Location, location, location. Augmented Reality on mobile phones has always been about location. What with all the other whizzy stuff involved that sometimes gets forgotten, but it is mostly used as a really visual and simple way of telling you more about where you are.
With Facebook launching Places last week, location is now red hot. Facebook Places isn't Augmented Reality since it doesn't overlay an image of the real world with computer generated information... but it's not hard to see them introducing it at some point in the future.
The big player at the minute is Layar, a Dutch company that have a created a platform also called Layar for Augmented Reality apps(or layers as it calls them). Layar comes pre-installed in most Android phones and is available on iPhone 3Gs and 4. It's still the most advanced platform out there (see our article here) though lots of other big names are making moves in that direction... Foursquare is one. Facebook & Google are both potentially interested.
Anyway, before we get carried away with all this talk of the future - here are ten great Augmented Reality apps out now. Most of them are doing interesting things with the medium. Some are just a bit bonkers.
[A lot of the links are to the iPhone store, but most apps will be on Android as well ]
Related: Interview with Howard Ogden, Britain's leading Augmented Reality Specialist
Twitter on Layar
Twitter on Layar (on iTunes ) Available on all versions of Layar, this is fun, it’s a nice way of animating Twitter. Scan your phone over a street and see all the geolocated tweets doing the rounds. There’s one for geotagged Wikipedia too. Love it.
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