Sony Pictures is playing with augmented reality technology for its new The Amazing Spider-Man AR app, which is out on iPhone and Android. It’s using technology from Qualcomm.
The app puts Spidey into the real world. “Just locate special movie-themed AR images and scan them to unlock exclusive 3D Spider-Man interactive animations. You can see Spider-Man swing through buildings, crawl up walls, shoot his web at the screen, or engage with nefarious characters on the streets…”
We’re often sceptical of AR apps as short-lived novelties, but this is marketing a blockbuster film, so it only has to be interesting for a matter of weeks. The ability to take photos of the star and share them on Facebook and Twitter may give it a flicker of virality too.
Here’s a new Android app that could be fun for musicians. It’s called SnapNPlay, and it takes a photograph of sheet music, then plays it.
The video above shows it doing a decent job with Amazing Grace, although according to its developer, it’s yet to figure out what to do with rests, grace notes and triplets.
I want a Pebble smart watch. I MUST HAVE ONE. It seems like a lot of other people agree: more than 13,300 people have pledged money to its Kickstarter campaign, generating $1.8m for its manufacturer to actually make it.
What is it? A stylish-looking watch that connects to your iPhone or Android smartphone via Bluetooth to get alerts when someone calls, texts or emails you. But it can also run apps, like fitness, sports and music.
It’ll cost $150+ when it goes on sale in the Autumn, but a pledge of $115 gets you on the list for the initial run. Or you can pledge $1,000 to get a ‘distributor pack’ of 10, or $1,250 for a custom watchface created “just for you”. Amazing.
US retailer/clothing brand Gap wants to recruit its next child models through an app. Gap Casting Call just came out for Android smartphones, and helps parents take snaps of their kids and tell Gap why they’re so marvellous, in the hope of winning “a professional photo shoot, a $1,000 Gap GiftCard, and the opportunity to be featured in a Gap marketing campaign”.
Gap fans will be able to vote for finalists in four age/gender categories. Just one thought: an app that lets anyone browse mugshots of children. A teensy bit unsettling?
At the recent MIPTV conference, there was lots of talk about how localised social TV apps tend to be: a few in the US, Zeebox in the UK, Teleglu in France and so on. Now India has a second-screen check-ins app: Amplyfy Me for Android.
Okay, it doesn’t look super-pretty, and its features have been seen before in apps like GetGlue. But the difference here is it has Indian channel data, and presumably more of a shot at striking deals with broadcasters and producers there to do cooler stuff…
