If you have watched the beautiful, brand new Layar video which we introduced yesterday then you undoubtedly spotted a very interesting layer found only in San Francisco. No? Missed it? Well then be sure to re-watch the video and scrub to around the 48 second mark.

See it now? The layer is called “Historic Market St.” and it was produced by bigBigBang. Using public domain archival footage from 1906 (okay, not exactly 1899, but I was only seven years off), this layer allows you to take a leisurely stroll down Market Street in San Francisco and view video clips showing what the street looked like over 100 years ago.

The video was shot from a camera placed on a street car, providing an interesting point-of-view as the car rolls east down Market Street. The street is filled with people milling about, children running, chaotic horse-drawn buggy traffic jams and these radical new inventions terrorizing the streets - automobiles!

As you walk down Market Street, different segments of the video begin playing, unveiling the early days of the centuries-old street right before your eyes.

The video is part of the archives of Rick Prelinger, a filmmaker and archivist whose massive collection was acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2002. Many of the films of the Prelinger Archives were placed into the public domain by way of the Internet Archive, including the video featured in the Market Street layer.

The Prelinger Archives contain over 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial and amateur films - over 2,000 of which can be accessed on the Internet Archive. Wouldn’t it be great if some enterprising individual decided to gather these films, geotag them and place them in a database connected to a layer? History would come alive on more streets in more cities, not just one main drag in San Francisco. We at Layar think this would be a terrific project.

Looking into the past is one of the truly fascinating and thrilling uses of Augmented Reality as we mentioned not long ago with the use of historic photographs in Layar. Historic Market St. allows you to immerse yourself in the San Francisco of 1906 - just watch out for those darned horse-drawn buggies and crazy drivers!

To view the entire 1906 Market Street film (all 14 minutes of it), be sure to visit the Internet Archive where the video is available to watch or download.

Outside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

As we mentioned last week, Layar is attending the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress conference/exhibition in Barcelona from 14-17 February, and we weren’t about to show up empty-handed.

Each afternoon at MWC Fountain, Layer is holding an Augmented Reality meetup where we show off our new Augmented Office layer, an interactive 3D model that you can literally walk into and access information about the company, layer content, job openings and more.

This layer was created especially for MWC, so it is only visible from Barcelona, but there is also a public version that can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

The 3D office combines elements of virtual reality with AR, enabling a 360 degree view of the space. You can look up at the multilevel ceiling, down at the tile and wooden floors, and around through the many windows where you can still see the “real” world.

Turn or walk around in the office and you see posters on the walls of some of our Layar Partner Network members, where you can touch the pop-up screen to visit their website, email them or follow them on Twitter. You also find portraits of our co-founders and our reps at MWC that you can contact or connect with on Twitter right from the layer.

Inside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

Continuing the office tour, you see posters on the windows for five of our coolest international layers that you can launch directly from inside the Augmented Office layer (A layer within a layer? Now we’re approaching Inception theory—be careful!).

Finally, near the doorway, you see a monitor on the wall that says “Layar News & Jobs” where you can see the current job/internship opportunities and read the latest news on our blog.

The concept of an “augmented office” allows any company to become an international company. You can place an office in the heart of Tokyo, Dubai or at Time Square in New York City.

But just as easily as you can place an office, you can place a store, selling merchandise through Paypal in AR! Case and point: Hostage Wear Shop. Hostage Wear is Layar’s first AR store, selling hats, t-shirts and other urban skate/streetwear products directly from the layer—there’s even a half-pipe in the store! (Although we don’t recommend trying to skateboard in AR… yet).

Outside view of the Hostage Wear shop.

Funnily enough, the Hostage Wear Shop layer actually started out as a joke. Herve Pellarin, creator of both Layar’s Augmented Office and Hostage Wear Shop (and the concept of virtual commerce in general), originally made the layer for his best friend to, in Pellarin’s words, “shut his mouth” about the frustration and expense of constantly having to make the tradeshow circuit to gain brand recognition and sell merchandise.

As anyone working in AR knows, monetization is a major issue at the moment, so virtual commerce is an exciting and much welcomed new element to the platform.

Pellarin is the man behind French development company HPSC, a member of the Layar Partner Network. He has made virtual commerce his primary focus, embarking on several new [mostly confidential] projects, and continues to push the boundaries in AR. Pellarin may still wear the coding hat, but assures us “I’m not a programmer. I’m a dreamer; an AR-chitect.”

You can contact Herve Pellarin at nocomp@gmail.com or follow @nocomp on Twitter.

As fans of history, we here at Layar see Augmented Reality as an amazing tool for learning more about the past. Already, layers like the Berlin Wall layer allow people to see history come alive through 3D models.

Another fascinating example of this type of Augmented Reality is in the works as part of a collaboration between Lightning Laboratories’ Gene Becker and Stanford University Knight Fellow Adriano Farano. Becker, who is focused on experience design for blending physical and digital storytelling, and Farano, who is looking to find ways to use AR in journalism, have been experimenting with historical photographs in Layar and Hoppala, a tool for creating Layar content.

By making historical photographs viewable as objects within Layar at the locations where they were taken, viewers can achieve a better grasp on history - and the early tests by Becker and Farano look very intriguing.

The pair chose to use historical photos of Stanford as their first test images - specifically those from before a massive earthquake in 1906. Several parts of the old campus were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake, and the evidence of missing architecture comes alive through Augmented Reality.

In the example above, the square structure on the right of the picture is actually the base of the right leg of the arch in the old photograph. Memorial Arch, as it was known, had to be demolished due to damage it received during the earthquake. In another example, a present-day statue is revealed to be the same as one which plunged through a sidewalk after being knocked from its perch during the quake.

The great thing about historical photographs is that there are millions of them in libraries and archives around the world, and dropping them into Layar is not terribly difficult. With Layar Creation Tools like Hoppala (which we will be profiling later this week), this process is even easier. We are excited to see what else Becker and Farano can create with further experiments!

The Dutch Architecture Institute (NAi) launched their Urban Augmented Reality platform called UAR (pronounced “you are”). UAR is a state of the art application of Augmented Reality - not only providing information on the buildings you’re standing in front of, but also shows you in 3D how it will be, how it was or how it could have been - if the alternative design would have been chosen. A truly immersive experience. A great example to show what AR is all about!

First in Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the first city in the world that is available in UAR. Open the UAR layer in Layar and experience what an alternative design for the Euromast would have looked like - in its real environment. Or get a sneak preview of the new Rotterdam central railway station. Rotterdam is the first city, to be followed later this year by Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. The rest of the Netherlands will follow in 2011.

More information can be found on the website of the NAi: http://www.nai.nl/uar

The Berlin Wall was a concrete barrier built by the German Democratic Republic that completely enclosed the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany including East Berlin. The wall fell in 1989, but is now back in it’s original environmental context in Berlin with the Berliner Mauer layer.

Two German layer developers, Hoppala and Superimpose, developed this layer, which is an amazing showcase of the 3D capabilities and relevancy of our platform when it comes to putting back history in it’s original context. The Berliner Mauer layer includes guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area.

Follow the former border line from Brandenburg gate and experience german history at an historical place – right in the middle of germanys capital.

Check out this cool layer when you’re in Berlin. Go to the Brandenburg gate, open the Berlin Wall layer and see how the fallen Berlin Wall comes back to life.