Augmented reality - It's coming!

Since I was a kid, I've always been very excited about all the technologies and innovations coming out every year. I have grown up since but I still am pretty excited, especially with what is called augmented reality.

I truly believe this will quickly evolve and slowly become part of our every day life within a few years. I am sure most of you heard about it already but I wanted to show here some nice videos explaining a bit more what it is, how it works and most of all, what uses we can make of it.

I have started hearing about augmented reality a couple years back at most and probably one of those geeky science related websites but couldn't imagine how we could exploit the technology in any other way than cool lab experiments.

The first advertisement I have seen using augmented reality was for the Mini car brand in Germany. The "bar code" was printed on the back page of a magazine and offered the readers to login on the Mini website with their webcam and scan the barcode for a surprising result. Have a look at the video below if you haven't seen it.

After seeing the above video, I was really looking forward to future usage and see how brands would start making great use of this tool. I know for a fact that other car brands such as Toyota have made similar advertisements later on.

Anyway, if I'm talking about augmented reality, it's also because we have seen some new applications in the past weeks developped for a series of smartphones. I won't talk too much about them and let you enjoy. The one below was developped for Londoners with the London tube map. I know another one has been developped for NYC as well.

Today, lastminute.com released on their blog a preview of a new app they are currently running as a beta version. They will make it available in the upcoming days/weeks. This one doesn't show the subway stations but all types of addresses around you: hotels, restaurants, comedy, cafés, etc... and more importantly pubs and bars :)

And for those of you who want to know more, here are several other usages we could make of them. Don't hesitate to google them, videos are starting to flood video hosting websites. Minority report here we come!

FeedOnThis!