Real life, just better
In 2010 your mobile phone will know where you are and will feed you information based on that data. Using a combination of geolocation and augmented reality (AR) applications like Layar, Wikitude, Tweeps Around and Quickpedia, it will be able to tell you which of your friends are nearby, which restaurants in your vicinity are the best or which houses in the neighbourhood are for sale.
Originally coined in the 1990s, the term augmented reality is essentially a technology in which real-world scenes can be combined with digital data to provide users with rich information on what they are looking at. So, for example, you could be on holiday in a foreign city and unsure of where you are or where to find a particular building. Using AR you could scan the buildings around you and as you do so your display will be overlaid with additional information such as the names of buildings, restaurants and forex offices around you. Or perhaps you’re sightseeing over a European city. Again viewing the scene through your phone will pull up a map that will be overlaid on the scene, with details of street names, building names and addresses and popular sights.
The same could be true of trying to find someone’s house. Viewing the street through your phone could, theoretically, overlay the names of all the homeowners in that particular street.
Layar and Wikitude
These could range from educational applications such as layers of additional museum information, construction layers for visualising new buildings, navigation and tourist information as well as medical and technical applications.
One of the first augmented reality browsers available is Layar (http://layar.eu) which is available for both Android-based mobile phones as well as iPhones. Layar includes a range of filters for viewing the world including Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter. A good example of AR’s potential is Layar’s estate agency service which can overlay information on properties for sale. Scanning a street scene through Layar makes it possible to pull up information on houses for sale including price, facilities and pictures.
Another example of the types of “layers” that can be added to Layar is Tweeps Around, which adds a new dimension to social networks like Twitter by finding other Twitter users in your area. And watching what they are saying.
Wikitude (http://www.wikitude.org) is another AR browser which is becoming popular and available for both iPhone and Android-based phones. Wikitude provides a layer of information such as landmarks and buildings which is overlaid on a real-time scene. Essentially Wikitude is a location-aware version of Wikipedia and so can provide users with significant amounts of information on the world around them.
Quickpedia is similar in some ways to Wikitude except that it dispenses with the AR features in favour of simply pulling up Wikipedia entries based on your position. So a quick scan of a new area could reveal local points of interest, schools, shopping centres and sports facilities.
On the desktop
But location aware applications are not only for mobile phones.
As more and more users switch to laptops, browser makers and application developers are looking to pinpoint users so that they can serve geographically-relevant information to them. Firefox’s 3.5 version of its browser now has this capability built in and is surprisingly accurate, even when using a desktop PC. Desktop geolocation is still relatively new and so there are not many good examples of geolocation in action. But the possibilities are endless.
Search results, for example, can be customised based on a user’s location. Or restaurant listings, or even Flickr images which will only show those from places close by.
The one thing that we can be sure of in 2010 is that our phones and laptops will know where we are at all times.
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