Category: Apps

Kids with Crocs can interact with AR-enabled Jibbitz charms using a smartphone.

Augmented Reality company, Zappar, has teamed up with Crocs, the makers of the popular rubber, slipper-like shoes, to provide children with an interactive experience via Jibbitz shoe charms, which use AR tech that is activated through a smartphone app.

Via mobile technology, the charms can be transformed into interactive pets and games.

There are four different Jibbitz charm packs for girls and boys. After purchasing a charm pack, the next step is to download the free AR app that has been created by Zappar. Using the app, children can use the camera lens of a smartphone to enjoy different activities with the charm. For instance, they can play with and pamper a kitten playing “Pet Salon”, take customized photos in “Fairy Land”, engage in “Battlefield” a paint ball tank game, or play “Racing Car’ a racing game.

Caspar Thykier, the CEO and founder of Zappar said that “Crocs is a great partner to showcase Zappar content in new and fun ways.” He added that “This ground-breaking new range of Jibbitz is an excellent example of the ways in which children’s charms are becoming more interactive. Add a bit of magic to your shoes by turning them into a game, whenever and wherever.”

The senior director of global licensing, Jibbits, and the children’s footwear division at Crocs, Matt Lafone, also commented on the partnership with Zappar, saying that the company is always on the lookout for fresh ways to create interactive moments for children and Zappar has enabled them to do that.

Children respond well to augmented reality, a technology that is also showing promise as an effective educational tool.

AR technology has been featured in museums and is appearing more and more in schools. In addition, this type of technology is also being used in school textbooks and has gained positive results.

Due to the fact that augmented reality is interactive, it has the potential to really capture a child’s interest and enhance learning experiences. The Jibbitz AR charms are available in the United States and the United Kingdom via Corcs stores and at Crocs online.

Once more, the geography test appears to have been failed by the device manufacturer.

Geography was clearly not one of the best classes that Apple Maps took in elementary school, as it has yet again revealed that it has placed certain locations on the world map in the wrong spots.

The mapping service has been especially creative when it came to the placement of certain Canadian cities.

For example, at the moment Apple Maps has relocated the largest city in Canada, Toronto, to the place that actually belongs to the country’s capital, Ottawa. Ottawa has been moved to Toronto’s old location on the edge of Lake Ontario. Though this has caused some to chuckle and others to roll their eyes, when they already know that these positions are not where the cities belong, it does bring to mind some of the disasters that were caused by a previous version of the app that led certain people into rather dangerous and unfortunate circumstances while following their iPhone GPS directions.

Apple Maps has also changed the position of a number of other cities and has misspelled others.

For instance, to continue with the examples on the Canadian map, the city of Edmonton was inaccurately placed to the west of Calgary, in the province Alberta. The apostrophe in the name of the city of St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, was missing.

Since screen caps of these inaccurate maps from the mobile app started appearing on media sites across the internet, the offending maps have since been taken down. This was not before a new series of jabs have been made toward Apple, which now has a growing reputation for providing consumers with maps and directions that are riddled with errors.

These recent errors are, however, nowhere near the magnitude of the mistakes that were built into the original Apple Maps software that was launched in 2012 in order to replace Google Maps as the default service of that nature in iOS based devices. The problems were profound enough, at that time, that CEO Tim Cook rapidly found himself making an apology for the failures of the service and providing directions that would help the company’s mobile device users to be able to go back to using rival services.