If you’ve ever found yourself in an unfamiliar part of town needing that one item (be it a water bottle, allergy medicine or cigarette) so desperately that you feel like screaming it at the top of your lungs in hopes that someone will point you in the right direction, then the “Where Can I Buy?” layer is for you.

Let’s say you’re in Phoenix, AZ and you want to buy some Advil for your pounding hangover headache. Just type “Advil” into the search field and the “Where Can I Buy?” layer finds stores in your vicinity that carry the item.

Hover over the icon closest to you (which will also be the largest) and you see that it’s $7.99 at a Walgreen’s drugstore .25 miles away. Tap the icon and you can call the store, see a full listing and photo of the item, or view the location on a map. If you tap through to the full listing you can even see that the 80-count liquid gels are $2.00 off.

“Where Can I Buy?” is available in the United States, and was created by Howard Ogden, founder of AugmentReality.co.uk and Mobilistar. Ogden is an Amsterdam-based developer and top-tier member of the Layar Partner Network. His Layar portfolio runneth over with some of our most popular layers including the AR Beatles Tour, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Your Street, and Funda. You can contact him at info@mobilistar.com.

We’re very honored that one of the worlds biggest rock bands did their augmented reality campaign on the Layar platform. The layer is the first of it’s kind in the world and was built by Augment Reality in conjunction with Polydor Records to celebrate the succe­­ss of the recently re-released Stones’ masterpiece Exile on Main St. Stones fans will able to fly-post their streets, homes or offices with virtual interactive posters of the rock icons. We talked to Howard Ogden from Augment Reality

The Rolling Stones layer is worlds first augmented reality campaign by a major rockband. How does it feels to create such a layer for these rock legends?
Being a music aficionado, and British, of course the Rolling Stones have been a big part of my life. To be asked to create a layer for them was a huge privilege. Everything had to be perfect – as by all accounts getting approval from Mick Jagger and his management is not a walk in the park. So, throughout a series of meetings at the Universal / Polydor HQ in London we developed this concept and had many discussions on the future of AR in the music industry. The app is a first on so many levels:

• 1st global Layar campaign for a music artist


• 1st to use Facebook to create AR content


• 1st to use AR for music sales (identify iPhone handsets and offer a direct link to Exile on Main St. on iTunes)


• 1st to use AWS as a hosting environment for massive scalability.


• and the one we’re most proud of: 1st project to be given approval by Mick almost instantly!! (”unheard of”)

The Rolling Stones layer will be filled with user generated content, therefore you decided to build a Facebook app which is connected to the layer. Can you tell us something more about this? The Rolling Stones have over 1.4 million Facebook fans so it was a great resource to tap into for UGC. We first realized we could use FB to do this in August last year; long before this project was conceived – it’s taken a while for us to find such a forward-thinking client with good reason to commission the project. I’m sure it wont be the last layar/FB crossover we see.

How do you scale these big projects when it comes to work and traffic towards these high value layers?
For sure we had to think big. So, the only option to consider was a cloud-based infrastructure, especially since there are a lot of audio and video assets within Exile on Your Street. We implemented a load-balanced Amazon Web Service ready to cope with the upsurge in demand expected when the announcement was made on the RS fan wall. We are happy to say that Exile has enjoyed 100% uptime.

What can we expected from Augment Reality in the near future?
The Exile on Your Street app generated quite a buzz, which, in turn, is keeping us very busy! As always we keep up to date with the very latest API changes within Layar in order to get the absolute maximum out of this platform. We plan to consolidate our position as one of the leading Layar development companies with branch office openings in US and Europe. Very exciting times.

>> Official campaign website
>> Official Facebook application

The past weeks 3 new international layers and 22 country layers have been launched. With 69 international layers, Layar is serving content in every country worldwide. On top of that more and more countries are plugged in with local, country specific content. This week Thailand’s and Russia’s first country layers have been launched. We talked to Howard Ogden from AugmentReality.co.uk and Irena Harseeva from ARdoor, who have been developing the MTS layer and the Estate Russia Dom.ru layer. Why build layers for Russia?

Howard: “MTS is a long standing client of JWT International, JWT International was one of the first agencies to get involved with Layar from launch, introducing brands such as Mazda early on to the possibilities of Layar. I started working with JWT International and MTS building the Russian layer back in late 2009. We had to geo-code their entire shop and distribution outlets across Russia, including all of the MTS wifi hot spots - no small task! We have created a great looking layer  in

Russian, that as Android and iPhone expand across the country will pick up momentum and we hope will help MTS offer more to their customers.”
Irena: “AR Door is an official Russian partner of Total immersion (France), the biggest software solutions provider with a proprietary technology that has been developed since 1999 - Augmented Reality. Unfortunately augmented reality based solutions are not yet popular in Russia. AR Door are the first to provide such technology in this country. What are my expectations? Well, I’m absolutely sure that Layar will be as successful and popular as it proved to be worldwide. … I have no doubt about Layar’s great hit on the Russian market in the nearest future.

