Having trouble recognizing
reality? There’s an app for that.

Reality just not real enough for you lately? Having a hard time identifying the objects around you? Well, no worries. There’s an app for that. Or at least there will be before too long. We’ve talked about Augmented Reality before, but another concept is gaining traction as the next big thing. It’s called the Internet of Things . It’s based on the idea that since the coming IPv6 addressing system for the web will make it possible to encode 50 to 100 trillion objects, well heck, we just might as well. And since the average person only has about 1000 to 5000 objects around them, we’ll just give all of them addresses so we can attach information to them, since there are plenty of URL’s for everyone! We jest of course. In (ahem) reality, these technologies make some amazing stuff possible. One implementation of the idea that has gotten some press is Green Goose, an activity monitoring system that uses green, egg-shaped sensors to track your activities and help you to reach goals that you select. Their tagline is “Play Real Life”. ReadWriteWeb covered the start-up in February of last year and again this year,  if you’d like to learn more. Personally, I’m already busy enough living my life that I don’t feel a need to do it twice. But the system points to interesting possibilities. We’ve already seen some of the cool tools made possible by object or environment analysis and universal connectivity. The song recognition app SoundHound and Quest Visual’s instant translator app Word Lens are two popular examples. But in the future, we may be able to access information about nearly anything around us, with tools similar to the “terminator vision” used in T2: Judgment Day. Let’s just hope this stuff works better than autocorrect. Below is just one example of the possibilities of having detailed information about the things and people around you with point and shoot simplicity. Just make sure you keep that antivirus software updated!

We looked at the future of augmented reality back in April, but had no idea at the time that so many developers were on the verge of launching apps so soon. Acrossair has a cool app that tells Londoners where their nearest tube station is via their iPhone’s video function. RobotVision AR is a little more interesting; it integrates Bing local search, geotagged Flickr photos, and Twitter connections with an app that lets you simply point the camera in different directions to locate the shops, hotels, or tourist spots you’re looking for. The Austrian startup Mobilizy is developing AR driving directions with text-to-speech functionality called Wikitude Drive. They plan to include more “social navigation” features in future releases. Japanese company Tonchidot is introducing “airtagging” via their tool SekaiCamera. This is all incredibly cool stuff, but being the future-obsessed late adopter I am, I think I’ll hold out for the holographic version where life will be like one big “Pop Up Video”.

Tools like this come in especially handy when you’re a naked killer robot from the future looking for some hot leather gear and a motorcycle: