The iPhone update to the Wikitude World Browser has just hit the appstore. So here is a very early look at whats new.
 
Firstly upon loading you are presented with a new list of search criteria which includes:
 

• Booking.com -  European hotel reservation
• Wikipedia
• Qype -  local reviews on services around you
• World Heritage List -  Cultural and natural heritage listings
• Webcams.travel -  collection of webcams
• English Premier League -  locations of premier league teams stadium’s
• City Search - Search cities for entertainment and dining
• EPER 2004 - details from the European Pollutant Emissions Register
• Twitter - Nearby tweets
• Wikitude.Me – your bookmarked POIS
• Bordatlas
• Flickr
• Youtube
• Google Local
• Planes – spot flights
• F1 Racecourses 2009
• Panoramico -  photo sharing
• Last.fm – gigs taking place around you
• Yahoo Upcoming -  community event’s taking place around you
   

It’s good to see 3rd party POIs being supported and easily found. It’s also good to see that there is support for both KM and Miles which has been my pet gripe. The new version also allows you to control the number of POIs shown at any time, however there is stil the issue of the application not remembering your previous selections. So every time you start the app it defaults back to the maximum distance and default set of POIs.
 
There is a good mix of POIs, the first POI  I tried was the Planes and had a good chuckle to myself. The only flight found was Sewage. I’m pretty sure I am flying them to Barcelona next week. The EPER POI throws up an interesting list of who around you is putting pollutants in to the environment and I was surprised to see that even in the middle of nowhere where I live there are offenders. 
 

I’m not sure how I manage to break things but I hit upon a few bugs.

1) The camera option disappeared a few times while choosing the POI. It meant that I could select POIs but I couldn’t turn on the camera without closing and restarting the app
 
2) I found a repeatable crash with the English premier league POI. Enable the POI, select any item in the camera view then select Web and the app crashes.
 
Overall it’s a nice update and good to see the inclusion of more POIs and the ability for developers to easily add their own.

Related posts you may like:

1. Create your own World in the Wikitude World Competition
2. Wikitude For The iPhone – First Look
3. Wikitude 4 For The Android With Video
4. The New Yell AR Browser
5. WhereMark Augmented Reality Browser