Earlier this week, Layar invaded Canada with our Activate Print seminar in Toronto. Attendees took to Twitter to express their excitement about the Layar Creator. Check out the reactions below!

On October 17th, Layar is hosting a seminar in Toronto, Canada for members of the media and publishing industries. This seminar will introduce the Layar Creator and interactive print, providing an opportunity for anyone interested in the Layar Creator to see an in-depth presentation and try it out themselves.

The event, presented in partnership with the Netherlands Embassy in Canada, is free and kicks off at 1:30pm at the Art Gallery of Ontario Weston Family Learning Centre. Check out more info below or click here to register right now!

Activate Print Toronto is a seminar for publishers, editors and media professionals who want to deliver more value to print readers and advertisers. At the seminar you will learn from Layar co-founder, Claire Boonstra, how easily you can combine digital with print, the added value it creates for readers and how it delivers more to advertisers. OMD, TBWA, Toronto Star and Postmedia Network will share their Layar Creator experiences and interactive lessons learned in print. Meet the experts and learn Layar Creator best practices alongside fellow professionals who have already begun to use Layar or are learning about it for the first time. The event is free, but there is limited space so register soon!

Have a laptop and a PDF of one of your latest printed pages so that during the seminar, guided by our experts, your print publication can be enriched.

Activate Print Toronto will be held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Weston Family Learning Centre, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto Ontario Canada M5T 1G4. Click here for directions.

Check out reactions from our previous seminar in Amsterdam, or watch the entire event here!

The multitalented Celine Mornet (known professionally as LutinCapuche) may be a Flash developer by trade, but she also has a creative outlet that allows her to step away from the computer monitor: designing and sewing stuffed animals (or “plushes,” to be exact).

Celine started making these plushes purely or fun; she displayed her little handmade creatures online but didn’t intend to sell any until people started asking to buy them from her. She then decided to make purchases easier by creating an online store, and has recently made the experience more fun by also selling them in Augmented Reality.

We’ve talked about HPSC‘s Herve Pellarin and his virtual commerce (aka v-commerce) layers before, but these AR shops seem to be getting cooler with each new implementation. The LCPlush Anywhere layer, for example, has intricate character designs on the walls, 3D renderings of the plushes and images of the actual products.

Introducing LCPlush: the latest in V-commerce on the Layar platform.

Celine and Herve worked together in France, and it was Herve who gave her the idea for an AR shop. The two joined forces on this project and created the AR shop in only two weeks!

“This guy is amazing because he always has some innovative ideas,” Celine says. “Everytime time I talk to him I learn something new. He made me discover Layar, how it works and how I can use it to sell my plushes.”

The LCPlush Shop layer has geo-located stores in her own city of Montreal, Canada, as well as in Paris, Geneva and Annecy, France that you can literally walk into.

For everyone outside of Canada and France, there’s the LCPlush Anywhere layer that places you in the center of the store where you can view various stuffed curiosities like the Real Monsters-esque Croc Cochmar and the cuddly yet carnivorous CrockNFish.

You also can share your favorite plushes on Facebook or Twitter, access the item in the online store (where you can purchase it via PayPal), or call the company from inside the layer.

The adorable Crock Cochmar in the LCPlush AR shop.

Even with her online store and AR shop capabilities, Celine doesn’t want to increase the number of plush orders much beyond her current 10 or so per week (hand-sewing plushes can get very time-consuming). She is, however, interested in expanding her use of AR, which she believes is an exciting new way to diffuse a brand.

In the near future, Celine would like to add more elements to her LCPlush AR shop. For example, she wants to allow users to customize their own plushes in 3D and place them around the world.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to build a kind of huge LCPlush exhibition and organize some contests with plushes as prizes,” she says.

Celine plans to do more projects with Herve, but also plans to develop new, complex layers on her own using her newly-acquired Layar development skills.

Groupon offers daily deals in your area.

While coupon-clipping is a practice generally reserved for those who still pay for a print newspaper subscription, collective-buying companies like Groupon and Living Social are growing rapidly. Both companies also now have mobile apps that allow you to view and purchase daily deals on-the-go and redeem them digitally (saving time and trees, yay!).

Layar developer and Anca 3D co-founder Juan de la Torre (a recent Canadian transplant from Colombia) used Groupon’s open API to create a layer that displays nearby Groupon deals. You can search by keyword (like “restaurant,” for example) and even purchase deals from inside the layer by signing in with your Groupon account information.

Currently, the Groupon API is only available in the US and Canada, so the layer is only available in those countries as well.

The Groupon by Anca 3D layer shows you daily Groupon deals in your area.

The ability to not only see how close Groupon’s daily deals are to your current location, but to also tap through and purchase the deal directly from the AR view would be a great added feature for Groupon’s official mobile app, especially because the already functional, well-branded layer is an ideal candidate for Layar Player integration.

Hopefully Groupon will get on board and add de la Torre’s AR content to its existing app!

Anca 3D is a Columbia and Canada-based Augmented Reality development company co-founded by Juan de la Torre and Andres Cardoso. The company provides AR solutions for offline, online and mobile platforms.

You can contact Anca 3D via @anca3d_AR on Twitter or email Juan de la Torre at juan.delatorre@anca3d.com.

Click here to launch this layer on your mobile device.

Want to feel safe? Find out if you’re in a safe area with the SpotCrime layer. ReportSee created SpotCrime on the notion that information is power. Next to their website, they launched a paid layer with crime maps, showing crime incident data around you, like crime alerts and reports of shootings, robberies, assaults, thefts, burglaries, arsons and vandalism. We talked to Colin Drane from ReportSee to find out how we can feel safer by using the layer.

Why a Spotcrime layer? Colin: “The SpotCrime layer allows you to see an augmented reality view of the crimes that have happened in their current location. This allows them to be more aware of their surroundings and helps to prevent becoming a victim. This can be especially useful if you are on vacation in an area that you’ve never visited before. It’s important to know what’s going on around you, and to avoid unsafe areas when you can.” What can we user do with it? Colin: “Use the augmented reality view or the list view to learn about crimes in a certain radius around your location. If one of the crime icons is selected, you can read more specific details about the crime event and follow the link to the SpotCrime website.”

‘Why is it worth my $1.95?’ Colin: “It’s only a one time fee, after which you can use the layer at home and any place you travel and become knowledgeable about safe locations. You can’t put a price on peace of mind!” Other things you’d like to share? Colin: “Sign up for free email alerts at www.spotcrime.com”

The layer currently covers the 300 largest US cities, main cities in Canada and The Netherlands and London.