Cranking out news for the geeks, music buffs and gossip junkies, my way. -Greg

Qualcomm was showing off their new S4 Snapdragon Processor in both mobile devices and TVs, that’s right TVs. Here we see this processor converting A.R. (augmented reality) from 2D to 3D before sending over HDMI to the TV. You can se how he has the mobile phone pointed at the flat map played on the table there and it’s turned into a 3D barrel shooting game on the TV. It really was pretty cool, no lag, and a crisp 3D image.

Here is a shot of the upcoming TV that uses the S4 processor technology. They have entered a partnership agreement with Lenova to build these TVs.

Metario and LEGO have come together and created and Augmented Reality Kiosk system. When the consumer grabs a LEGO box and puts it in front of the kiosk the QR code gets scanned and activates the Augmented Reality. The kiosk shows the LEGO design completed and on top of the box the consumer is holding. You can then twist and turn the box in your hand and see the LEGO design from all different angles. It’s a really neat application of Augmented Reality, this could star a tend of kiosks that allow you to see anything in a box before buying it and taking it home before assembling and deciding its not what you thought it was. Kudos to the  guys at Metario! -Greg

Stunned, I’ve only begun to think of the possibilties for this type of technology. This will change alot of how we use our phones to get information. Imagine traveling out of town, you wouldn’t need to get a telephone book (not that anyone does now), you wouldn’t need to get out you laptop and get on Google maps, no need to even ask the locals anything. Scan your camera phone around the block and you have a complete city guide at your finger tips. Names and types of businesses, contact information, hours of operation, menu’s, prices, recent peoples comments and or suggestions. I mean this could create a sorta sub-website, that is based soley on a person standing there looking at a building with their Android-Layar enabled camera phone, instantly having ever possible piece of information about it. Crazy… I wonder when Android will become self aware? -Greg 

By Kevin Purdy, 5:00 PM on Fri Sep 11 2009, 1,151 views

In a true-to-form augmented reality app, a phone’s camera would be used to provide a live video stream, and the application would analyze objects in that stream and interact with them in some way. This video demonstrates what the future will likely hold for motion-sensitive, GPS-enabled, decent-camera-toting phones—with zombies:

Until phones catch up to developers’ ambitions, we have half-breed apps like Layar that pull in geographic data from your phone’s GPS location, check it against web databases, and then show the locations of nearby subway stations, restaurants, and more overlaid on the image of your surroundings from your phone’s camera. Android phones allow apps to access the video stream for overlays, while the iPhone 3GS picked up that ability with the 3.1 firmware update, as ReadWriteWeb details. Here’s how Layar’s developers demonstrate the app in their native Amsterdam:

 

For a real-world, smaller-city test, I grabbed a T-Mobile G1 and headed to Buffalo’s Elmwood Avenue commercial strip, with a side venture to Main Street, to see what Layar could show me. The app has a single view and function that pulls in your camera’s video stream, but you can switch up what “layer” you see over it on the fly. The layers, listed at Layar’s web site, come from web services with big geographic data piles, like Wikipedia, review site Yelp, real estate finder Trulia, and sites that mash up social apps like Flickr and Twitter. Yelp and Flickr (pulled in as “FlickAR” in this app) are, as you might imagine, the most densely packed of the apps I tried. You normally turn your camera, or yourself, to get thumbnail data on any “blips” that come up in Layar. When you come up with clusters of results in layers like Yelp, though, you’ll end up switching to the less impressive list view, because trying to pinpoint individual finds will have passersby wondering why it looks like you’re trying to rotate the world with your phone.

I didn’t get any results for local tweets or Trulia real estate findings, but an architectural society layer and Wikipedia yielded a few fun surprises. If you were new in a city and looking for something to check out, Layar might well be worth the time (and battery drain) to check out. Who wouldn’t want to check out the spot where President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, or the seriously creepy spires of the H.R. Richardson “State Lunatic Asylum”? Layar is neat stuff, and will probably get better as more developers buy into it.

Layar is a free download for Android phones only. If you’ve used the app for something useful, fun, or something in-between, tell us about it, and post pictures, in the comments.