The next mobile frontier - Augmented Reality Apps...

Minority Report comes to mind when taking a look at what I am certain will be the next big wave in mobile applications.  Simply put, Augmented Reality utilizes a local camera as an input device, combined with either location based services or visual bar code in order to overlay artificial objects or navigation right over the visual.

All sorts of applications are popping up and the most obvious are those that are related to mapping or friend-finders or sorts.

Imagine holding up your phone camera and as you turn around all of your friends pop up based upon their location and distance from your current location?

Or imagine signage and review information magically appearing over retail and restaurant locations as you tour an unfamiliar city?

Watch these videos for a much better view of what is in store for us.

Masahble: Top 6 Augmented Reality Mobile Apps

Layar: The Web Browser for Reality - Coming Soon to iPhone

Posted via email from Jared Hendler

A better blogging platform?

via fastcompany.com

Posted via web from Jared Hendler

Streamed consciousness and parallel tracked conversations.

Beyond being rude, what does it mean now that many of us are tracking multiple conversations in the presence of others? I am convinced that, etiquette aside, we are changed forever as our technology becomes a multidimensional representation of self. Parallel conversations inform the present while others are put on hold until the mind is able to grasp the answer we seek. The immediacy of technology now allows us to take our time with an answer-how ironic. The opportunity to involve others unaware. Who's question or conversation is it anyway, and who's answer?

This is the tide of our newly intertwined conversations. One on one will never be the same as we jump into the river of our collective streamed consciousness and conversations.

Will YouTube trump local news affiliates?

As featured in the NYTimes, YouTube is experimenting with a local news filter at: http://www.youtube.com/news. Viewers are able to pull local news-feeds down to a specific zip code. While much of the news-feeds are in-fact professionally produced content, many are not. Pro-sumer feeds often make up in value what they lack in content and I was surprised at how much I learned from/about my own neighborhood.

Short term, this is an experiment. Long term this could easily trump local news affiliates given at how nimble this could become.

Success rests on the quality, reliability and relevancy of local news sources which of course will be up to local reporting - professional and pro-sumer alike.

Either way, local news affiliates from the major networks will be given a run for their money once this matures.

Can the mobile ecosystem support multiple OS environments?

Having attended an iBreakfast this past summer on moblie app development, I could not help but wonder if it makes sense moving forward for app developers to have to cater to multiple mobile OS platforms. If you use the PC wars as any indication of this, the answer would tell us that the ecosystem cannot support more than 1 or 2 OS platforms in the mobile space. Two of the main reasons that Microsoft became the planet's OS are:

1. Hardware neutrality: Distributed model enabled multiple hardware platforms to adopt the OS giving consumer a wide choice of hardware.
2. Application support: Once distribution was in place, developers naturally gravitate towards the largest ecosystem.

Mobile device are of course the next generation of computing. Evolution of 'The Cloud' will ensure that all of our data will be available at all times making our mobile devices the only devices we will need (with a bit of help from mobile keyboards and portable screens).

Hardware neutrality will be the champion of Microsoft and Google's Android. Apple has the lead on apps along with momentum due to its first mover advantage and the ease at which developer tools enable entrepreneurs to enter the marketplace. RIM had the lead on 'push' communications, but that will narrow as competing software closes the gap quickly.

The big difference from the PC marketplace is how consumers latch onto a few select leading hardware devices (unlike the PC industry). Remember StarTAC from Motorola? Everyone had to have that phone. The same applies to a few select devices today.

In some ways we can look to the PC market to see how this will net out. In other ways mobile computing has a psychology all of its own. Just because you allow choice of hardware does not guarantee adoption by the consumer and mobile industry as the PC market once did.

What is certain is that a few players will fall as the ecosystem will be unable to support them all.