Japanese company Tonchidot announced today the global release of iPhone application “Sekai Camera” that lets any user post a virtual, geo-located tag for any Sekai Camera app user to see. Or, as Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reports today, now we can all leave each other “geo-tagged virtual Post-It notes.”
The app is avail at the iTunes store here.
[The image above features a real screen shot from Japan showing the multi-media tags left by other users in one location. Click image for their whole Flikr feed.]
“The premise behind the app is quite simple: as you go about your day, Sekai Camera invites you to leave text messages, photos, and audio recordings that will appear as floating bubbles wherever you created them. You can also fire up Sekai Camera to look at the world around you to see what kind of content has been left by other users. As you spin the camera around, you’ll see new messages pop up as floaty icons. Click one, and you?ll see the content that was shared previously. It?s a bit like Twitter in that everything is?publicly?available, but everything is built around location — if you aren’t near a message, you can’t see it.”
Until now you had to be a developer to load something onto an augmented reality platform like Layar, and it was pretty much a “read only” experience for viewers. You could see what a developer had put in the viewer for you to see, and that was it.
Now, you’ll be able to see what ANYONE with this app has dropped into the “location” (coordinates) your iPhone is pointing at, AND you can drop your own commentary.
I don’t use the word “drop” accidentally.
I’m awed by the prospect of marrying social networking with augmented reality. Imagine wanting a slice of pizza, pointing your phone at the pizza store in front of you, and seeing blurbs from people who’ve eaten there to help you decide if THIS is the place.
But I’m concerned, too.
Imagine walking down the sidewalk and constantly weaving to avoid dog droppings, with the inevitable squish (no imagination needed if you live in Paris).
We are a communicative lot. Given the opportunity, we talk. If we can call it sharing, all the better.
So rest assured lots of folks will “share” their thoughts, views, insights, information and just-plain-stupid-thoughts about all kinds of places. Point your iPhone at something popular like the Statue of Liberty and you’ll have to swim through the virtual Post-it notes.
That sounds like noise to me. Augmented graffiti.
All the same, kudos to Tonchidot for breaking this out of Japan (where it’s a big hit with iPhone users already). We’ll get good at filtering over the next couple years. If (more like when) there’s a ton of content to edit down, that’ll be a good problem to solve.
[...] Until Augmented Reality showed up. Today and in the very, very near future, (reading in months rather than years) any small time brand can usurp a bigger brand for “brand visibility” outdoors and indoors. The example picture above and article is linked from TarikSedky’s blog [...]