Author: Julie Campbell

Mobile device users can celebrate whenever they want with digital pyrotechnics

A mobile product company called Pocket Scientist has just announced the unveiling of its augmented reality fireworks app that allows smartphone and tablet users to celebrate with a digital pyrotechnic display whenever they want.

These displays can be viewed on the screen of the device and can be selected for specific celebrations.

Some of the augmented reality fireworks that are available include New Years, romantic, and those for anniversaries. The various scenes that are available are designed to be appropriate for each different occasion.

The augmented reality technology that is used for the displays is cutting edge.

It helps to make it look as though the rockets and explosions that appear on the mobile devices are as real as possible. All the user needs to do is point the camera of the smartphone or tablet at the horizon, and the fireworks will appear in stunning colors and shapes.

The effects are meant to be as breathtaking as the real thing. The augmented reality pyrotechnics can work in daylight, but the full effect (as with the real deal) isn’t available until darkness has fallen. The perfect view is over a city’s lights from the side of a mountain or hill.

The augmented reality is used along with the camera of the smartphone or tablet. The rockets are launched into a three dimensional real time calculated space. If the camera is turned, the fireworks remain within the same virtual position and do not move along with the camera of the device.

This augmented reality application’s basic version is available for free download, but it comes with the downside of a watermark within the view as well as to a photograph that is taken from the actual AR view. The watermark is removed and the full app becomes available by paying a fee of $0.99.

Photos of the view of the augmented reality fireworks can be shared over a user’s Facebook account, so that their friends can also enjoy the images. This adds a completely different social element to the features that are available through this application.

Life360 has announced that it already has 25 million members and that is rapidly rising.

A geolocation app for smartphones called Life360 has been designed to allow families to be able to monitor the locations of their members, has announced that it predicts that it will have broken the 25 million registered user mark by the end of 2012.

This will mean that the company will become serious competition for the wider known Foursquare.

In fact, Foursqure, though it may be much higher profile, just passed the 25 million user mark in September 2012. That company is also based on a geolocation application. Both of those businesses first opened in 2008, but while Foursquare was able to raise more than $71 million, Life360 was only able to raise $6.85 million.

The Life360 chief exec is now predicting that its geolocation app will surpass the competition.

Chris Hulls, the chief executive of Life360 has announced that he believes that his geolocation app will have passed the audience size of Foursquare within the next couple of months. He has justified his prediction by saying that his company is experiencing a far higher growth rate than the competition. That said, he didn’t share any specific figures regarding the growth rates of either company.

Hulls also declined to reveal how many of his geolocation app’s registered members are actually regular users who are actively using the service. The most specific statement that he would provide was that it was a “pretty high ratio”.

In a phone conversation, Hulls explained that “We’ve really hit an inflection point in the company in terms of the family network going digital. We want to be the company that really owns your family life on the phone.”

The company used a new press release to announce this new membership milestone and, at the same time, launched a new brightly colored website branding style. Furthermore, it also announced that two new features would be added to its geolocation app. These are designed to help tech savvy parents to achieve greater piece of mind. They include “geofencing” through its Places feature, and map view crime data.