Here's an interesting cool mobile app released by layar, a company based out of Netherlands.
Basically the app figures out exactly where you are and in which direction you're looking, and then it presents additional data overlaid on top of the camera's image. Be it a bank's ATM that you may want to reach or imagine you reach a locality in your city and would love to find some houses to live here, just use layar and it will find you some houses, real estate agent too and you can call him right away!
Watch it live here:
I do believe it has limitations. It's not all pervasive at it looks:
a. You need an android phone
b. The service needs to be available in your country.This to me is a serious limitation. In a country like
India, which has a huge penetration of mobile phones, it will serve a real need. In a world of connected
information that's almost seamless, one cannot be selective in making such a service available. To
me it must be simple enough to be downloaded and used anywhere in the world. The data on the web
must be leveraged. This is really where most services fail. You can't have a product on the net and
expect it to be available only in Europe, US and Netherlands.
c. It still needs the consumer to do something to throw this data thro' this browser. The novelty factor
may die after some time. It needs to be embedded with what the mobile phone consumer does. I am
sure this will improve over time.
I do think applications like these will redefine the way consumers, data providers and advertisers will collaborate in the future.