Mobile Augmented Reality browsers
Enkin was an entrant in the first Android developer competition and garnered a lot of media attention back then. Unfortunately it didn’t make the cut, subsequently never to be heard of again. However, the last post on their weblog mentions that they’ve been approached by Google, leading to some interesting speculation.
Aside from Enkin, several other applications have picked up the concept. One of them, Wikitude, even made it into the Android Developer Competition Top 50 (making the whole Enkin story even more interesting). Wikitude is available on the Android market, but for some completely inexplicable reason lacks any kind of decent and presentable promo video – the one they have on their website doesn’t even show their service in action. If they had a promo video comparable in quality to Layar’s, they might have stolen their press.
Layar recently made a lot of headlines. Their client looks more polished than Wikitude and their demo video is a lot better in selling the general concept. It seems their client is currently only available for Android phones on the Android market in the Netherlands.
Both Wikitude and Layar have announced developer APIs (in closed beta at the moment). All things considered there seems to be a lot of overlap in concept and ambition between both applications.
Acrossair recently made headlines with its Nearest Tube and Nearest Subway applications. According to a LA Times blog post, these will find their way onto the app store once iPhone OS 3.1 arrives:
Finally there’s nru by lastminute.com, available on both iPhone (3GS) and Android. It’s probably the first Augmented Reality browser on the iPhone app store, supposedly in large part due to the fact that it doesn’t overlay it’s information display on a live camera view, which would require the use of private iPhone APIs (though this limitation will hopefully be lifted once iPhone OS 3.1 arrives). Unfortunately i couldn’t find the application on the Austrian Android market and the iPhone version isn’t fully functional on my iPhone 3G, but their demo video looks decent:
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