How Big is a Planet?

Here at Talking Dog Studios, we've 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:


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiXhrDLhvRg

We 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:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkuEXH1pTCQ

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, we're hoping that you will enjoy them as well.

If you'd like to know more about Talking Dog Studios and augmented reality, here's a link to our website.

Augmenting the world, one website at a time,

The Talking Dog Team

How Big is the Baby - video

Hey, check out the new movie we've just put up demonstrating How Big is the Baby!


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkuEXH1pTCQ

Pretty cool, huh? Be sure to send us any of your favorite pictures of you with your virtual baby to ar@talkingdogstudios.com

Cheers!

Talking Dog

Pregnancy Flakes?

We've have had our How Big is the Baby project up for a week or two now, just added a feature yesterday which allows people to post pictures of themselves with the baby directly to their facebook page. Hey, wouldn't this be a great way to announce to your parents that you're expecting? Well, maybe...

We noticed in our website stats that yesterday September 30th, we got mentioned on an Isreal news site called ynet. The article can be found here and you may be curious what it says in english...well... a translation of the site can be found here. Our site was linked to under the heading of "Pregnancy Flakes", we suspect something was lost in translation but we're not sure what. It looks like the site was mentioned because of http://twitter.com/ErezAK... thanks! We just saw a big jump in the number of visitors to the site, so we guess that means lots of people from Israel are having fun picturing themselves with a developing baby.

We look forward to seeing what types of pictures start surfacing online and hopefully people have some fun with it. We don't actually record or look at the pictures as you take them (because we respect your privacy and say so in our privacy statement), but if you have a picture you think we might get a kick out of, email it to us at ar@talkingdogstudios.com .

We've also been building up our twitter followers. The twitterverse is a mysterious place and we hope people following our tweets are picking up a thing or two. Thanks to a few mentions on twitter we've also noticed a flow of people coming to check out our site. Also, we picked up a new "slogan" through the retweeting circles. The phrase "Get pregnant without the morning sickness" seemed to replicate all over the place and we were entertained by the idea.

To finish off here is a recent speech by Bruce Sterling talking about the augmented reality industry.

Video: Bruce Sterling's Keynote - At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.

Have fun in your augmented world!

www.talkingdogstudios.com
1212A Winnipeg St.
Regina, SK Canada
306 790 4008