A company called Tagwhat is joining the augmented reality market with a brand new service. Their twist is simple – they allow anyone to create points of interest by “tagging” places, and eventually interact around those tags.
Here’s how it works (from the press release):
At the heart of the Tagwhat network is its patent-pending augmented reality technology that lets users leave behind digital crumbs (tags) for any location, place or thing, anywhere in the world for friends and followers to discover. Each marker is an interactive social object, and can include direct action links to email, phone, SMS, photos, URL’s, cross-posting to Twitter, Facebook, and more. As a result, friends are able to easily interact and share information with one another with the added benefit of location and AR. Suddenly, “checking in” at a particular coffee shop, dropping pictures at several bar locations from last night’s pub crawl, or creating blog entries from personal favorite locations as they are discovered or re-visited, opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. With a single click, users are able to easily let friends know where they’ll be in 5 minutes, then get turn-by-turn directions to the tagged destination, and flip through photos of a friends’ night out on the way over.
As expected, Tagwhat mobile client works on the iPhone and Android-powered devices and is/should be available as a free download from the Apple AppStore and Android Market, respectively — the iPhone 3GS app has been submitted for review and approval and should be available in the near future.
Another cool feature of Tagwhat is their channel lineup. Initially, there are four channels — Eat, Drink, Wikipedia and Foursquare — where interested companies can advertise. On the other hand, users take advantage of these channels to look for nearby restaurants, clubs and bars, and relevant content.
In a conclusion, I’ll only add that it’s a good thing to have more augmented reality apps and services emerging…