Hidden iPhone Augmented Reality Feature

Posted: August 28th, 2009
Author: lester

yelpar2The world this morning appears to have gone crazy for a hidden augmented reality Easter egg feature in the Yelp iPhone application. Yelp is a Yellow Pages type service who yesterday launched a mobile application for the iPhone to enable you to search for local business on your phone. Today we hear that they have managed to sneak a hidden Easter egg past Apple that unlocks an augmented reality feature to overlay your search results on the camera screen.

The application is very Layar like in that you tell it what you are interested in, eg a bar and it overlays the search results on the camera screen and gives you a handy compass so you can find your nearest target.

To activate the hidden augmented reality feature, install the Yelp application from the app store, shake your iPhone 3 times and if successful you will get a blue box indicating that a new feature called Monocle has been unlocked. Now you should be able to overlay the search results.

Yelp application in action

To activate the feature you need to shake the iPhone 3 times, I had to laugh, how hard can shaking your iPhone 3 times be?

Shake it to activate it

I’m wondering if Yelp did sneak this past Apple, if they did I wondered how long it will be before the application is pulled from the store?

Related posts you may like:

  1. Augmented London – The New iPhone App
  2. Layar For The iPhone Is Here
  3. WhereMark For The iPhone
  4. Robotvision for the iPhone
  5. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality – Part III Browsers
  6. GetFugu Logo Recognition For Android And iPhone
  7. Wikitude For The iPhone – First Look

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1 to “Hidden iPhone Augmented Reality Feature”


  1. steve says:

    thanks i will give it a go when i get home



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