Wikitude Augmented Reality

What's the most likely killer app for smartphones once everyone has got used to the basic web / maps offerings? I reckon it's going to augmented reality; overlaying data information on a realtime view of the world (e.g overlaying data on the Camera view of an Android device).

Having gotten Google maps and gps sorted out for Creelcard, so that you can specify and view detailed catch position info, what's the next logical jump? How about being able to hold the phone up and see an overlay of the catch location and other data overlayed directly on the realtime camera view ahead of you? Interested ?

After reading a post on AndroidGuys about the new Wikitude Augmented Reality browser and developer API, I contacted the Wikitude dev team and got access to the private beta of their SDK.

The documentation was very clear; the library JAR file easy to add to the code base of the creelcard code project in Eclipse. Within 30 minutes I had added a simple Button View to the Creelcard catch list screen that launched the WikitudeCam screen. Then it took another couple of hours to figure out how to capture altitude info from Android's location API. The Wikitude browser is altitude - aware as well as latitude/longitude; set a point-of-interest (POI in wikitude-speak) on the top of a mountain, and you would have to point the camera up at the summit from the mountain's base to see the overlayed information - very cool! A final hours work to be able to pass a list of catch information as individual POIs, and I had a working basic Creelcard AR screen!

Unfortunately I can't release a version of creelcard with this functionality yet as the SDK is still is in an initial private beta phase. I have to say that the Wikitude team have been very responsive with the few questions I have had to ask to get this far. I really need to do some real - world testing to figure out how best to make use of this promising technology. Am also waiting for the commercial terms & conditions to be published before making a final decision. It would be great to hear from any readers of this blog as to your thoughts on how you could see AR helping your fishing experience !!