Latest announcements for Layar Developers:
- February 2, 2010 - Get your Google map into Layar
We are always excited to see third parties developing useful tools and services on top of the Layar open platform. One of them is the newly released Hoppala Layerserver. Hoppala Layerserver is a cloud POI hosting service for third party content providers. The basic idea is to free content providers from creating and maintaining their own Layar webservice code. It provides you with an easy way to integrate your existing Google map into Layar. But it can also import different file formats like KML, CSV, XML or Excel. The Hoppala website shows several different kinds of content integration. Read more...
- February 2, 2010 - Meet Layar at the Mobile World Congress
This year we will attend the 2010 Mobile World Congress which will be held 15-18 February, in Barcelona Spain.
At this congress you can meet-up with our founders and head of customer development on a daily basis between 12 and 1 at la Font Magica where we will organize a small picnic.
Don’t forget to bring your own lunch since we are still a small start-up ; ) Read more...
- January 22, 2010 - Layar will be back on the Iphone soon
We take great pride in our product and are very serious about delivering high quality to our users and our developer community. This is why we decided, ourselves and not Apple, to pull our application from the Appstore after the number of users reporting crashes exceeded our own quality standards. We are currently re-engineering the app and we are aiming for resubmission to the Appstore by the end of February. So please be patient and we are pretty sure we won’t disappoint you again. Read more...
Step 1: Our wiki is open for all. Have a look at how you can build you own content layer on the Layar platform.
Step 2: Are you ready to start building now? Request an API key here.
Be inspired by over 250 examples of layers available all over the world.
Quotes from the press release:
Scott Halcomb of SystemK from Japan, who developed 22 layers including the ‘Sapporo Hotspots’ layer:
“With the Layar API and support of the developers community, creating layers has been a pleasure.”
Dave Elchoness of GoWeb3D from the USA/ India, with 11 layers published including FlickAR:
“We strongly believe that Layar represents the next evolution for mobile applications and feel privileged to participate.”
Brightkite: “Why we love Developing our Brightkite Layar”
Why we love developing for Layar from Brightkite on Vimeo.
What does it take to make a layer
- Layer definition: To make a new layer, developers have to define the look and feel of the augmented reality layer. Many parameters can be fully customized, such as branding, color scheme, titles and the POI indicators. In addition, filters can be defined that the user can set to narrow or widen the search for POIs.
- POI list: When viewing a layer in the augmented reality view, a list of POIs for that layer and location is retrieved from the external developers’ application server. The developer has all the freedom to decide which points are relevant in the current context for the user, e.g. depending on the time of the day and the filter settings by the user.
- The POI: Each POI contains information that is displayed on the screen as soon as that POI comes into focus. For each POI, actions can be defined such as go-to-URL and make a phone call. This allows the user to interact with the developer’s application directly.
Architecture
The layer definitions are created on the Layar Provisioning website and stored in the Layar database. The web interface will allow developers to set all the attributes that make the look & feel of the layer. It will also allow the developer to manage the publishing process of a layer. Once published, the end-user will be able to view the new layer in the Layer Gallery inside the app.
After choosing a layer and switching to the Augmented Reality view, the Points of Interest (POIs) are requested based on the current GPS position. The Layar Server forwards this request to the application server of the layer developer. The Layar API will enable developers to expose their POI database. The call (HTTP REST) will contain all parameters necessary to determine an appropriate response, such as geo-coordinates and filters set by the user. The developer’s application server should return a JSON document containing the list of POI’s. These POIs and their information are displayed in the AR view in the app.
By selecting a specific POI, the user can view additional information by requesting a mobile web page directly from the content provider.
In summary, a layer developer needs to create a layer definition via the Layer Provisioning Website and expose a web service (REST) that can be called by the Layar Server using the Layar API and optionally expose (made-for-mobile) web pages for further action on each POI.
Please find a selection of our developers below. If you are a developer and you want to be in our catalog, please fill in your public profile for approval.