Hyperlinking Reality via Phones … whoa

Now excuse me while I go have a Neo moment but this has got to be the coolest thing I’ve seen out of any R&D lab ever.

A Nokia research project could one day make it easier to navigate
the real world by superimposing virtual information on an image of your
surroundings. The new software, called Mobile Augmented Reality Applications (MARA), is designed to identify objects viewed on the screen of a camera phone.

The
Nokia research team has demonstrated a prototype phone equipped with
MARA software and the appropriate hardware: a global positioning system
(GPS), an accelerometer, and a compass. The souped-up phone is able to
identify restaurants, hotels, and landmarks and provide Web links and
basic information about these objects on the phone’s screen. In
addition, says David Murphy, an engineer at Nokia Research Center, in
Helsinki, Finland, who works on the project, the system can also be
used to find nearby friends who have phones with GPS and the
appropriate software.

…

However, at this time, Nokia has no plans to transform MARA into a
commercial product. "Creating a prototype and creating a product are
very different things," says Murphy. Some of the challenges are
technical: minimizing power consumption in a phone with multiple
sensors, and extended use of the camera. And some of the challenges are
logistical: addressing privacy issues, and deciding the number and type
of objects to maintain in the object database.

Source: Technology Review