Layar’s Plan to Monetize Augmented Reality [mashable.com]: Let’s say you’re at Disneyland. There’s a ton of information on where to go, what you need to see, and what you can do available on the website. Smartphones and mobile sites put that in your pocket. Layar and developers like Mouse Reality are letting you parse that information using the real world as a canvas. Laryar is an augmented reality app that layers information on the screen of your Android or iPhone on top of a live view from the camera. Developers can create Layars to be displayed on the app like the Tweeps layar that shows geotagged tweets and the Upcoming layar that shows information from Upcoming.com, which are both free, or the new Disneyland or Walt Disney World Layars which cost $3.45 each. It’s easy to know where you are and what you want to do, but it’s not always easy to connect the physical world with the information about it online. Augmented Reality apps like this, including Layar, Google Goggles, Yelp and others, will let you use the real world as a key to extract the right information from the digital world. The Thrilling Potential of Sixth Sense Technology [ted.com]: Check out this TED talk from inventor Pranav Mistry. By the end of his demonstration you’ll have a different vision of the future of mobile computing. Mistry invented a wearable computer that, “projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets us interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or our interaction with the object itself. ‘SixthSense’ attempts to free information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.” Even better than layering digital information on top of your view of the real world is the ability to use the real world as an interactive computing surface. Think about integrating this into helmets for navigating cities by bike–or ski resorts. Imagine being able to seamlessly tag real world objects and be able to store, sort and retrieve that information later; taking a photo, simply by marking a place and time rather than using a separate camera; being able to view metadata about real world objects in real time… Travel brands and destination marketers should see huge potential in combining real and virtual experiences through innovations in augmented reality and semantic technology in the next few years. This is just the beginning. -Mike]]>
by mhenderson