Augmented Reality – Only for Social Media?
I can’t but help try out the Yelp app for the iPhone and not be amazed. We’ve all been lucky enough to see augmented reality in the geospatial world for the last couple of years, but not at the consumer level. For most of us, the closest we got to augmented reality was when we road in a Lincoln Town Car that projected the digital speedometer on the windshield. Clearly though we are much further along than that considering that my iPhone can find Margaritas while I blog by just holding up my iPhone.
Now if I could only order that margarita as well...
But really has my head spinning is what if there was such an app like Yelp that helped you discover spatial data? WeoGeo uses maps to help you find spatial data, but what if you just used your smartphone in the field and walked around seeing what datasets where available?
Now tell me that wouldn’t be useful!
Wow, what a neat idea to use AR to FIND spatial data, hmmmmmmmm
Oh and use the Yelp API to add in good pubs near the NEPA datasets. MASHUP!
“what if you just used your smartphone in the field and walked around seeing what datasets were available?”…. and kept walking into walls cos you’re too busy looking at your phone (or is that just me)?
Actually, isn’t this what Google Maps can do already to some degree i.e. display your current location on the map and show some additional markers e.g. for hotels etc? Not as cool as “augmented” reality on an iPhone, though…
ChrisW: You should see my wife use a map.
***mental note to delete this comment before she sees it.
Yelp’s got it right. Finding shapefiles isn’t anywhere near as useful as finding individual resources. When walking around Nanaimo, I’d want to have the experience of physically browsing Jason Birch’s property resources and see URLs like the ones in http://maps.nanaimo.ca/data/property/. When walking Montpellier, I want to physically browse OpenStreetMap and be presented with links to resources like http://api.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/8105279. I don’t want to see a cloud of shapefiles. What would you do with them on your mobile, anyway?
Of course you wouldn’t Sean.
I’m just pointing out the difference (to me) between immersion in data-on-the-web vs immersion in metadata for off-the-web datasets. It seems like only yesterday that you, yourself, were putting down metadata search?
Yes, I was, but keep in mind I expect machines to pull in metadata automatically so humans only have to keep basic information.
Immersion works well because the bounding box of datasets can easily be grabbed on upload allowing you to discover datasets in your geographical area.
Exactly-odo, Quasimodo.
AUTOMATIC discovery and usage is kewlness, as is a general requirement that the discovered data are useful seamlessly without user intervention. You know, like “it’s there or it’s not” rather than “let me go to GOS and find it and retrieve it and reproject it and reformat it and convert it and then present it through a proprietary service”
something automatic like that would be nice, yes.
hey guys, check out http://www.DaeVision.com
Augmented Reality for the masses