Augmenting Your Reality: Junaio

More augmented reality methods for online and mobile.

Took a look at the Junaio augmented reality browser on the IPhone today. The basic idea is to let you augment what you are seeing in a specific location. It can be your own private reality, or you can share it socially with others. The Junaio approach is to let you add a number of prefabricated 3D objects to a real physical space. These can be animated, images, links or text. The result places these in a 3D space overlaid onto a map space. The little animations are cartoony and cheesy, but I can see how they could be improved to be more realistic.

The live view version, for the IPhone 3GS only, allows you to view a space live, so imagine yourself in a space that has been annotated by others in 3D and then you walk through it with your device held up in front of you.

Overall I am intrigued by the idea. Yet it has the same inherent problem with many of these ideas. I am not likely to use something like this unless lots of people have annotated a space already. The method is not hard, but hard enough to be a barrier for many people. Its also hard to really express yourself in each 3D space unless you are clever in 3D design, not common either. If there were enough demand I imagine these could be commissioned.

Worth a look. See also Junaio's blog.

Also see Layar, which also has a competitive method.