Here’s how it works. Using an integrated camera, a mobile device can “see” the world around it. PendAR’s technology looks for a certain image — in this case, a printed Angry Birds startup screen — and then superimposes the virtual game on top of the physical image. The game then becomes 3-D-like and part of the gamer’s actual environment. Take a look:

VentureBeat caught up with PendAR CEO, Mojtaba Tabatabaie, and learned that this version of Angry Birds isn’t coming to an app store near you. That makes sense, since the original game’s development shop, Rovio, would surely — and correctly — accuse PendAR of taking certain illegal liberties with the Angry Birds franchise.

So don’t expect to play Angry Birds with your home or office in the background. However, this technology demo has me thinking that we should see more augmented reality games in the future. Mobile device hardware is quickly improving to the point where any flagship phone can handle a virtual reality app with ease.

To date, the only type of apps to truly benefit from such technology are generally navigation-based, showing virtual directions and point of interest information on screen. We’ve gone from 2D to 3D gaming graphics some time ago, so what’s the next big step? Augmented reality games on mobiles makes sense to me; at least until we can project interactive holographic games, that is.

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13th Lab, which I wrote about last year, is building an augmented reality service. But it’s not any old augmented reality: it’s an iOS-based service that uses technology part-developed by NASA to let your device see and understand the world around it. It’s complicated stuff — the same technologies used in the Mars Rover or autonomous aircraft — and it’s compressed into a version that can run on your mobile using just its sensors.

And, crucially, it’s all built into the company’s iOS browser, Pointcloud.

“We’re very different from other AR and computer vision companies,” says co-founder Petter Ivmark. “Everything is done on an open web model… that’s great for people, because there’s nothing new to learn, no new language: it’s just HTML and JavaScript.”

The product is really two-fold: 13th Lab provides a browser that lets users surf the web as normal on their iPhone or iPad, but can add virtual moments in whenever the device recognizes images and objects. It’s a sort of souped-up QR code that’s already being used by Swedish megapublisher Metro to add interactive elements to its newspapers, and very accessible:

But at a deeper level, it also offers an SDK to app developers to let them build AR into their own products — potentially enabling companies to develop complex services that take augmented reality somewhere new.

Here’s a video to guide you through.

You can easily imagine, say, a certain Swedish furniture store offering an app that let people check what the sofa they’re interested in would look like in their living room in 3D glory.

Ivmark says the company isn’t just going to be one of those horrific AR vehicles, but a platform for creating a “UI for reality.”

“We’re really pushing for utility, not just ad-based use cases or being gimmicky,” he told me. “It’s not just seeing a fire-breathing dragon on your desktop; we’re over that stage. Now there’s been a resurgence with image detection and recognition, but in most cases it’s used for advertising, marketing. We want to provide something that has real value.”

That bigger vision is what brought in a €550,000 ($700,000) round from Creandum, the northern European-focused venture firm that is an investor in the likes of Spotify, Videoplaza and iZettle. And the money will be used for modest growth, says Ivmark: The company has low costs despite the complex technology it uses.

“We’ve gotten as far as we have with no outside funding at all — we’ve been doing this for two and a half years, and we don’t burn a lot of cash: we’ve been self-funded for a long time,” he says. “At the moment it works really well in smaller spaces like a room, but we want to take it bigger scale to whole apartments, airports, even outdoors.”

So what about Google Glass? Is Google’s interest in computer vision a threat to startups like 13th Lab?

“From our perspective it’s a really interesting development, especially because it’s Google and they have almost unlimited resources. Right now it’s just a small screen that shows you information: there’s no computer vision in there, and we think there should be — and will be — in the future.”

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On paper, it sounds like the Optimus Max 3D has most of the right specifications to compete in the mid-range market, even without 3D capabilities on the 4.3-inch display, which is limited to 800 x 480 resolution; something we’ve seen on phones for two years now. LG chose TI’s OMAP 4430 chip; a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor to power Android 2.3 and, later, Android 4.0, which LG says will be available soon after the phone launches in Korea and Europe.

Other key specifications include support for 21 Mbps HSPA+ networks, HDMI output in 2D and 3D to an HDTV set, 8 GB of internal storage, an integrated NFC chip and a 5 megapixel dual lens camera. The 3D functionality includes a 3D converter feature, allowing users to convert Google Earth, Google Maps and other road views into a 3D image.

For a select few that have embraced 3D imagery, the Optimus Max 3D could appeal. But for most consumers, 3D is still considered gimmicky on a handset; it’s simply not enough to create a hit handset. I like that LG is trying to break out from the pack, but it could be better served by taking an Apple-like approach — something that Samsung successfully did with its original Galaxy S — and devote resources toward one great handset model that appeals to a wider audience.

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Orange says the Xbox service will include 30 channels via the Xbox live platform, including its on-demand and premium channels that it offers through its Orange TV service. It will be available initially only in France. Meanwhile, the Dailymotion service will see Orange launching a new, free 3D channel on the Dailymotion platform. That will be available everywhere, although the content is all in French.

