Augmented Reality - For iPhone Uses

In order to get the significance of this blog one must first understand the concept of "easter eggs". Wikipedia describes them as "A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game. The term was coined – according to Warren Robinett – by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure.[1] ".

Easter eggs are in most computer games, software, operating systems, etc. There are entire websites dedicated to finding and exposting easter eggs. The easter egg that Yelp has put in there new iPhone app is mind blowing and it's social implications are endless. This takes the power of the people to a whole new level. Restaurants beware, if you get a bad review on Yelp, you're dead.

So check out this video on Monocle - Yelps hidden app (aka easter egg) underneath their iPhone app. It uses the camera in the iphone in combination with the GPS to determine your location then overlays that with reviews of the businesses in the immediate vicinity and direction you are pointing the camera. Like I said, mind blowing. Requires 3Gs iphone with latest software.



Check out the Mashable web site for more details and explanation of how to activate the easter egg.

Followers

I added a "followers" tab on the right hand side bar, near the bottom of the blog. Whether we all like it or not, the world has changed and it will continue to do so. Most of our reading content is now online. We get news, weather, playoff schedules and tickets all online. We want to read a book and we can get a Sony reader, a Kindle, download it as a PDF or read an actual paper book.

The Internet is no longer just somewhere to get info on something, it has long past that goal. It already has become a social networking world tied into your smart phone. I'm speaking about facebook (mobile and otherwise), myspace, twitter, etc. Now as we rapidly move into 2010 that will also evolve into an even more tightly integrated world where combining phone GPS's, mobile blogging and facebook, google friends and the myriad of other apps we will know where everyone is at any given moment.

An example of this would be I'm standing in the parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl, I have 4 terrace box seats but one couple just cancelled last minute. Using my iPhone or other smart device I can advertise these 2 extra tickets for sale with my exact location with alerts going out to other users looking for Bowl tickets for that event. Scary? Yes. Useful? Sure.

Another example of this would be an iPhone app recently written where users can post using the iPhone GPS their celebrity sightings. I saw Tracey Ullman at such and such a place at 2:52 pm today. Other obsessed fans would get an alert of where Tracey is and can run to her and mob her. Scary? Hell yes.... Aren't you glad you're not a celebrity?

So, I got off on a tangent there but the gist of all this is that I've added "followers" on my blog. Feel free to sign up, I'd love to have you!