Probably the single most interesting startup (as far as I’m concerned) from the first round is Layar. Under the tagline “Browse the world,” Layar is offering the augmented reality service to deliver great location-aware experience to the end user. We’ve seen a demo showcasing application running on the Android device enabling users to look at something, point their phone, and see balls on the screen representing various offerings nearby. And when you click on any of the balls, you get additional information about it. For instance, they talked about finding jobs, real estates for sale and rent, local businesses and so on.
At the moment, Layar is available as a free application in the Netherlands and it works with Android phones, only. More countries are planed for the future and the same goes for more devices being supported, though every one of them needs to have a built-in magnetometer (compass). In that sense, we won’t see it on the iPhone 3G but on the 3GS.
Finally, it’s important to add that Layar plans to add more content partners in the near future. They mentioned anwb for camping information, Twitter (local Tweets), and Google Local Search.