The Xbox service will include the ability for those who have Kinect for Xbox to use voice and gesture controls with Orange’s TV service — perhaps the biggest way that this differs from the other ways you can already access Orange TV via set-top boxes, connected TVs and the Internet.

While there have been a lot of 3D services and devices launched in the last year or so, it remains to be seen whether this is a gimmicky add-on that comes and goes, or whether consumers really have the appetite for such products. The Kinect enablement, however, is a keeper: the technology has provided a huge boost for Microsoft in the past year and it’s likely we will see more competing TV services entering the market in the year ahead.

For that reason, Microsoft has been busily ramping up its own Xbox/Kinect TV offerings: not only is it enabling TV services itself, but it is signing up IPTV providers, in addition to Orange, to the service — most notably, Verizon and Microsoft have announced that FiOS will also be on the platform.

Gaming consoles are a good channel for pay-TV providers to keep tapping: a survey from Nielsen yesterday revealed that video is already a very popular use of these consoles. In the U.S., 14 percent of Xbox 360 time, 15 percent of PS3 time and 33 percent of Wii time is being spent on video viewing, watching channels like Hulu, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and ESPN.

And IPTV providers really need all the help they can get: they launched services relatively late compared to other pay-TV products from satellite and cable providers, in addition to all the OTT competition. Pyramid Research forecasts that IPTV will be installed in only one percent of all broadband enabled homes worldwide by 2012.

Of course, the Xbox service will also give Microsoft a boost in marketing its consoles in the French market, where France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) is the IPTV leader and will be selling the console in its stores as part of the deal. It looks like it is the only IPTV provider in the market to team up with Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox/Kinect service, at least for now.

Meanwhile, the Dailymotion channel shows how Orange is also using the OTT route to market its own services, and possibly grow its traffic there as well.

The service includes what looks like a selection of content from the carrier’s existing paid 3D channel — which incidentally is also available via the Xbox service. It includes Mag3D, a 30-minute 3D gadget program, as well as some TV and film content. It will also be featuring user-generated content: Dailymotion users have the option of designating their videos as 3D for them to appear in the channel.

As this line-up is designated as “for launch”, there is a chance we’ll see Orange launching more, and possibly paid, services on the channel. It already notes that it will have a mobile version of the service available by February 2012.

Orange, which is a 49-percent owner of Dailymotion, has used the investment to further its business reach online before, including an advertising deal announced earlier this year.

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There, for the last six months, Jackson (with presumably some help from the Hobbit production team) has been sporadically posting 10-minute video diaries from the set of the production — essentially, the sort of stuff that you find on the special edition DVDs, except they first started appearing 20 months before the first movie even comes out.

The first diary is relatively unfocused — a hodgepodge of Jackson attending production meetings and taking viewers on a tour of the sets in the lead-up to the first day of production — though it does include off-the-cuff riffing with Sir Ian McKellan, which is never a bad thing.

The three subsequent diaries are somewhat more focused: The second, posted July 8, covers what the crew will be doing during a break in production as well as Jackson and his team doing location scouting, while the third, posted July 20, features Jackson freaking out over shooting at the historic Pinewood Studios and the cast and crew’s favorite moments from the first few months of shooting.

The fourth, which came out just last week, is all about the 3-D camera technology behind the film. If you really like learning about camera rigs and frame rates, you’re in luck! You also learn that Jackson has named the 16 cameras being used to shoot the movie after family members, dogs and Beatles, though, which is quite charming.

As default host of the diaries, Peter Jackson is actually quite adorable. As many others have observed, he’s probably the closest you’ll ever come to seeing a real hobbit in the wild, and his fanboy joy at having the chance to make these films is palpable.

While using Facebook as a distribution platform means that embedding is impossible, multiple reposts of the videos have appeared on YouTube, racking up hundreds of thousands of views thanks to embedding by blogs like Io9.

But the videos are still obviously popular on Facebook; after less than a day online, Video no. 4 had accumulated over 11,000 “likes,” and past videos sport similar numbers. In short, it’s proving to be a brilliant way to keep buzz alive for a film that won’t be in theaters for another 13 months. Not every project would lend itself to this kind of treatment — I doubt anyone would care this much about the production of, say, Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist — but when the making of the film is almost as epic as the film itself, it’s quite deserved.

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Instead of building a wide range of Android devices, Samsung focused on one, the Galaxy S, and then tweaked it for different carriers and regions, saving on research & development, as well as manufacturing costs. The company also designs and builds its own processors, flash memory and displays, helping to eliminate reliance on component providers. Samsung also has its own media ecosystem for books, music and videos, plus it created a backup plan to Android: Phones running the company’s Bada operating system outsold Windows Phone 7 devices in the first quarter of this year.

Other Android phone makers are trying to replicate Samsung’s approach, but supplement it with new features that differentiate. Smartphones with 3-D video capabilities are appearing, helped in part by more capable chips, graphic processors and display technologies. But consumers don’t want to wear 3-D glasses to view this content and two handsets aim to deliver a glasses-free vision.

