Explanation for outsiders: AR is really a pushed topic on Flash conferences around the world which is why its treatend so much tension: Everybody knows its not Hughes effort at all.

I don’t want to sound fussy but he stated “unbelievably awesome” to the ARToolkit which is from 2006/07, written in C and can not be used on a browser in contrary to the FLARToolkit which was itself a huge amount of work. Using a ted talk video to make a ordinary video texture(as offered by the tools) are a very simple thing to do – same goes for publishing.

I want to state that I have no personal anger against Chris Hughes. It can happen that you loose your nerves when you are really excited about such a great opportunity and I am sure that he has some great abilities. Pride can be a hard enemy

FLARToolkit while being great on flash, is actually not a very good example of “Augmented Reality” of which he was touting.

Check this out (look ma, no marker!): http://www.t-immersion.com/

He should not have been invited to speak on it at that very same conference. Indeed, had he been forthcoming with the organizer in that he had done absolutely no original work at all, I sincerely doubt that he would have been invited to speak at all. Reading his own blog entry (at http://spazout.com/ted_2009_and_why_it_was_the_best_thing_ever) it is clear that he approached this as an opportunity to sell himself, more than as an opportunity to share the technology. Quotes:
“Is today the day that I build something cool enough to get my [redacted] invited to TED?”
“something that I would tell a TED organizer in the hope that I could pique their interest in seeing a demo of my work.”

“Life goals:
Get Invited to TED – done
Speak at TED – done”

Honestly, the best course of action is to note clearly before clicking on the video exactly how much work he did. Such as “This is a presentation of existing work at (x) using (y) toolkits.” Follow that up with inviting the *original* authors to TED to make a real presentation to replace his, and it could be considered a professional resolution.

Editing in some “attributions” which don’t clearly show that he presented someone else’s work is hardly sufficient. Had he done this at an academic institution, he’d be up against a plagiarism tribunal, facing possible failure and expulsion. But apparently TED isn’t that concerned.

It’s not only that he says “I wrote”, “We’ve managed”, and “I’m doing this with a browser and Flash”, as well as the fact that he says “We’ve ported ARToolkit to Flash”.

It’s not his first blog report on his TED experience, where he points out the route of cornering a TED Curator to show him “his” awesome demo.

It’s not the fact that his awesome demo is factually a modified tutorial, which counts up for the remaining 4% of work, leaving about 1% to him.

It’s all of that combined that paint an image of someone overly eager (maybe in the spur of the moment) to be on a stage and even to this point in time refusing to acknowledge his blatant rip off. 1% of work ?