Augmented Reality: Browse Everything

Reality catches a break

The display of graphic information over real-time video is commonly referred to as Augmented Reality (AR). One’s initial experience with it was probably watching a football game on TV. It was a small miracle when the computer-generated  first-down line magically stayed put while the camera panned. Players appeared to run over it, not under it. Camera angles changed, and the line remained. For a brief instant, it was cool. Now that has disappeared; it has become part of the game. In fact, it is part of nearly every TV sporting event. TV instances of AR technology are Pop Warner league compared to what is about to happen.

Tag the World
Layar is an app available for the android phone. It allows developers to lay photos, video, and text over live video on the phone. And it’s location based. So as you pan your phone’s camera over the food court, you can get information on which vendors are less likely to poison you (Are you listening, health inspectors?). Any content that is tagged shows up as information over what appears on your camera’s screen.

Be Recognized
What about people? TAT Augmented ID is an app that uses facial recognition technology from Flickr to identify a person and pull up available profile information about them. Think your online persona can’t follow you into the real world? Think again. Feel a Sandra Bullock movie here, anyone?

Need Directions?
Download Nearest Tube. It overlays subway station information onto live video on your iPhone. Point the camera down the street and get the distance to the nearest subway. The transportation, the restaurant, although…

Minority Report vs. Fight Club
There are two cinematic visions of AR that have manifested themselves in real life. Audiences swooned as Tom Cruise groped the gestural interface in Minority Report. His deftness at sifting through information felt almost inevitable. In reality, we got the iPhone and iPod touch. Small miracles, but not as grand an experience as we’d hoped for. Next, Ed Norton’s walking through his immaculately detailed apartment in Fight Club, with everything he owned displaying its name, price, and description. It was an IKEA catalog brought to life. And it was supposed to scare us. Instead, it influenced a whole generation of programmers and designers who are making it possible to overlay the real world with all kinds of digital information.

What we might find scary, though, is just how fast this kind of technology becomes commonplace. Will it be socially acceptable to scan strangers? Sure. Will there be virtual graffiti artists tagging the wonders of the world? Absolutely. Will we eventually forget how cool it is to use this stuff? Certainly.

UPDATE: Sean Kingston Augmented Reality Karaoke Yahoo Tech reports rapper Sean Kingston CD ships with an augmented reality component that lets visitors to Kingston’s site be part of a music video.