Don’t we all just love whipping out our smartphones and going click click click? Be it at a restaurant when there’s nicely plated food, or at the beach with the setting sun, with a giant poster of a celebrity or for that perfect selfie.
But what if you could do a lot more with that phone camera of yours? Like maybe blip an object and watch it come alive. All you need to do is download a nifty little app called Blippar and let it bring alive images that you scan with your phone camera.
An augmented-reality mobile app, Blippar that was founded in the UK in 2011, has finally made its foray into the Indian market.
With tie-ups with brands and establishments like Heineken, IBM, Wipro, Nestle, Pepsi, The Beer Café, Tinkle Comics, T-Series, Taj Hotels, World Kabaddi League, and British Council among others, Blippar looks set to change the way we view the world.
The premise of an augmented reality app is to overlay digital content on top of real things using a map, a camera, or sometimes the sky. Blippar however, isn’t the only augmented-reality app in the market. There’s the more familiar Google Goggles, Cam Gun, Star Walk, Google Sky Map (a personal favourite, since I simply love to star gaze) and even Wikitude World Browser.
Picture this: you use an app to scan a ketchup bottle and it brings alive a recipe book with meal suggestions using the ketchup as ingredient. Or maybe scan a makeup tutorial via a fashion magazine and photo op with a celebrity via their album covers.
You could even use the app to bring alive an art work in a gallery to get more information on the artist and maybe perspective on the work itself.
Blippar for instance, has a tie-up with British Council, where an artist’s works were given a new dimension with the app. “We did something similar with British Council where the works of Jeremy Deller came alive when you looked at them from the Blippar lens,” said Arnav Ghosh, managing director, Blippar India.
According to him the app lets you unlock information from an object or image. And that’s just one of the things it can do.
He says, “It also lets you share a selfie, play a game, watch a video, try on a watch, piece of jewellery or even an outfit, participate in a poll, share it on social media, or locate a store. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination.”
One of their latest associations in India with The Beer Café in Mumbai, lets you scan a bottle of the beverage before the app brings alive details of the drink — where it’s from, what kind of brew, the works.
While currently the app works with markers on an object, according to Arnav, they are working on a future that lets you blip anything and not be confined by markers.
The app is currently available on both Android and iOS.