Augmented Reality's Disruptive Potential 126
pbahra writes "A company called Layar, based in Amsterdam, is working on products that take augmented reality in a slightly different direction. They provide a platform that allows anyone to build an AR app. Consider these ideas: you can use your mobile phone's camera to view the world; your phone knows where you are and what you are looking at. The implications are profound. One of the most interesting apps that someone produced was a virtual tee-shirt shop. It was placed in the 20 most expensive shopping streets in the world, selling t-shirts. Stop and think about that for a minute. He built a virtual shop where a real one already existed. His shop was accessible via a mobile phone, while the real one was accessible through, well, being real. Real space and its virtual overlay are being used by different people. There will be lawyers."
Re:Fascinating (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you seen the real world lately? People ARE walking around perpetually staring into their phones.
Tried it (Score:5, Insightful)
The implications are profound.
No, not really. Unless, maybe, you're Geordi LaForge.
Stop and think about that for a minute. He built a virtual shop where a real one already existed.
Big deal. I've already been able to walk into Sears and shop at JCPenney.com on my phone, if I chose, for the past several years. What this guy has done is basically artificially limit his online store's reach.
Re:Same space, different market? (Score:5, Insightful)
when you put it that way, it sounds just like pop-up spam.
i'm sure that as soon as someone invents an ad-blocker extension for AR, we'll be fine.
Obligatory... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A thought (Score:2, Insightful)
And to all you bleeding hearts out there: you don't honestly think that that sick, disgusting shit is okay do you?
Ah, what a great argument, that if we disagree that people should be jailed and killed for outputting their desires in a way that doesn't harm anyone, we're championing the acts themselves, or somehow partaking or approving of them, which makes us as bad as the perpetrators in your eyes. Newsflash: People will like what you don't like, you'll never stop them. As long as it doesn't hurt others, what's the harm? You may not be into fisting little girls, but if someone was, and instead of fisting little girls, they played videogames to relieve their needs, why do you feel the need to stomp on other's freedoms? These are the same type of disingenuous turn-around that bought-out Politicians did with the internet monitoring bill. "If you're against this bill, you like CHILD RAPISTS, OOOOH~"