As children we all dreamt that our toys would come to life and play with us. Well thanks to Qualcomm and some augmented reality technology our children won’t have to dream.

At CES2012 this week, Qualcomm showed off a product demo of the Sesame Street Playset. The playset was developed in partnership with Sesame Street Workshop for the education of pre-school aged children. The toys are fun to play with on their own but come to life when a tablet joins in. In this case Qualcomm used a HTC Jetstream tablet.

“In the past, the only place toys came to life was on TV and in movies. Today, we are bringing that magic one step closer to reality,” said Jay Wright, senior director of business development at Qualcomm.

The experience is built using Qualcomm’s Vuforia™ platform and an application to recognize 3D figures. Qualcomm has always been active in the augmented reality space working with and supporting developers to create the hardware needed for truly immersive executions.

Although a prototype this Playset has been created with learning and interaction at it’s core. Qualcomm has worked closely with the Sesame Street Workshop to ensure the toys are educational and maximize developmental growth. The toys from our dreams and sci-fi movies are now in our living rooms. What will be next?

Check out this video to see the Playset in action:

Want to try on watches but can’t make it to the store? Tissot, maker of Swiss watches has a solution for you. Using augmented reality technology you are able to try any of a select collection of watches.

This magical experience lets you shop online for just the right watch. You can see a 3D model of each watch on your own wrist. Compare styles, seek the right color to match your outfit or decide which face size is appropriate for you. By activating the touch functions you can learn about the features of each watch.

Congratulations go to Tissot for a perfect matching of e-commerce and augmented reality. With this unique offering Tissot ensures that their consumer is engaged with their product and spends more time on their site. The AR application is both refined and informative. The experience is compatible with both Windows and Mac systems. The only draw back is the hefty download. For Mac it weighs in at a whopping 85 MB.

Download the marker:

Tissot Touch Collection

Download the AR Experience:

Windows or Mac

Video of Experience:

During my time at the first annual Augmented Reality Event 2010 in Santa Clara last month, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Camilla Grey from Moving Brands. Moving Brands is a London based branding company. Their goal is to “redefine branding by setting new standards of creativity for a moving world.” They have done some amazing identity work.

During the conference Camilla gave a wonderful presentation on Living Identity. Instead of the usual PowerPoint or Keynote slides Camilla used a custom AR format. What a great way to present at an AR conference. If you would like to experience the script for yourself you can download the marker and follow the link below. Through the use of their logo Moving Brands is able to display blog, twitter, video and image feeds from their site. To cycle through the content you simply move the marker to arrows at the left or right of the content. The code is flash based so there is no download required.

Tips for use:

1) On Mac computer make sure you have USB camera selected. To do so, right-click select settings and click the webcam icon.

2) For easy recognition, you may want to print the marker at 100% and fold the edges of the paper under to make it more stable.


Download the marker:
Moving Brands: Living Identity

Launch AR Experience


Video of Experience:

Everyone needs to backup their data. With the millions of options out there, what is your preferred method? Personally I use a couple different solutions.

Overall my backup solutions are based on using Carbon Copy Cloner or CCC for short. There is always the default Time Machine app which started coming with Mac OS X with Leopard (10.5). However, from some personal experience and reading of various reviews I am not fully confident in its abilities. Reading about non-bootable backups or backups not working at all scared me. After all that is the point of backing up; knowing for certain your data is safe. The other major drawback in my mind was not being able to constrain the space your backups require. I know there are some partitioning tricks and I had used them for a while. But overall I don’t appreciate Time Machine filling my 2TB drive with 200+ backups.

So with all that said, Carbon Copy Cloner became my choice. CCC is a free Mac OS program that works on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. Having an older Powerbook G4 laptop I needed to back up this was a huge plus. Also Carbon Copy Cloner will allow you to make a bootable backup or simply backup a selected portion of your drive. I like to format my hard-drive and start from scratch every 6 to 9 months to keep my computer fresh and clean so I choose only to backup selected files. Now I’m not going to go into the details of selecting exactly what you want to backup and where you can find all your preferences. However it is important to know your way around library files if you want to backup preferences. Personally I backup files from my desktop, documents, downloads, bookmarks, and music folders. CCC makes it simple and easy to select what you want and schedule backups. I chose the sparse image option so CCC only needs to update my backup with changed or new files.

Another free backup software solution for macs is Super Duper. I found Carbon Copy Cloner to be simpler and easier to use for my needs. Super Duper also has a paid version for $27.95 for the hardcore backup user.

My solution currently looks like this: The majority of files backup from my iMac to the drive on my 500 GB Time Capsule via wireless-N. I backup my music files to an external Lacie 1TB hard-drive via firewire 800. I also backup all my video files to a Western Digital My Book Studio hard-drive. This drive is connected via USB to the Time Capsule for streaming of video content via Plex. My Book Studio drives are specifically make to run efficiently with Apple’s base stations. I only wish my Time Capsule had firewire 800; l the difference in speed for backups is a noticeable increase from USB. Also important to note; your initial backups may take anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours depending on the amount of data your plan to backup. Be patient.

Other tips: In my experience I have had the least amount of problems and failures with Lacie and the Western Digital My Book drives. Keep in mind the connection speeds of your devices. If you have firewire 800 it might be worth the extra price to buy a drive that supports that feature. This is particularly important if you are also looking to stream video from the drive.

Backing up is an important part of data management. Overall make sure you are backing up at least on a weekly basis. There are always more secure ways and other solutions depending on your needs. This should get you started. Please feel free post your backup solutions and questions in the comment feed below. And happy data management to you.