If you are a job-seeker in Amsterdam with a cellphone that works with technologies like Google’s Android, you can download a free application called Layar and see available jobs displayed in front of the buildings that house them. Layar is an augmented reality application that overlays real world with virtual informaion.
The developer of the application receives a fee from companies that use it to promote their brand or service.
Another application, Wikitude.me draws content from sources like Wikipedia and displays information about 800,000 places of interest around the world. The developer of this application worked with IBM this year to display information about Wimbledon matches in progress on cellphones. The application also displayed dining and transportation options, that a typical Wimbledon fan finds valuable.
These appliations use the phone’s global positioning technology and built-in compass to determine what the user is seeing. It then pulls information about what is likely to be in the user’s sight-line and displays it on the screen. This is an imprecise approach, however.
To work, these location-based applications need massive amounts of data about each location. Google Maps, Garmin, TomTom and others maintain such location information databases. The applications might also enable users to add their own content to the database.
Wearable devices that can provide the above kinds of information are in prototype stages. Sometime in the future, you might be able to wear a contact lens that displays more than the reality of what you see! Or a doctor might be able to see a patient’s X-ray on that person’s body.
Read the story at: Kicking Reality Up…
