Augmented reality -- or the addition of a layer to the world before your eyes (aka the "real world") using technology -- is the next big tech trend. Already making its debut in everything from mobile apps to kids toys, "AR" will clearly soon be talked about by everyone the way they used to talk about "social media" and "Web 2.0" before that.
While augmented reality has its uses -- although many of them just involve oohing and aahing at nifty apps -- this trend is already in danger of being over-hyped, even though it has barely gotten off the ground.
AR Apps We've Seen So Far
We've been fascinated by augmented reality for some time now, especially after we got wind of a new mobile application built for Google's Android platform called Layar. The app, an augmented reality browser, "layers" sets of data on top of your mobile phone's viewfinder as you point the camera at the city around you.
Once our interest was piqued, we began imagining what future apps could be built using this platform, thinking up everything from people search to place data.
Only days later, another mobile AR app made the news: TwittARound, an app which shows you nearby tweets.
[Via : http://www.readwriteweb.com ]
