If you’re contemplating taking a trip to recover from the holidays my first travel tip is to toss out the Frommer’s – for that matter throw out the guidebooks completely. You don’t need them anymore! An innovative mobile-phone system called Wikitude is about to change the way you and I sightsee – forever.
Here is a break down of how Wikitude works, according, to the Sunday Times. You’re standing in a city, staring at a building. You suspect that it’s important and historic, but, frankly, you’ve no idea what it is. Instead of pulling out a guidebook, you reach for your phone and hold it up as if you were going to take a photo. As you’d expect, the screen shows the building in front of you – but there’s a little logo at the bottom. Tap on it and it’ll tell you what you’re looking at. In this case St. Paul’s Cathedral.
You would be surprised to learn to that another tap will take you through to the Wikipedia entry for the cathedral the entire 3,000 exhaustive entries about it.
Wikitude was created by Austrian designer Philipp Breuss who coins the system “augmented reality”. It took five years to build and is built to run on Google’s new Android operating system for mobiles as well as T-Mobile’s G1.
What are the implications of this new and revolutionary tool? Well, Wikitude has 4,000 entries for locations in London alone. Fodor’s 2008 London Travel Guide had roughly 900 entries. When your mobile has the capability to pick up every point of interest just by pointing, do you really need a travel guide book?
Another interesting and exciting way that new/emerging media is changing our lives (and the way we sightsee!).
