I used to write about all kinds of digital goodies here. Now sometimes I write about UX and product innovation here. If you can somehow find me more time to write — I'd be happy to do it more. :)
Rad, rad, rad! Meet Nearest Tube, but Acrosshair. One of the first augmented reality apps to go live in the iPhone AppStore.
Wandering around the UK and want to locate the closest Underground station? Simply look at your iPhone! This app displays All 13 lines of the underground network, pointing them out with colored arrows.
Users can see the nearest station, what direction they are in relation to their location, how far and what tube lines/stations etc. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons.
The genius flash-in-the-pants and optical-recognition lovers that go by the name Squidder have been showing off two new systems that tie augmented reality into Twitter. Their first project is a t-shirt with a FLAR barcode that, when recognized by a webcam-enabled computer, pulls up the encoded Twitter username and displays their latest tweet as a video overlay. Rediculious. (That means awesome, Mom.)
Augmented Reality T-Shirts:
(Please visit here for more info on the Augmented Reality Shirt Project.)
The second task, meanwhile, is cutting out the barcode and having the system recognize users by face. Redonkulous. (Even more awesomer than rediculous.)
Facial Recognition meets Twitter:
(Please visit here for more info on the Augmented Reality Shirt Project.)
Hokay soh, the facial-recognition system isn’t totally working; it currently doesn’t actually recognize individual users, just any face moving into frame. However software that can do that is already out there, and merely requires some more time and effort pulling everything together.
Of course, Twitter is just one source of information; Squidder is also suggesting that the system could call up a Facebook profile, or in fact just about anything.