What do you expect from Layar and your content layer in Russia?

Howard: “As far as we know this is a first in Russia, certainly a first of this scale and a service not offered by any other network provider in Russia. JWT Internationals Moscow office is rapidly growing and I hope that this partnership between our companies will continue to grow. We are currently working on a large scale project with JWT International Amsterdam to launch a new 3D layer early next month and I see a great future in cooperation’s of this nature between agencies and their existing clients and developers.”
Irena: “Layar proved to be an extremely successful project, launched only in 2009 but managed to get over 1 million users by now. I think this statement shows clearly its great potential. Why exactly for Estate Russia Dom.ru? Well, no doubt, using Estate Russia Dom.ru layer significantly eases the process of searching property. Whatever you are, you are able to define the search for relevant information about real estate in particular area just using your mobile phone.”

About the layers

MTS is one of the worlds largest telecoms companies, ranked 71 last year in the worlds most powerful brands by Millward Brown and the Financial Times. Based in Russia with operations across CIS and 87 million customers.
Dom.ru provides an extensive data base of approsimately 75,000 real estate units. Besides it proved to be a very reliable real estate agency.

Today, we are very proud to present to you version 3.0, with fantastic new tools to enable the already more than 1000 active independent content developers to create AR experiences that go far beyond answering the simple ‘where is…?’ question. This new version allows everybody with basic web development skills to create rich immersive experiences that cannot be replicated on a map, in a traditional browser or in a mobile location based application.

This blogpost explains the new features on a technical level; read on to see five cases to show you what Layar 3.0 can mean for people, organizations and brands.

Architectural showcase: the new Market Hall in Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the Dutch capital of modern architecture. The latest eyecatching project by Provast is the construction of the ‘Market hall‘, a U-shaped building designed by renowned architects MVRDV. Completion is planned for 2014, but visitors and inhabitants can already see how the Market Hall looks like, simply by pointing their phone at its construction site. The 3D model enables the visitor to walk around the building and look inside - as if it was already there.
Layer developed by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) and in cooperation with IN10

Storytelling: Beatles Tour

Abbey Road in London has become famous for housing the studio where the Beatles recorded most of their albums, including their final and most successful one, “Abbey Road“. Now it is possible to see Ringo, Paul, John and George back on Abbey Road, simply by pointing your phone at the zebra crossing. After having taken some screenshots with your friend standing next to the Beatles in 3D, you can proceed to the next location on the Beatles discovery tour, which covers 42 locations. The next destination only appears after the previous location has been visited.
Layer developed by AugmentReality.co.uk

History comes alive

How often did you wonder ‘how would this place have looked like hundreds of years ago?’, while standing in Rome, Paris or New York. Layar enables re-creation of a long past reality, by displaying ancient photos overlaid on their current location or even by re-constructing the original building. Imagine you can experience the Colosseum back in its original state, see the audience sitting on the benches and hear the lions roar - as if you were teleported to a scene 1000 years ago, simply by holding up your phone and looking around you. Many of such layers are now in development and will go live in 2010.

Art, messages & fun objects

Hold up your phone and see new pieces of art, specifically created for Augmented Reality. Various artists are creating new art and new ways for people to interact with their work. Experience existing or old pieces of art in a completely new context: not in the museum but outside on the city’s main square or in a park. Or see fun objects like zeppelins and UFO’s or even messages and graffiti in unexpected locations.
Layers in development by Winvolve,  Superimpose, Hoppala, Muzar.org

B2B & personalization

Layar v3.0 features easy login through cookie support, which enables personalization of your layer. This is useful in various ways. Business-to-Business purposes include a closed fleet tracking layer by Masternaut, only visible for employees. It is also useful for social layers: show only the twitterers you follow, tweet from within the layer, or see check-ins from your friends in Foursquare.
Masternaut own layer, Tweeps around layer developed by Squio

We are extemely proud of what Layar content developers across the globe have already created with Layar v3.0 - in very little time. This sets the stage for a future in which many dreams come true. Where our reality will be enriched with new objects, specifically designed for Augmented Reality. And where completely new worlds will be created.

We are only at the start of a long journey where developers, users and brands can start to explore the possibilities of this new medium - developing engaging experiences with new ways of interaction and service provisioning.

Layar v3.0 can now be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market and is available for all Android 1.5 and 1.6 devices. We will release a compatible version for the Droid as soon as possible. We have almost finished testing for Android 2.0.
A version for the iPhone 3GS is to follow after Apples approval.

See which version 3.0 layers have been launched today