The LG Optimus 3D and HTC Evo 3D both use a stereoscopic display to show both pictures and videos in 3-D without glasses. LG demonstrated its 3-D Android phone in February and now says it’s rolling out in Europe. Here in the U.S., consumers will see the HTC Evo 3D on June 24. The phone, for Sprint’s 3G / WiMAX network, will cost $199 after contract, comes with Android 2.3.3, HTC Sense 3.0, and a pair of 5 megapixel cameras for capturing pictures or 720p video in 3-D. I took an early look at a review unit to demonstrate how the 3-D functionality works, which surprisingly, was impressive.

Also impressive to many is the Swype keyboard for Android, which now claims 50 million downloads. The unique input system allows you to trace your letters, making for quick text entry with just a single hand. Swype debuted the next version of its keyboard, 3.0, in a public beta this week and it just may have me switching keyboards on my smartphone. The new version includes a tap word prediction function and support for displays up to 960 x 540 resolution. Swype is adding support for Honeycomb tablets as well, allowing for the keyboard to be resized or moved on the larger display of a slate.

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This marks the third refresh of the popular HTC Evo for Sprint. The new model uses a large, 4.3-inch touchscreen and boosts the resolution to qHD, or 960 x 540, over the prior models. Like T-Mobile’s HTC Sensation 4G, the Evo 3D runs on a dual-core, 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and version 2.3 of Android. HTC Sense 3.0 runs atop the standard Android interface, providing useful features such as an active lock screen and a 3-D carousel of home screens. I’ve been using the new Sense software for several days and can see why many people like it. It provides a far better experience over the stock Android user interface.

That same Sense software is also on the HTC View, which gives the tablet a “big smartphone” look and feel. The View is nearly identical to the $499 WiFi-only HTC Flyer (see our first look video here) but adds mobile broadband support. The 7-inch slate uses a single-core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz, which — on the Flyer — I find plenty fast enough for most tasks. Sprint is launching the View with Android 2.3, but says the tablet will be upgraded to Android 3.0 when, the carrier says, Honeycomb is available for tablets.

Like the very similar Flyer, Sprint’s HTC View tablet supports digital inking on the 1024 x 600 screen, but only with a special pen. Outside the U.S., the tablet includes the pen, but here, it’s an additional $80 purchase. Sprint, however, is including the digital pen accessory with the View, provided the customer signs up a two-year data plan contract.

Note that while both devices launch on June 24, Sprint will offer its Premier customers a three-day head start on the smartphone. Qualifying customers can order the Evo 3D online beginning on June 21 to get an early look at the glasses-free, 3-D capabilities of the handset.

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The independently created web series Universal Dead, created by Kelly Parks, Vernon Mortensen and Neil Trusso, is just one example of this. Launched in March 2010, Dead was originally written as a screenplay, which Parks then adapted as a web series for Mortensen to direct. The three episodes released show a world overrun by “the infected,” focusing on a government scientist (Gary Graham) who visits a military base that’s made advances in understanding the disease — at perhaps too high a cost.

The cast is solid: Doug Jones in a rare not-covered-in-latex role brings a ghoulish edge to his scientist role. Graham is only a little bit hammy, and hands up, girls who still love D.B. Sweeney even eighteen years after the release of The Cutting Edge, because I know you’re out there. It’s no Piranha 3-D, but these are players who could easily support a watchable B-movie version of this project.

That was the intent the entire time. The motivation for creating a web series, Parks said last month at the San Diego edition of Celebrate the Web, was purely to get exposure for his story so it could be acquired by a studio: an approach that worked, as right around Comic-Con, Unconventional Films announced a deal to produce a 3-D feature film version of the series.

Dead isn’t the most professionally produced web series I’ve ever seen; some moments of direction feel awkward, and the editing could be a little tighter. But if you find yourself wondering what about Universal Dead inspired interest in a feature version, though, the answer is in Episode Three.

Not only is it the series’ most visually interesting installment, but it introduces a sci-fi twist that I’ve never seen applied to this genre before, one that not only explains an important yet rarely addressed zombie-related issue but has potential to really explode the concept.

As a result, I’m disappointed that there won’t be any further episodes of Universal Dead, especially since the feature version won’t be complete until late 2011. However, there’s no denying that the strategy worked, and is another example of an increasingly important truth about web content: Making a successful web series entails knowing exactly what you want to get out of it.

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IdeaPad is Lenovo’s consumer product line and the Y560d has all of the special functionality found on this line. This includes the RapidDrive technology which uses a conventional hard drive and a solid-state disk to achieve Windows boot time of just a few seconds. The Lenovo OneKey Theater II is responsible for a rich audio-visual optimization for media consumption.

You’ll need the (included) special glasses to get the 3D affect, which will turn compatible games and movies into an immersive experience. Prices start at $1,200, but Lenovo is not detailing what that configuration includes. I suspect the 3D option will add a bit to that price. The Y560d will be available in June.

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