since as far as I know nothing actually came out of this software concept (but who knows...).
So feel totally free to delete the thread (and for this I owe you a beer - call me if you're visiting Hungary).
But to answer your further questions, which show perfectly well how curious and kind person you are (after I was spamming here you still insisted to turn it into a conversation - very very rare and valuable personality character) I will try to remember the original concept and answer your questions one by one.
The wallit app is similar in a way that it also lets you leave messages in an AR environment, but it is more like an actual wall onto which you can create your own FB similar wall. What we wanted is to give users a more free environment where they can upload images and for example cut out figures and leave them at a certain place for someone or just write somethng but without the actual "wall" feeling (more like floating around in space).
This app wasn't meant to use for actual communication but rather as a tool to express your feelings-cliche-monologue-whatever in a new way. Just leave a message instead of bidirectional communication. The technological gap you mention I think slowly erodes and nowdays we have a much more correct location awareness of our phones with the wifi/3g/4g but these were the problems I dont't know if the team has tackled since...

So, Jan, after reading this late answer please feel free to delete the thread, or if you like leave it as it is.

Sincerely yours:
Misi

[Jan Ciger]

Hi Minko,

On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:57 PM, minko mihaly <minko....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jan!

Thank you for your questions and comments.
You are absolutely right, at this moment, this is a spam since as far as I know nothing actually came out of this software concept (but who knows...).
So feel totally free to delete the thread (and for this I owe you a beer - call me if you're visiting Hungary).
But to answer your further questions, which show perfectly well how curious and kind person you are (after I was spamming here you still insisted to turn it into a conversation - very very rare and valuable personality character) I will try to remember the original concept and answer your questions one by one.

Thanks, but I think you don't realize that this is primarily a mailing list, not a forum. So you have revived a thread one year old.

 

The wallit app is similar in a way that it also lets you leave messages in an AR environment, but it is more like an actual wall onto which you can create your own FB similar wall. What we wanted is to give users a more free environment where they can upload images and for example cut out figures and leave them at a certain place for someone or just write somethng but without the actual "wall" feeling (more like floating around in space).
This app wasn't meant to use for actual communication but rather as a tool to express your feelings-cliche-monologue-whatever in a new way. Just leave a message instead of bidirectional communication. The technological gap you mention I think slowly erodes and nowdays we have a much more correct location awareness of our phones with the wifi/3g/4g but these were the problems I dont't know if the team has tackled since...

My issue with this project was that it is pretty much a solution looking for a problem. Solving something that people don't feel is a real need (otherwise I am sure we would have seen many more of these apps), in a very clumsy way and it isn't even new to boot as there are existing applications doing the same thing already ... It looks more like an art project than actually something remotely useful to me.

 

So, Jan, after reading this late answer please feel free to delete the thread, or if you like leave it as it is.

Why? Moreover, even if I wanted, I can't - this is a mailing list, I cannot delete stuff from people's mailboxes.

Regards,

Jan

[minko mihaly]

Hi Jan,
:D
No, I didn't realized it until now.
Anyway, your argument for a solution looking for a problem is partly true partly false. We tested the idea during the Startup weekend and the audience was pretty forthcoming with further ideas and instant messages they would loved to see on top of trees on sidewalks etc. And you are right with the art project relation as well, because this app would have provided self-expression possibilities for artist. Imagine if a graphic artist could post the city around with her posters or typefaces. That would be artistic for sure. But as I said it seems that the project is quite frozen at the moment and as google glass didn't get the expected results (so I heard) maybe this whole "VR to the masses" thing will slowly fade away. Until some real need comes up....

Thanks for your comments!

Misi

[Jan Ciger]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:18 AM, minko mihaly <minko....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jan,
:D
No, I didn't realized it until now.
Anyway, your argument for a solution looking for a problem is partly true partly false. We tested the idea during the Startup weekend and the audience was pretty forthcoming with further ideas and instant messages they would loved to see on top of trees on sidewalks etc. And you are right with the art project relation as well, because this app would have provided self-expression possibilities for artist. Imagine if a graphic artist could post the city around with her posters or typefaces. That would be artistic for sure. But as I said it seems that the project is quite frozen at the moment and as google glass didn't get the expected results (so I heard) maybe this whole "VR to the masses" thing will slowly fade away. Until some real need comes up....

Doing something for a startup weekend/game jam/etc. is *very* different from actually bring up a viable business case. People like toys but that doesn't mean they will want to pay for them as well :) If you look at the established, existing apps doing similar things to what you proposed, you will find that there are very few users actually using any of them. It is a toy, once the novelty wears off, the users move on to something shinier. That's not really something you could build a sustainable business on, IMO.

AFAIK, your project didn't depend on Google Glass, did it? Also Google Glass has nothing whatsoever to do with VR (nor AR), so I am not sure what are you getting at there. Glass is a failure in my book, both because it was a device looking for a problem to solve and because of the many many usability (and social) problems with it. But it was an experiment and everyone learned from it. So from that point of view it was not a complete failure - kudos to Google for actually having the guts to bring such product to the market. I am sure Google may bring another version of it out in the future which could be better - these personal HUDs have their uses (e.g. for maintenance staff, factory workers, etc.), but that is probably not what Google intended.

