Can Your Phone Augment Reality?

Last week I was introduced to Layar, which is a Mobile Augmented Reality Browser. Layar combines GPS, camera, and compass technology to identify your surroundings and overlay information on the screen, in real time. There are close to 87 layers of information that range from Real Estate to Social Networking.

The technology was created by Raimo van der Klein, Claire Boonstra and Maarten Lens FitzGerald and is available on the Google Android Mobile Platform. An iPhone application is also in the works, but will be available exclusively for the iPhone 3Gs.

Now that you have a little bit of background ... what is the big deal?

We tested Layar in the office last week and we were able to point our phone in the direction of a building and learn its distance from us, the exact address and some limited information - all provided via Google. All this information was displayed in real time and accessible by a simple touch on the screen.

Now here is the most impressive part ... it also worked on people!

By aiming our phone in any direction ... we were able to tell how far away someone was, we could see their last "tweet" and we could see a thumbnail of their profile picture. Clearly this technology is powerful and amazing, but it also seems a little frightening!

Think about how many people silently stalk Facebook and Twitter accounts (You know who you are!)... do you really want people knowing where you are, what you look like and what you are saying? Seems like a recipe for disaster - if placed in the wrong hands!

I think that I am going to stay well grounded in reality and leave the augmented version to others. Beware my friends - Big Brother is watching and the mobile phone could be the next weapon of choice.