CES 2012: Software and Apps

Augmented reality is far from mainstream--but a couple of exhibitors at CES are working hard to change that.

Aurasma, which is part of HP's Autonomy business, showed off its 3D augmented reality app. And today I caught up with a London-based startup called Blippar, which is set up at CES' Eureka Park.

Blippar, which last week raised an undisclosed amount from Qualcomm Ventures, has been in technical development for a year and just launched in August. It has about 30 partners in the U.K, and is working hard to sign up more and break into the U.S. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Vlingo, the virtual assistant app for all major mobile platforms, today announced that it's making its way into televisions.

Not just a voice-controlled remote for changing channels and volume, "Vlingo for Smarter TVs" can help you browse and discover new content by simply talking into your mobile device. For instance, you could ask Vlingo something like, "what comedies are playing tonight?" Then, the app would trigger your TV to pull up a listing using the database of programming made available by cable providers. Or, you could simply tell Vlingo, "watch 'The Price is … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The final Microsoft keynote at CES features a choir that belted out soulful tweets, a veritable hugfest on-stage, and Ryan Seacrest palling around with Steve Ballmer in front of several thousand people. And crammed onto the end of the Windows 8 announcements in the middle of the event, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for Windows Tami Reller took a moment to play a quick round of Cut the Rope in Internet Explorer.

While Google has been getting the lion's share of press for porting popular mobile game apps to HTML5, most notably with Angry Birds, they're not … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Online video fanatics, the wait is over, as Vimeo's free mobile app is now available on Android devices (including the Amazon Kindle Fire) and Windows Phone devices.

Now, users of these mobile platforms can browse, watch, like, comment on, and add videos, just as they would on Vimeo.com. Plus, the new apps come with Vimeo's upload manager, which makes it easy to continue an interrupted upload without having to start over.

So far, I like the design of the new apps. Vimeo for Android (download) is clean, and has much of the charm and polished feel … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Slacker Radio, a popular alternative to Pandora, announced a few valuable new partnerships here at CES, one of which should have sports fans foaming at the mouth.

Thanks to Slacker's new partnership with ESPN Audio, users can now listen to live streams of ESPN shows and sporting events on the Web through Slacker.com. And according to the company's representatives, the new live content will be coming to Slacker's mobile apps soon as well--though no date was given. While all Slacker listeners will get access to the interactive ESPN Radio station, the live programming will only … Read more

LAS VEGAS--BlueStacks isn't a household name, but it's about to become arguably one of the most useful pieces of preinstalled software on Windows 8 computers.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronic Show here today, BlueStacks revealed a functional demo that runs Android apps of all kinds on Windows 8. This follows last year's debut of the software and release as a rough alpha for Windows 7, but it comes with a piece of unexpected news. The software maker has been in talks with hardware manufacturers to ship the program preinstalled on Windows 8. A beta of the Windows … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Initially launched in July of last year, Aurasma, the augmented reality platform for Android and iOS, has just gone 3D. And did we mention it's a top-10 finalist in this year's Mobile Apps Showdown at CES?

If you're not familiar with Aurasma, it's a bit like a QR code reader that doesn't actually use any QR codes. See, with Aurasma, you simply have to point your device's camera at something, and if the app's image recognition technology fires, then a 3D pop-up will appear. You can watch the pop-up as-is, overlayed on … Read more