Augmented reality is such an interesting concept, it uses the view from your eye (well, basically your mobile phone’s camera) and provides information based on that.
On very interesting app for this is layar. So what other application can implement this in a very cool way? Here’s my take, after the break.
1. Multilingual Translator
Would be awesome if we can read any foreign language books by using our mobile phone’s camera, and then the application would translate and override the text visually with your chosen language.
The text can be detected with OCR scan and the translation itself using Google Translate.
2. People finder
Say you are at a bar and you’ve been approach by a stranger. By using your phone’s camera, you can extract information realtime from facebook, twitter and other social network sites. Instant face detection! Now you’ll know if she’s single and joyful, or a sociopath murderer.. Well, not really but you get the picture :p
3. Gaming
How cool would be for us to play Magic The Gathering and have the monster and fight animation displayed on our phone or portable gaming system.
4. Item identification
This idea works really well in museums and wild life recreation sites, how cool would be if we can identify what animals are we seeing in afrika, or what fish are at the pond, what flower are we picking and of course identifying a poison mushroom would be very useful in a stranded island.. That is assuming you have internet connection XD
5. Shopping
You’re walking on a store and you see the TV that you like, you grab your phone, fling the camera and the app finds the cheapest, best offer and discounts available for the product. We can order directly from the app and deliver it right to our house. How convenient would that be 
I think that’s all I can think of, got any more ideas?
I am Aria R. Masna, a web designer and developer living in Jakarta, Indonesia. I currently work at
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