Augmented reality has been around since the 1950s, but has upped its game in the past couple of decades. In fact, the idea of an electronic display overlaying real life data was first mentioned way back in 1901 by L. Frank Baum in his book The Master Key . He, however, called it a ‘character marker’, a set of spectacles that could show you the character a person superimposed over their foreheads. While no one has been able to replicate that in real life as yet, we still have a pretty decent amount of augmented reality apps in the market that can do a lot of other stuff.
Google Goggles
The app is image recognition-based; once you click a photo of a landmark, a painting, a barcode or QR code, or any product, Goggles searches its database and provides you with pertinent information. It also translates text in foreign languages from pictures, adds contacts by scanning business cards and even solves Sudoku puzzles. Goggles is quite popular; in fact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has collaborated with Google to provide information about the artworks in the museum through direct links to the museum’s website.
Lookator
Lookator uses your phone’s camera to detect all WiFi hotspots in range. The phone’s GPS and compass also play a part in determining the accuracy and strength of the signal. The app also informs you if the signal is encrypted or not.
You can use the camera screen and the little radar in the upper right corner of the display to move in the right direction to get a better signal if needed.
Ingress
Possibly one of the most massively popular augmented reality-based games in recent times, Ingress has a complex science fiction back story.
For the uninitiated, all you need to know is that a player belongs to one of two factions, and must – among other things -- hack a “portal” and receive items, subject to limits on frequency, that earns the player points. “Portals” are most often landmarks around your location and you need to physically travel to these “portals” to fight or receive further instructions.
Google Sky Map
A beautiful, must-have app for astronomy buffs and regular, curious minds alike, the Sky Map is based on planetarium software.
The app simulates a star chart for the day and night-time sky of your location at a specific time on your phone. Therefore, at any given point of time, you know the exact position of the sun, even during the night (it’s below you), the moon, constellations, et al. A recent addition to the app is meteor showers and I cannot wait to observe the next one!
