Half an hour ago, I just had an iPhone 3GS. Now, I have an iPhone 3GS with Layar installed.
It was one of the main questions I had for the Dutch company, which markets an augmented reality browser, when they launched at the Mobile 2.0 Europe event in Barcelona last year. When would they be complementing their Android program with an application for the iPhone?
They said it’d come in the fall of this year, and while there have been a number of AR applications made available on the App Store in the meantime, Layar’s finally arrived a couple of hours ago and it’s worth a second look. (iTunes link)
In case the concept of augmented reality is still new to you, basically it’s the placement of a digital layer of information on top of a real-life view of the world around you, as seen through e.g. a mobile phone’s camera lens. Using augmented reality, you could be using your smartphone to glance around the main square of a city you’re visiting and get up-to-date information about nearby restaurants, ATMs, real estate offers, and more on-screen, bolted on top of what you’d be seeing if you weren’t looking through the lens.
And if you’re not familiar with the place you’re at, you can ideally place it on top of a map to help you get the right directions, and if you find for instance a sea food restaurant even fetch user reviews to check out if it’s considered to be a decent place, as well as contact information to book a table right from where you’re standing.
Layar does all that, and does it well. I used the iPhone application – which is entirely free, by the way – to find pizza places here in the Brussels region, and I was able to locate dozens of places where I could get one simply by rotating the camera around my house. If you want, you can filter the distance in between 1 and 10 kilometers to narrow your search down.
Layar also boasts its own little developer ecosystem (and even 3D support), so it has so-called ‘layars’ in place mostly made by third-party developers that you can use to enhance what you’re able to see through the camera lens using the app (e.g. for viewing Twitter contacts around you). There are two options in the menu: ‘Featured’, extra layers that were selected by the startup, and ‘Popular’, obviously based on usage. Finally, there’s an integration with Google Local Search which lets you launch searches for places you find using the ‘Reality Browser’.
Layar is great, but it’s not the only AR app in the App Store. First, there’s Mobilizy with their Wikitude browser and then we recently wrote up Robotvision, which does much of what Layar does but is powered by Bing. Gawker recently covered a few more.
All hype or game-changing? It’s still early days for augmented reality, but I’m bullish on it.
I have resisted upgrading to the iPhone 3GS but now that this is available I’m seriously going to trade in my handset. This is what I have been waiting for and now it’s available I suspect that it’s going to be the must have accessory for tech-fashionistas!
Sounds pretty awesome, I have to say. Bummer I just got a Blackberry — maybe I’ll have to switch before long.
Bummer I’m stuck with my rotary dial phone as the only means of telecommunication. Btw, have you guys ever heard to that new information superhighway?
Ok this app is cool, I just wish they could smooth out the shakiness of the camera so that the artificial stuff is more elegantly places on the real time camera feed.
the direct appsto.re link: http://appsto.re/Layar
Another appsto.re spam link. Visit http://itunes.a...404207&mt=8 to byspass the affiliate spam.
Hi Robert,
here’s why appsto.re links are pure value to the community, and zero affiliate:
* appsto.re Links earn their affiliates 5% of Apple’s 30% share. For the average $0.99 app that’s $0.014 (yes, 1.4 cents). To make a thousand bucks you would have to SELL over 71,000 apps, yes that’s 71 thousand app sales. Not a great business model for anybody, better go work for Amazon Mechanical Turk.
* appsto.re link are short, easily share-able, retweet-able, etc (noticed how the default Wordpress/Disqus comment system shows your iTunes URL as http://itunes.a….4523535, not so elegant right?
On top of that, developers are using appsto.re links to track clicks, sales and conversion, which iTunes URLs hide very well from them, leaving in the dark in regards to performance.
The world is more complex than it seems, inquiring can be better than bashing.
Nice to see it move!
Exciting. Downloading it NAO.
Lots of hype. Very little practical use. Will you guys really fire up Liayar for Twitter or Yelp or even finding a home? The UI is also horrible.
Nice effort though. But their website looks like a Russian spam site. They should do something about that ‘world’s first’.
AR looks cool, but I don’t think there are many applications for that.
Very cool Layar app for finding concerts built on the Bandsintown.com platform by Johannes la Poutre. Awesome Job
http://squio.nl...dsintown-layar/
http://squio.nl/RW
Cool!!! http://www.webedesigner.com/
the app actually sucks tired it on android… kind of garbage… you play with it for 5 min.. then you move on with your life
First thought on the Layar browser – no post to Hyves feature?! Come on @rhymo we need more sharing features in the next update!
Hello world this gives me a smile on the face seeing that Europe tech company has the capability to reach overseas.
Kinda make me proud good job Boonstra.
Keep up the good work.
It was on Android a while ago…Love how no love for that…keeping sucking on IPhone D*(&&K
That’s really cool,i just got a iphone 3GS,now i can download the cool app. thanks for your post.
Looks like a fun application! Thanks for the article.
It’s crashtastic, UI is buggy and it doesn’t improve on the Android version.
Next.
The UI does seem sluggish when there are more than 10 POI’s on the map (in a single direction). This app could be really useful abroad. It would be cool to use the architecture guide to get relevant information about buildings, etc…