Augmenting Reality

Bryan Stratton — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:04:04 +0000

The newest version of the Yelp app for the iPhone (released yesterday) has a nifty Easter Egg that we weren’t supposed to get until the iPhone 3.1 OS upgrade. From the Yelp home screen, shake the phone three times to enable a feature called “Monocle,” which triggers an augmented reality feature, overlaying the iPhone’s camera view with a real-time HUD indicating businesses that are reviewed on Yelp.

image © Bryan Stratton

I tried it this morning while walking to the Little Red Bike Cafe in North Portland. At a distance, it worked pretty well, but as I got closer to my destination, the accuracy decreased. In the screenshot above, Darcy’s actually is pretty much right across the street from me, but Taco Bell is behind me, and the Little Red Bike Cafe is to my left.

I’m sure that’s just an issue with the calibration and the fact that the iPhone 3.0 OS isn’t fully equipped to handle augmented reality apps at this point. But for a secret feature that’s still in beta, it’s frickin’ cool, and it’s definitely got me looking forward to seeing what creative uses app developers come up with for the finished API.

Tagged: apple, augmented reality, iPhone, tech

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Augmenting Reality