Nokia’s mad scientists working at Beta Labs have released a new application called “Nokia 3D World Gaze”. Like many augmented reality applications that have come before it, most of which are absolutely pointless and serve no other function than being a technology demo to wow a crowd at a conference, you point your mobile phone in any direction you please, and the app will then show you the places around the world that are lined up directly in front of you. If you’re bored of that then you can also just browse around, like you would if you were in front of your computer and had Google Earth installed. Watch the video below to get a better idea of what we’re talking about.
Now will someone tell us what exactly is the purpose of this application? Remember when everyone was talking about Layar and how they’d change the world with their augmented reality application? Where are they now … oh, that’s right, no one cares. The same can be said about Wikitude, who for all intents and purposes released the first augmented reality application for smartphones to the public. We question why Nokia would invest resources into this, especially at the present moment in time when the company is in a tailspin, but it’s pretty easy to figure out how the “Nokia 3D World Gaze” got support internally. Because Nokia owns all this location based data, they need to find some way to make money off of it. Release an augmented reality application, throw some ads in the customer’s field of view, and voila. The guy who signed off on this was probably conned, like many of us were when we first saw similar applications being demoed, at the future potential of this type of user interface.
Guess what, holding your phone in front of you at arm’s length makes you look like an idiot, isn’t comfortable, and most certainly is not the future.