I’ve recently had my first glimpse at Augmented Reality applications on my iPhone. At first I didn’t really know what the term Augmented Reality actually meant (as it is starting to become a buzz word).

Ronald Azuma in 1997 gave the following definitions on Augmented Reality:

combines real and virtual

is interactive in real time

is registered in 3D

With this in mind and wanting to use information available on the net, I was surprised at how many applications where available on the iPhone. The first one I used was called NearestWiki.

NearestWiki once open finds out where you are located, and then searches for all wikipedia articles that have been geo-tagged with a location in a 20 mile radius (roughly 32 kilometers). Once it has this locations loaded you can then navigate 360 degrees to find out what articles around you and how far they are.

NearestWiki being used outside a QUT lecture room.

As you can see from my example standing outside a lecture room at QUT. You can see that it has picked up an article about QUT itself, which is 190M away. Yes I was at QUT but it was fairly accurate in saying that the heart of QUT was a little bit away.

It also picked up the GABBA as we know it, but officially know as the Brisbane Cricket Ground. Having just drove past this I could say that I had driven further than 1.54 Km. If your wondering why there is a difference it is because it directly 1.54 Km away and doesn’t take into account how you would actually need to get there (and I’m okay with that).

As you scan around you can pick up on the Roma Street Parklands in the opposite directions, Parliament House which is next door to QUT and so on. So how can you use this to help you out?

Well provided you had phone reception, and could get a data connection on your phone. If you were close to a ‘tourist attraction’ or something that has a wikipedia article you could turn on this application and identify things yourself. You could locate nearby interesting things you may not have come across and if something caught your interest you can simple tap on article and it loads up the full wikipedia article for you to read.

You are now your own tourist guide? You are empowered with information instantly and easily. You are using information in ‘Real Time’ to interact with the ‘Real World’ and this is just the start.

This application only provided data on wikipedia articles so I thought I would see if I could find another application to find a place to eat or drink.

The first one I’ve tried and just briefly (no more than 5 minutes) demonstrates potential was called buUuk.

With a similar interface and concept as I said before, this locates places that have been added to the database (unsure if it is is buUuk’s or a shared one) and displays them in a similar fashion.

The buUuk application being used (spinning around) to locate the nearest palces to eat or drink.

One thing that looks nice is that not only do you get a list of places you see user ratings. Not only that you can rate the places yourself which really empowers you with data in real time.

With a click of a button you can see details of the place (even a button to make a phone call to them), user reviews you can read, prices, address and a whole lot more information.

So what are its downfalls?

• There are a lot of places that don’t turn up as they haven’t been added.
• User participation is fairly low from what I can tell.
• Heavily relies on the ‘Network Effect’
• With small participation reviews could be skewed or biased made by owners
• You need an device that has this enabled (are there any others besides the iPhone 3Gs)?
• Internet connectivity on your mobile device (often expense)

The nearest places to eat or drink that buUuk has found. A lot of places missing at the moment, but over time will this improve?