It may look cool and one may wonder how this can be useful practically, here is another video showing how this can be used:
So in future you may have quite a few people who can only look at you through the [phone rather than directly :)
The following is an extract from The Guardian article titled, "What is mobile augmented reality for?":
Mobile augmented reality is a relatively young technology, but it has already attracted a great deal of hype and scepticism in equal measure.
Overlaying digital information onto the real world, viewed through a cameraphone, is technically impressive, but the business models and usage patterns are still evolving.
That's a polite way of saying mobile AR is cool, but nobody really knows what it's for, or how it will make money. One of the more interesting conference sessions at this year's Mobile World Congress aimed to answer the key question: what is it for?
Tourism has been an early focus. Just this week, travel site TripAdvisor added an augmented reality feature to its iPad app (pictured above), while Lonely Planet has also used AR elements in several of its travel apps.
"You are most information-starved when you are in a completely new environment," said Jeremy Kreitler, vice-president of mobile at Lonely Planet. "Those are probably the environments where augmented reality will flourish the most."
The Layar chief executive, Raimo Van der Klein, pointed to the popularity of Twitter layers in his company's app, which allow people to see local tweets superimposed on their camera view of the world around them.
"In the future, it will be the physical world that will trigger usage," he said. "Your dynamic and changing context, as you interact with different media, products, packaging and people, and you would like to make sense of what you encounter."
Technology firm Qualcomm recently held an augmented reality contest for mobile developers, announcing three winners this week at Mobile World Congress. All three were games.
Qualcomm's vice-president of ventures, Nagraj Kashyap, took the view that games are often a good proving ground for new technologies in their early stages, with AR no different.
"It's just something that appeals to a wide cross-section of users," he said. "But to have augmented reality become mass, we need to move out of just the gaming context."
Qualcomm sees much potential in marketing, particularly when AR is used to add an interactive layer to print advertisements. Kashyap also thought educational and instructional AR content will be popular in the future. "Imagine pointing your phone at a newly bought washing machine and getting instructions for it on your phone."
However, Philipp Schloter, chief executive of developer Abukai, said that looking for individual killer apps is the wrong way to approach augmented reality.
"This is really more of an enabler that sits across many different areas," he said. He was backed up by Peter Meier, founder of Metaio, the company which makes the Junaio AR browser app. "I always see augmented reality as a new user interface technology, and less as something for which there's the killer app out there," said Meier.
"For me, this is about accessing and understanding information more easily, and enjoying information that is somehow related to the real world ... I don't think there's a killer app. This is more like the next touchscreen for mobile phones – more like the next user interface revolution."
David Marimon, who heads up mobile augmented reality and visual search for operator group Telefonica, suggested that new uses for AR will be found as different kinds of developers start to work with it, including visual and interaction designers.
He also said that Telefonica is keen to help developers find new uses for AR by providing them with technology and APIs to tap into the operator's customer data.
"We know where mobile phones are thanks to GPS and other sensors, which is a very intuitive starting point to get the context of the user," he said. "We are also working on visual recognition to acquire that context: we need to know what the user is looking at, for which we can use the camera."
In the recently concluded Mobile World Congress, there was a panel that discussed the options on Augmented Reality or AR as its better known. The slides are embedded below but only the initial slides provide some value.
I have heard of some and can can think of some more simple applications that can actually be very useful. Maybe some of them are already being developed.
1. reviews of Pubs/Clubs - If you planning to go to some Pub/club in an area you can just look at the places through your lens and immediately see the number of stars received in reviews.
2. Virtual tour guide - One of the apps Lonely Planet are working on is developing virtual tour guides that can tell you all the information about a place once in your mobile camera
3. In some countries where For Sale sign could not be put while selling houses, you can go in an area and look at the houses though your camera and it will tell you which house is for sale, which estate agent and what is the price
4. Some manufacturers have suggested that simple procedures required with gadgets like changing the toner or a printer can be done using AR apps.
5. Games is certainly and area that is going to be a major user of AR for effects and to get people excited
6. Dating apps could use AR to tell about the places where singles hangout in the real time.
8. CV's for Jobs - Personally, I think QR code can do the job in this case
9. AR could be used as your personal shopping assistant in the supermarket helping you do your shopping in the least amount of time - assuming you know all the things that need to be bought in advance
And many more uses of AR can be thought of and debated.
Finally, there is also a recent presentation titled "Augmented Research" embedded below:
Augmented Research
View more presentations from Face
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