Wired (Bruce Sterling): “Virtual Mirror for Trying on Glasses.” “There’s been so much fuss about head-mounted AR displays that it’s fun to see the fuss inverted: fake glasses installed on somebody’s head by a screen-based system.”

Joe Lamantia: “Geek to Chic: The Cultural Branding of Augmented Reality Experiences.” “Since I wrote about the user experience of augmented reality less than two weeks ago, the most important development is the arrival of augmented iPhone apps (unofficially for the moment, officially in September). Why is this so important, when Wikitude and other AR Android apps have been available for almost a year? Bringing augmented reality to the iPhone changes the cultural assumptions made about AR experiences as a class of offering. Endorsing AR experiences for iPhone users moves augmented reality from the geek realm of Android and Google, to the chic world of Apple. Culturally, the assumptions we make about the new products and services from Apple and Google are driven largely by the differences in way we perceive the two brands. Apple is chic, while Google is geek.”

Associated Press: “At Singularity U, Tech is Savior.” “In the final weeks of their studies, students split into four groups and created projects whose only requirements were that they needed to focus on one of the world’s great challenges and have the potential to improve the lives of a billion people over a decade.” Full disclosure: Singularity University is a client.