by Andy StroteHere are the keys to Augmented Reality: your 3G smart phone (likely an iPhone or Android-powered phone) with its camera, GPS and compass technology enabled, a new browser such as Layar or the Wikitude World Browser and any number of use-specific applications that you download to your phone.
Augmented Reality (already acronymed to AR) works like this: with the AR browser application open, you point your phone’s camera at a building, store, street, in fact any location. If there’s an AR layer of information available, it soon pops up on your screen.
So, you can download an application built around the Paris subway system. Get out at any stop, aim your camera down the street and up pop the names of stores and restaurants to be found down those streets. (Unfortunately, the app seems to be built for American tourists – restaurants are heavy on McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc). Open the AR application for the popular restaurant and retail review site Yelp, point and shoot and get menus and reviewers’ ratings.
The real giant in the room will likely be Wikitude. Using a similar crowd-sourcing and editing model as Wikipedia, it won’t be long before you can point it at anything and a whole layer of information pops up.
Point it any building and you could get the building’s history, a list of current occupants and maybe an ad from one of the tenants.
So, let’s say I point it at your house. What would it tell me?
One last thought. In a similar AR vein, there’s face recognition software that will now attempt to link faces in pictures to that same face on any website. So you’re in Paris and you discretely point your camera and snap a shot of an alluring young sophisticate enjoying an espresso in the café at the Musée d’Orsay. In a minute, up comes the information. What might it tell you? Facebook status? Blog entry? Dating site profile?
Anyone pointing a camera at you? Here comes the Future 3.0.
Here’s another interesting article on Augmented Reality at Fast Company http://bit.ly/3wsnkI
