geobloggers

In the research section of Nokia we’re introduced to Mobile Augmented Reality Applications or MARA for short. A quick sound bite…

“If the absolute location and orientation of a camera is known, along with the properties of the lens, it is possible to determine exactly what parts of the scene are viewed by the camera.”

Here’s what it looks like…

Using it’s position and orientation knowledge, combined with an internal model of the local area (which has to get onto the phone somehow) and magic Bat Sense* it figures out what should be where on the screen and highlights them.

I’m assuming, as I haven’t seen it in action, but based on what they say, you can toggle through the highlighted spots, select one and then annotate it, or at least assign a URL to it, which in the end could amount to the very same thing.

Just imagine combining this with the 500,000+ geolocated Wikipedia entries, see http://www.geonames.org/wikipedia.html for more information and being able to update it. I suspect this would be particularly good for audio annotations.

The really slick part that makes me smile is that when you hold the phone horizontally it switches into overhead mode. Which makes perfect intuitive sense.

It’s interesting to see just how much of this stuff can be done now, with some hacking and pulling together of services from here and there. Anyone with a mind to do it and a few solid days to throw at it, could put something pretty useful together, probably not full MARA mind. It’s just getting everyone to use the same hack that’s the issue.

[Via engadgetmobile, via GigaOm]

*Well maybe not Bat Sense, but it should.