Instantly transform yourself into a ravenous, brain-hungry zombie and join the ranks of the undead with the App Store's first true live-video Augmented Reality (AR+) face tracking app. Get it here.

This is more than just image manipulation… Blurring the line between reality and fantasy, ZombieMirror uses cutting-edge AR face recognition to track your movements and perform frightening undead transformations, all in real-time.

Configure your undead identity with maggot-infested wounds, dangling bloody eyeballs, skull-embedded axes and machetes, and much more. There's enough zombie combinations to last an undead lifetime.

Whether it's a zombie you or an undead friend, take photos of the action and share the horror on Facebook or via email. Save photos to your camera roll, or even assign them as friends' contact pictures for an undead fright every time they call!

WARNING: in the event of a zombie apocalypse and your inevitable degeneration into zombiehood, ZombieMirror will only serve to make you an even freakier zombie. Please seek urgent medical attention in the form of a shotgun blast to the face.

The latest video from the Black Eyed Peas, entitled “The Time (Dirty Bit)”, shows some cool Mobile Augmented Reality, seemingly happening on the new BlackBerry PlayBook – RIM’s answer to the iPad.

Checkout the video, from around 2:13 onwards:

Of course, in the video, all of the AR is all applied post production – it’s not real! However it does hint that the PlayBook will have some kind of AR feature built in, or at least that the device will be AR capable.

Unless you are Will.I.Am you’ll need to wait until March 2011 to get your hands on a PlayBook, so I guess we’ll have to wait until then to see what it’s really capable of.

In the meantime, in case any of the Black Eyed Peas are reading this, why settle for post-production video tricks when you can have the real thing right now?! What is in the video is totally possible on existing Android tablets using Total Immersion’s powerful D’Fusion system. So if you’re out there, why not give us a call?

Bruno Uzzan, CEO and Co-Founder of Total Immersion, made this important announcement during his keynote presentation, at AR Immersion 2010 in Los Angeles this week.

The collaboration between Adobe and Total Immersion will foster optimization of Total Immersion’s D’Fusion software platform for developers and companies using the Adobe® Flash® Platform, of which there are many (over three million at last count).

Flash has an enormous user-base, with over 98% of internet-connected PCs worldwide having the Flash player installed. This alliance will considerably accelerate the market penetration of augmented reality applications, and will take Flash-based AR well beyond the confines of the current black and white marker-based systems.

Under the collaborative relationship, Total Immersion and Adobe will work together to help ensure the Flash Platform is enhanced for the development of professional AR experiences, providing seamless playback on any platform that supports the Adobe Flash Platform runtimes.  Total Immersion also plans to leverage the new ‘molehill’ Flash Player and Adobe AIR 3D APIs when they are made available in future releases of the runtimes.

AR Immersion 2010 Keynote: Special Guest Session with Adobe - Part 1

AR Immersion 2010 Keynote: Special Guest Session with Adobe - Part 2

If you’d like us to develop a Flash-based AR solution for you, we’re ready and waiting, so feel free to get in touch today!

Rock'em Sock'em Robots is a two-player boxing game that was first manufactured by the Marx toy company in 1964. It features two robots that fight each other, using simple mechanical manipulation to allow the players to control their robot. The game is won when one of the opponents loses their head - the robot that is, not the player!

A number of different versions have been produced since then, and the game has sold in the hundreds of thousands, becoming something of a minor pop-culture phenomenon.

In 2000, a remake of the classic version was developed by Mattel, at approximately half the size of the original model. You can still buy this (at the time of writing) from Mattel's ecommerce shop.

Now Mattel are enabling a whole new generation to experience the Rock'em Sock'em Robots game, but this time via Augmented Reality on an Android SmartPhone!

Augmented Reality implementations on SmartPhones have actually been around for a while, but have tended to be somewhat basic graphics-wise, using floating tags to indicate points of interest. There have been examples using 3D graphics, but the limited processing power and display capabilities of mobile devices has made for a less than ideal experience... until now that is.

Mattel's AR Rock'em Sock'em Robots game features graphics that are more akin to what you would expect from a desktop Augmented Reality experience, and it enables a high degree of user interaction by using two phones to control the action - one for each player.

The game is the first incarnation of a sophisticated AR development system by chipset manufacturers Qualcomm, running on an Android 2.1 handset with a Snapdragon processor. This game has essentially been created to demonstrate the potential of this system, however it is not available yet commercially, sadly.

We will however start to see more engaging and graphically rich mobile Augmented Reality experiences like this start to appear over the coming months, as SmartPhone hardware and software continues to improve - so watch this space!

There is something peculiar and dramatic about the latest issue of SZ magazine from the trail blazing German Newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Unbeknownst to many of the 550,000 strong household readerships who will receive this today, the magazine courts print media with the augmented reality (AR) technology to transform what appears to be a traditional print media into an immersive augmented reality experience when viewed through an iPhone, Android or any suitable smartphone that is camera-equipped.

The issue numbered 33 of the SZ magazine will go down in the annals of AR history as the first print media publication to fully embrace augmented reality, a just reward for the reputed magazine that always had the knack for producing something uncanny.  The technology firm behind the effort is Metaio, a German AR developer more known for their junaio augmented reality platform for camera equipped 3G and 4G Mobile device.

In order to experience all of the augmented reality features found in this special SZ Magazine, users are required to download the free junaio augmented reality browser from either the iTunes store or the Android marketplace, and then proceed to activate relevant channels relating to the augmented reality overlay.

Once armed with the right smartphone and having activated SG Channels, the magic is ready to unfold. In the cover of the magazine, popular TV talk show host and journalist Sandra Maischberger is seen hiding her face behind hands. This “Real” world is soon transformed into an “Augmented Reality” world, thanks to the augmented reality overlays viewed through the smartphone camera, where Sandra can now be seen uncovering her face to reveal a happy smile.

As we turn pages there are more encounters of the AR kind, the first one we stumble onto is the "interview without words" where the European Song contest winner Lena Meyer-Landrut is expressing jibes and remarks that appear amazingly as bubble texts in the augmented view. As we go further inside the magazine, the popular Axel Hacke column is seen activating a brilliant 3D animation. As we wind up, we experience something more novel and useful as staff of the SZ Magazine present their favourite spots in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin in a virtual city guide. Readers from those cities are able to use the smartphone to see the augmented reality view in which they will have markers pointing out to restaurants, clubs and hotels in their vicinity.

An augmented reality experience on a cover page of a magazine is not exactly a novel concept, Popular Science came up with what they called as “first interactive 3-D augmented reality magazine cover” in their July 2009 issue in which a PC equipped with webcam was used in conjunction to see the augmented view of the cover, and couple of months later Esquire followed suit with a similar spectacle.  However those efforts pale in comparison to the effort by SG Magazine which has used augmented reality throughout the publication and not just on the cover, and more importantly, has taken the reader to a new realm of quality journalism merged with augmented reality overlay view from camera equipped smartphone for an unforgettable and rich sensory experience.

Magazine cover and page-based augmented reality is something we have considerable experience with, and would love to help you take your brand to the next level. Get in touch.