Wikitude 4 has hit the Android and has numerous improvements. Firstly Wikitude 4 supports miles as well as kilometers so no more wondering if 7.5km is to far to walk. I'm really happy about this change and I'm glad my nagging has paid off. Wikitude 4 also boasts many new features and a UI refresh which looks really cool.

The votes have been counted for the first ever Augmented Planet Readers Choice awards. We asked you the readers to vote for the augmented reality applications and demos that have caught your eye in 2009. We are pleased to annouce the winners are:

Google have just announced their first augmented reality application for the Android device. Google Googles for the Android allows users to search by taking pictures of real world objects and having Google provide related information. However unlike existing augmented reality browsers that rely on a compass and location based services to provide search data Google Goggles uses LBS and image recongition.

Parallel Kingdom is a massively multi-player online role playing game that takes place around you. The game uses GPS to figure out your location and places the character directly in your neighbourhood where you can explore, declare war on other players or just fight the many creatures that live there

If you are looking to build your own augmented reality applications and looking for a starting point then Gamaray are giving away the source code to their browser application.

The leading augmented reality browsers applications for the Goggle Android platform come to the iPhone

Imagine if you could treat any logo as if it was a bar code, or if you could take a picture of any product logo and get back special offers, take part in competitions and more. Take a look at GetFugu for the iPhone and Google Android devices. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Are these the two ultimate must have augmented reality applications for Android owners? Get turn by turn navigation instructions overlayed on reality in the new Wikitude drive AR navigation system. It's a Heads Up Display navigation system for your car. Tired of getting stuck in traffic? Then the augmented reality Traffic View application could save you hours.

2 augmented reality application that will show you objects in the sky. Track the location of satellites or impress your friends with your knowledge of the locations of planets and constellations.

A quick congratulations to the guys at Layar today who have now taken their product global and have an amazing 87 layers available for their augmented reality browser. If you are not familiar with Layar, Layar shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your [...]

Floating around on Twittersphere this morning is a very interesting article on the augmented reality hype cycle. (read here) The article that breaks down the technology in to 4 stages: Level 0 -- Physical World Hyper Linking Level 1 -- Marker Based AR Level 2 -- Markerless AR Level 3 -- Augmented Vision Right now we are [...]