For today’s ultimate guide we’ll focus on augmented reality browsers. The holder of the best augmented reality browser for 2009 is of course Wikitude which was voted no.1 in the Augmented Planet Readers Choice Awards, so who should we be looking out for in 2010?

WhereMark
WhereMark is a relatively new arrival but has already caught the eye.
Plus points, great UI, innovative pinch and stretch zoom, search across multiple categories. Negative points, difficult to see what category is selected, switches between portrait and landscape.

Verdict well worth installing

WhereMark iPhone Augmented Reality Browser

Yell Labs

Another new entry, visually looks fantastic. I really love the lock-on effect where the targeting targeting reticle locks on to a POI. The search criteria is also presented nicely and it’s easy to perform a one click search.

Yell AR (UK ONLY)

While it looks great it is not without problems. The initial search range is set ridiculously low and it took an accident before I figured out that there is a hidden menu on the right hand side of the screen that controls range.

Data accuracy, I know I moan about a lot about this, but pressing the Indian restaurants button reveals 10 matches. 6 of which are Chinese restaurants, 1 is a grill, 2 are Indian restaurants, and one KFC. If you are going to go to the effort of having dedicated search buttons the least you could do is ensure that the data is going to be correct.

While Yell looks good, as you use it you’ll see that the application feels empty. There is no map for example so navigation is difficult and once you have your POI selected very little information is given, in my tests nothing more than the ability to place a phone call was shown.

Verdict, disappointing from Yell you would expect better accuracy, but worth installing and showing your friends the cool lock-on feature.

Zagat To Go
This is another visually stunning app, the ability to scroll A La Street View through the results is pretty cool. Zagat also has a review system so you’ll know if the restaurant you are visiting is any good.  It’s difficult to find a downside to this app other than the price ($9.99), but 89 reviews out of 107 give the application 4 stars or above so they must be doing something right.

Verdict, cool app if you are looking for a high quality application to find places to eat and you are not on a budget then well worth getting.

Zagat To Go

ARgo
Another new browser launched in early February. Search is performed by dedicated buttons which orientate themselves to either portrait or landscape depending on how you hold your device. Searching for Indian restaurants returns a good set of results, all of which actually look like they are Indian restaurants (no KFCs).  As you can search POIs from different categories the compass has a nice touch where each POI is identified by a different colour.

The downside, the POIs in the camera window were pretty difficult to select. POIs were often place on top of each other making it impossible to select those that were further way. There is also no map so no navigation.

Verdict, not really tested in anger. Needs work on selecting POIs

Acrossair multifunctional browser

Acrossair
The Acrossair browser feels like it’s a collection of different AR applications rather than a single app. You can find the nearest tweets, wiki’s, search for restaurants or if you’re in a social the mood you can share your location with your buddies via facebook, twitter, or email. There is even an option to find where you left your car.

There is a good collection of functionality here but it feels like a bit of a jumble. With applications, presentation is often everything. If a user doesn’t like the look and feel they wont come back no matter how good the app is. Here the developers have gone for just putting everything into a list and it feels like it has just be thrown together, it really doesn’t do it any justice.

Verdict, worth installing just for the car locator application

Other world browsers.

• Robotvision
• Bionic Eye
• Nearest Places
• Worksnug

Augmented Reality Browsers

And The Rest

In Rouli’s (ARTimes.net) predictions for 2010 I predicted that everyone would have augmented reality browser functionality by the end of the year, so expect this list to grow. In the meantime if you are looking for even more browsers, try these.

• iNeedCoffee
• A Cafe View
• BUL
• Spot Crime – see where crimes are taking place around you. (US only I believe)
• Stella Artois
• Urban spoon
• Nearest Wiki
• Cyclopedia
• buUuk
• Nearby Navigator
• Ristoranti d’Italia del Gambero Rosso
• Wiki(Ar)
• Taiwan Food AR
• Compass Camera
• A Nearby View
• Huckleberry
• Beijing Discovery AR

Random browsers, find bars, find crime. It's all good

Related posts:

1. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality Part I
2. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality Part II
3. Augmented Reality Browsers Head To Head Part 1

Chetan also talks about the choices in selecting a platform and his plans for porting applications over to Android. It’s an interesting talk, the Q&A at the end has lots of questions on where the data comes from and how to manage the presentation of lots of data on the screen. So if you are planning on building an augmented reality application and want some tips from a company that have 10 augmented reality apps already in the iPhone store,  or if you are just generally interested in learning more about the technology then its well worth a listen.

Watch the webcast

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsTFPoK0Gbk

Related posts:

1. Over The Air 09 And O’Reilly Webcast
2. Build Mobile Augmented Reality Applications In 1 Hour
3. Augmented Reality Events – April – June (Updated)

WorkSnug in case you don’t know is an augmented realty application that helps you find a place to remote work in London. WorkSnug goes beyond just pointing you to the nearest coffee shop that has free wireless access as the team have actually visited many of the locations and rated them for noise levels (no one wants to work in a really noise environment) as well as useful information like the availability of plug sockets so you’ll never be without power. You can switch the search between all locations or only those that have been reviewed so you’ll have lots of locations to choose from.

If you have used any of the Acrossair products before then this looks very similar and it looks like it uses the same augmented reality engine, you hold the phone up in front of you and you’re in augmented reality mode, put the phone flat and you switch to the map view. If you read this blog often you’ll know my main bitch is when we don’t get the option to choose the unit of distance and get forced to work with something alien. I’m please to say that WorkSnug can switch seamlessly between miles and kilometers. No more trying to figure out if 1.87km is walking distance. Another neat feature is you can limit the number of results displayed so the UI doesn’t’ become too cluttered. (see the  last picture below).

My early tests shows it works pretty well but I did find a couple of little problems. When you load the application and change the scan range to see just what is within a nearby distance it doesn’t actually affect the search results. What I mean is if say only show me nearby places within a 2 mile range, when I switch to the augmented reality view the application still shows me places that are 5 or 6 miles away. I have to close the app and reopen it before my search range is picked up.  The map view is sometimes a bit suspect, putting the phone flat gives a white screen and no matter how long you leave it no map is drawn. When it does this all the entries disappear from the augmented reality view as well even though there should still be some in range.

While the app has lots of potential it’s a bit disappointing that these bugs are still present, I have only had the product for 10 minutes and found them so the QA tester needs a bit of a kick on that one.

Summary
The best thing about the app is the work the guys have put in to reviewing the locations and the work they have done in presenting the infomation to the user. That kind of data is invaluable and since they have the option to switch between miles/km we can assume they will role out the application to others parts of the world in the future.

I’m not completely sold on the augmented realty aspect though as it doesn’t really add any value to the application. Yep sure you can hold the camera up and see the locations but it is much easier to get a flavor of location in the map view. However all that said it’s free so if you live in London it’s still worth your time taking a look and worth and installing.

Feel free to agree/disagree.

WorkSnug video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_Q3yl4NjM

Related posts:

1. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality – Part III Browsers
2. iPhone 4 Gyroscope vrs iPhone 3 Accelerometers
3. AR Browsers Head To Head – Test 2