Augmented Reality- Digitalizing Physical Space

While intelligent mobile devices now serve as an on the go hub, it will soon serve as a gateway to interact with physical space in a way we have only dreamed of until the last few years.

For those of you who have never heard of augmented reality, it is simply defined as a view of the physical world augmented by digital information. One of my favorite basic examples is the Yelp Monocle view for iPhone

This view uses plots restaurants and bars relative to your location and direction that you are pointing with your iphone camera.

I see augmented reality as the future for delivering real utility to mobile location awareness. We have not even scratched the surface for what the implications will be as we start to digitalize physical space but I am very excited about the opportunities that it will generate for businesses, consumers, and technologists.

Mobile devices today are in-adequate to address the true potential of augmented reality so it will be very exciting to see what vendors take the lead to re-think the human-computer interface and furthermore how it will enable us to expand our capacity to consume location-based information.

I am truly fascinated by this topic, so if you have any cool augmented reality apps or ideas I would love to see them.