Every now and then technology makes a quantum leap while you’re not paying attention and then it seems as though you’re living in the future when you finally ‘get the news’.
Augmented reality is a thing that everybody has been thinking about and toying with but besides Layar I’ve yet to see examples of it that didn’t strike me as either frivolous, contrived, stupid or a combination of all of the above. Great for gaming and finding house prices but what else could you do with it? (from my idea dump: label stuff with the proper colors for the colorblind, identify resistors and wiring in electronics equipment).
So, I was pretty sure that augmented reality would be a big hit at some point but that we weren’t there yet. Apparently I was wrong, about 1⁄2 a year ago an app was introduced that did what I would consider to be the first example of an immediately useful augmented reality app with broad appeal.
Introducing word lens, an application so simple that the fact that it exists simply blows me away: