All the best of the holidays to you and yours! As regular readers of my blog know, this year here at Talking Dog Studios we've been expanding our tool set into the exciting new world of augmented reality. You'll recall that back in June we created an AR version of the tenth dimension helix for you to play with. Now we've created a unique Christmas present for you - an augmented reality page that lets you look into your webcam and see yourself as Santa Claus. There's lots of different Santa faces to choose from, and when you see one you like, just click on the "Take a Picture" icon to save a photo of you as Santa to your computer or to share with your friends on facebook. Check it out!
My company, Talking Dog Studios, has been creating Augmented Reality projects for a while now. We've recently put up a couple of free sites for people to play with, both have similar designs but will likely appeal to very different groups.
The one that just went up now is called "How Big is a Planet?". You can go to the website and try it out yourself, it's at howbigisaplanet.com . Here's a video demonstrating how the site works:
I think there's something about actually seeing the scale of related things when you hold them in your hand that sticks in your memory more than just reading about such things. Seeing yourself hold Mars and then seeing yourself hold Jupiter gives you a "mental slap" that makes it more likely to remember this kind of information. The following site is based upon the same principle, but this time we're comparing the relative sizes of a developing baby during its nine months of development in the womb. Here's a video:
Again, it's one thing to read about how teeny an embryo is only one month after the egg has been fertilized, and it's quite another to hold it in your hand. If you'd like to try it out yourself please go to howbigisthebaby.com . Both of these sites would make great teaching aids, but they're also just fun to play with. One thing to note - once you have the marker showing the baby or the planet in the position you like, you can quickly take the marker out of view and the object remains, useful if you want to see yourself with these planets and babies without having to hold the tag. And when you see something you like, you can click on the "Take a Picture" button and save a picture of yourself to your hard drive, or automatically share it with your friends on facebook.
Is taking a picture of yourself with a baby in front of your tummy a good way to let your family know you're expecting? Well, that's a personal decision. But having watched both kids and adults have a great time playing with these websites, I'm hoping that you will enjoy them as well.
