Augmented reality is an up and coming mobile technology that seems to have a lot of potential in the library field. The basic concept is to use a portable video devicethat can add information to what is being displayed on the screen. Its bit difficult to explain just in words, so here are a few examples of Augmented Reality applications being developed.
GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality
The simplest examples of augmented reality are computer recognizable images that can interact with a webcam to display additional information. This GE example shows a printable black and white image that when used in combination with a webcam and the GE website, allows you to see a 3D model. You can try it out yourself.
The Astonishing Tribe: Augemented ID
This is an example of an augmented reality applications that allows people to show links to content from social networks and other services online based on facial recognition software. this example shows a person turning off his personal social life profile and changing to a professional identity for a presentation. Later on your see someone from the audience take a camera phone and point it at the presenter to see the same links he made available earlier. She then sees a list of available profile links, clicks on Slideshare to see the current presentation, and rates him with four stars for his presentation.
Accrossair: Nearest Tube/Subway
Accrossair has developed an iPhone app that will allow people with the video enabled iPhone 3GS to display directions to the nearest train station. London is the only place supported now, but they are expanding the service to other major cities, including New York City. All you would have to is start the application and point the camera at whatever location you happen to be in. Color coded arrows will point you in the direction of the closest subway lines, along with additional information about distance from your location.
These are just some examples, and more can be found through the Wikipedia article as well. Tune in Thursday where I throw out some ideas on how these technolgies might be used in the library 
[...] 6, 2009 by Ken Fujiuchi On Tuesday I had a quick post introducing augmented reality(AR) applications. In this post I wanted to talk about some ideas on how libraries can take advantage of this kind of [...]