At Future of Web Apps last week there was a lot of talk about a Japanese company called Tonchidot. Tonchidot has created an iPhone application that can overlay in image of the real world with extra information gathered from the internet and your social networks: augmented reality. Here's the demo from the recent TechCrunch50 conference: Pretty cool stuff and I recommend watching the full presentation if only for Tonchidot front-man Takahito Iguchi's enthusiastic, if somewhat confusing, answers! However, to me it's not nearly as impressive as a similar demo for a product called Enkin also developed in Japan. It is built for Google Android phones by a couple of German researchers: Not only can I see this being more useful in my everyday life but they had a working demo 6 months ago (on Android emulators since the first phone only just came out this month). Also at FOWA, I had a play with Microsoft's Surface and I really wasn't very impressed. I'm hoping it was just that the guy on the Microsoft stand was lacking in imagination but aside from the ubiquitous picture sorting demo he didn't have much to say about collaboration which is surely what a device like Surface should be all about. On the other hand I came across this demo also from Microsoft, which, although flakier technologically, I find more inspiring due to its use of real world objects for interaction: I can't wait for this kind of technology to hit the mainstream but in the meantime I'll have to make do with watching more augmented reality demos on YouTube!
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