Enticed by Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald (aka @DutchCowboy) in this tweet, I fired up Layar (an AR — Augmented Reality — browser from the company by that name, which he co-founded), and aimed it at the cover of my new book. What followed is chronicled in this Flickr set. Start here, then follow the links at the end of each caption.
It’s a fun way to see what linky stuff might be found with any image you can visit in the world. Right now its purposes are mostly commercial. But I’d love to see the technology applied to questions we might have in the much larger non-commercial world, answering questions like…
- What kind of flower is this?
- What breed of dog is this?
- What’s the name of this bridge?
- What’s the history behind this building?
- This crystal is produced by what chemical compound?
- Show me older photos of this same scene
- What is the geology beneath this scene?
- Where else can I buy this?
- What are all the news stories about this?
- Who made this, and what went into it?
- Show me the standard information sharing label for this
The biggest one for me — and maybe one I could actually work on — is this:
- What am I seeing out the window of this airplane?
Given that planes are moving, usually at speeds of hundreds of miles or kilometers per hour, this might be hard to do. But what about after the fact? I’d love it if my own captions (or better ones) to photos such as these…
… could pop up when somebody looks at them, whether on a browser, a phone or any other device.
Just one more way I keep learning that it’s still very early in whatever it is we’re making of the digital world that coexists with the physical one.
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