The "VR for the masses" is alive and well. I think the main problem is that the developers are getting restless that the commercial versions of Oculus Rift are not on the market yet - until that happens, there won't be much adoption, because there literally is nothing to adopt yet. I am not counting the various smartphone gimmicks - I just don't see people paying extra $200 for a piece of plastic to put their $600 Galaxy Note 4 in to watch a few demos or play some games, especially when that piece of plastic will not fit any other phone once Note 4 is obsolete.

However, there are quite a few software projects in the pipeline, essentially just waiting for the HMDs becoming available. I would also dare to say that the amount of applications supporting Rift is probably an order of magnitude larger than anything Glass-related already.

Regards,

J.

 

[minko mihaly]

Doing something for a startup weekend/game jam/etc. is *very* different from actually bring up a viable business case. People like toys but that doesn't mean they will want to pay for them as well :) If you look at the established, existing apps doing similar things to what you proposed, you will find that there are very few users actually using any of them. It is a toy, once the novelty wears off, the users move on to something shinier. That's not really something you could build a sustainable business on, IMO.

Yes, you're absolutly right. But trying is the first step towards making a product out of it. I agree with the 'toyness' factor of yours, but positioning the product would require some more solid understandig of the market - and as you said doing something for a startup weekend is very different from an actual product. This means that these products will find their way to the market - be it on a surgeon's head or an amateur astrologist's. And I agree again, this is still not something one could build a sustainable business on...
 

AFAIK, your project didn't depend on Google Glass, did it? Also Google Glass has nothing whatsoever to do with VR (nor AR), so I am not sure what are you getting at there. Glass is a failure in my book, both because it was a device looking for a problem to solve and because of the many many usability (and social) problems with it. But it was an experiment and everyone learned from it. So from that point of view it was not a complete failure - kudos to Google for actually having the guts to bring such product to the market. I am sure Google may bring another version of it out in the future which could be better - these personal HUDs have their uses (e.g. for maintenance staff, factory workers, etc.), but that is probably not what Google intended.

Nope, it didn't, but as the second (or any other) phase would came we planned to extend it to Glass. I think I miss the definitions here, if you mean "virtual reality" on VR and "artificial reality" on AR than you're right again. But I think (and this is my humble opinion) that these concepts are really fuzzy (at least for me) and there are many doors between them to go through that one doesn't really know how to use them in a correct way (especially coming from a startup weekend :) ).
I would love to hear the comments of the product developers on your opinion on Google Glass - that it was a device looking for a problem. Though I agree again. There might be are some specific applications where it can be used, but since not so many applications are out there for it... well seems kind of a trash can to me too. Hope they try the contact lens line next time!

 

The "VR for the masses" is alive and well. I think the main problem is that the developers are getting restless that the commercial versions of Oculus Rift are not on the market yet - until that happens, there won't be much adoption, because there literally is nothing to adopt yet. I am not counting the various smartphone gimmicks - I just don't see people paying extra $200 for a piece of plastic to put their $600 Galaxy Note 4 in to watch a few demos or play some games, especially when that piece of plastic will not fit any other phone once Note 4 is obsolete.

Well, this one we will hopefully see for ourselves :)
 

[Jan Ciger]

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Hello,

On 11/20/2014 01:28 PM, minko mihaly wrote:

> Nope, it didn't, but as the second (or any other) phase would came
> we planned to extend it to Glass. I think I miss the definitions
> here, if you mean "virtual reality" on VR and "artificial reality"
> on AR than you're right again.

The common meaning of these abbreviations:
AR = Augmented reality - computer-generated image added on top (=
augmenting) reality
VR = Virtual reality - user immersed in a fully computer generated world

"Artificial reality" is a term with a rather particular meaning
invented by Myron Krueger to differentiate his work from the (then
current) goggles & gloves VR. Look up his VideoPlace or Small World
works if you want to know more. It is also the title of his book (old,
but pretty inspirational).

> But I think (and this is my humble opinion) that these concepts are
> really fuzzy (at least for me) and there are many doors between
> them to go through that one doesn't really know how to use them in
> a correct way (especially coming from a startup weekend :) ).

Don't worry, they are often fuzzy even for the researchers supposed to
define them! :-p

There is a concept of "virtuality continuum" by Paul Milgram
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality%E2%80%93virtuality_continuum)
where these terms come from.

> I would love to hear the comments of the product developers on
> your opinion on Google Glass - that it was a device looking for a
> problem. Though I agree again. There might be are some specific
> applications where it can be used, but since not so many
> applications are out there for it... well seems kind of a trash can
> to me too. Hope they try the contact lens line next time!

I think the Glass kinda came ahead of its time. A bit like Apple
Newton - cool concept, but the tech was not there yet and the
shortcomings killed the product.

Google was/is trying to make something they could mass-market, tying
it to their Android and Google Play infrastructure, but the device is
obviously not there yet for many reasons, both technical (battery
life, constant tethering to the smartphone, user interface) and social
(privacy concerns, socially awkward interactions, etc.).

I think they didn't want to market it towards the "pro" market where
similar hardware exists already (e.g. http://www.laster.fr/ ).

Furthermore, despite the enormous hype the Glass got, it is *not* an
augmented reality device in the classical sense of the word - it has
no features that could enable an accurate registration of the
projected information with the real world behind it. There is no
tracking apart from basic orientation (and GPS via smartphone). That
doesn't mean it is useless, but it is more a personal HUD than
anything AR related.

>
> Well, this one we will hopefully see for ourselves :)

I am pretty curious to see how well is the Samsung Gear thing going to
sell. I fairly sceptical about it (and the concept as such), but we
will see.


Regards,

J.
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