junaio channel creator page

I just finished playing around with the new junaio’s channel creator, which allows the novice user to create his or her own augmented reality (AR) channel without any programming skills. This would be a great tool for teachers or students interested in quickly adding some 3D or video content for an interactive walking tour.

Before you begin, you have to sign up for a FREE Developer Account. Once that’s out the way, you can start defining you channel with categories, descriptive text, icons, and geographic data. You can actually restrict your content certain regions, which is a nice touch if you want to target a specific target audience.

Defining your channel

Initially, I though that junaio creator would act as a content management system (CMS) for any AR channel but I realized it’s restricted to junaio Glue. junaio Glue specifically allows you to connect virtual information to the real world using image recognition. As a result, the user will need to scan a poster, sticker, etc. in order to access any video or 3D models provided through your channel. This is great for anyone interested in creating an AR scavenger hunt.

Once you’ve defined the channel, you can begin adding content. You are currently restricted to two types of media (e.g., videos and animated 3D models). junaio Creator has some built-in interactions that are activated when the user click the model, such as descriptive text, homepage, phone, and email. In my first experiment, I created a quick model using Google Sketchup and quickly learned that it doesn’t support the M2d format. I’m stuck. If you have Blender, you should be able to export your model and texture into the application without any trouble.

Next, I’ll experiment with the video content. More to come….