[From Digital Trends, where the story includes an additional images; by the way, as described last year in the Wall Street Journal, to save money Ikea is replacing product photographs in its catalogs with computer-generated images] Ikea’s new augmented reality app superimposes furniture into your empty room By Natt Garun — August 2, 2013 The typical Ikea experience usually goes like this: You get to the showroom, everything looks so wonderful and amazing, you pretend to live in the overly-organized fake bedroom, realize you should make a list of things to buy and… crap, now you’re not quite sure how…

[From The Next Web] DAQRI and the playful future of augmented reality By Josh Ong, Thursday, 25 Jul ’13 Augmented reality (AR) is a mixed bag. Early implementations have been gimmicky without adding much value to the experience, but when it’s done right, AR can be a wondrous experience. DAQRI is taking strides to legitimize the medium by partnering with big-name brands like Maxim and Target, and the company is charting a next step to bring AR experiences to educational toys and games. The startup tipped its hand on Wednesday with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for a set…

[From the Cheraw Chronicle] Virtual Reality School applies for charter by Special to the Chronicle August 4, 2013 Can you imagine a school where students visit the Sistine Chapel and are back home by the bell? Or a school where students learn to operate lasers on the moon or explore sea life on the bottom of the ocean floor? Or a school where students travel back in time to meet Beethoven, Davy Crockett or Alexander the Great? Soon such a school might exist in South Carolina if the proposed NOBLE Virtual School, based upon interactive 3D virtual world technology, is…

[From XConomy, where the story includes an image slideshow; for an evaluation of the video walls for conferencing, see a post on Inrich Consulting’s web site] Prysm Eyes Telepresence as Next Application for Video Walls Wade Roush 8/6/13 One sign that your company has arrived is that you can afford telepresence suites from Cisco or Polycom—you know, those rooms equipped with a trio of 1080p flat-panel displays and special cameras, microphones, and lighting so that chief executives in New York can see tiny droplets of sweat on the faces of vice presidents in Los Angeles. The cost of building and…

[From Fast Co.Exist; more information is available from Shigeo Yoshida’s web site] A Portrait Of Your Face As A Happier Person This camera-powered mirror projects an image back to you where you’re happier than you are in real life. Can it actually make you happier? Sydney Brownstone August 6, 2013 Interacting with incessantly optimistic people can be one of the most depressing experiences on Earth, if you’re wired that way. Being told to “visualize success” can be good advice if it weren’t rendered meaningless by overuse (or cynicism). But with a new tool out from a team of graduate students…

[From Road to VR] VR Researcher Flips the Script, Augments Virtual Reality with Actual Reality August 6, 2013 | Posted by Ben Lang In what seems like a total reversal of the usual paradigm, a VR researcher is showing the benefits of augmenting the virtual world with the real world. In ‘traditional’ augmented reality, we take a scene from real life and overlay it with useful digital information that in some way enhances the experience. Oliver Kreylos, a VR researcher from UC Davis, has turned the tables by bringing the real world into the virtual world for the same purpose.…