Augmented reality on Android and Apple
The first commercial augmented reality app to launch on a large scale, Layar is a free application which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality, through the camera of your mobile phone. By just holding your phone in front of you like a camera, you can view key information about your location, be directed towards a local site of interest, or even have historic or imaginary images displayed on top of the camera view.
Layar’s philosophy is to provide the tool, then wait for content providers to queue up to provide you information, alerts, reviews and advertising. All this stuff is added as content layers, almost the equivalent of webpages in normal browsers. Another example is a layer that displays The Beatles on the crossing when you’re at Abbey Road and other famous locations.
Yes, it still needs a bit of work and yes, there’s not a lot of content yet outside of large cities. But there’s such a wow factor in seeing a 3D plane populated with arrows and pointers layered over your live camera image. It brings back memories to me of the reality overlays from Firefox, The Terminator and Robocop.
Maybe I should copyright this idea, but imagine getting a text to alert you there was some kind of prize or nearby, and the first person to get there using Layer could claim it? Or the first 50 people to a store get a discount? Let me know your other suggestions as a comment.
You can download Layar for free from the Android Marketplace or Apple App Store. Your phone needs GPS and a compass.
We’ve held out for a Hero long enough
At 135 grams the Hero sits comfortably in one hand and feels thinner that it is, with bevelled design. Stylish and severe in construction, dumping the plastic feel of its predecessors for a solid metal fronting, the Hero levels the playing field against HTC’s high-end competition.
The gorgeous 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen displays in 320 x 480 HVGA. HTC has done remarkable work on its Sense interface that pays off. Users are put firmly in command, able to customise and resize widgets and applications with acres of room across seven pages. Glide around and enjoying the experience with fingertip taps and pinches, and minimal button pressing. Not preloaded with social applications, pick and choose what’s needed and grab it (mostly free) with fast HSDPA access to Android Market.
Gripes. I dislike touchscreen keypads, though I was helped here by well designed predictive text assistance. And my reasonable use of the phone still needed it charging up every other day. 3G access and updates suck the power from any phone battery.
Everything else you’d expect is here. A 3.5mm jack plus HTC’s own ExtUSB audio/USB port, a 5 MP autofocus camera giving clear video capture. Medium memory, 288MB expandable to 32GB with microSD cards.
A delight that rewards you for taking time to customise.
And 10% more Apple apps in a month
Millennial Media publish its October SMART report revealing lots of interesting facts. Apple topped 100,000 applications last month and growth doesn’t seem to be slowing.
The chart I’ve borrowed from the report shows total applications for the three main suppliers, broken down by type. You can see that for everybody, games dominate the available content.
In just over a year since the launch of Android Market, 13,000 apps compares favourably to just 3,100 available with BlackBerry App World. App World has been around six months longer so you can see why new development tools from RIM were announced last week.
It’s claimed that 90% of iPhone and iPod Touch owners have bought something from Apple’s App Store, with £2.99 ($4.99) believed to be the sweet spot for customers to make impulse purchases. £2.99 can now buy you a beer, a burger or a download.
