Is this the future ... hmm ... not quite

A small article in the most recent .NET magazine grabbed my attention and after reading the first paragraph and seeing the images on screen, I immediately came to the conclusion that an amazing technological future is upon us. 

"The reason was the Sekai Camera, an iPhone application that takes the view from the phone's camera and augments it with data overlays including user-generated content. Could this be the future of social apps?" (.NET Magazine December 2008, page 52)

So, my first thought was, this application connects to the video of the iPhone, and recognises the shapes of buildings, and along with geolocation GPS gives you the right content. This would be a killer application, especially if it was to connect to existing XML datasources to provide the content that you see on the screen.

However, it is much simpler than that. It only uses the geolocation. Where you are and in which direction you point the iPhone draws the appropriate data from a demo database.

Although, still an amazing piece of social app for your iPhone it is somewhat misleading in lending too much emphasis on the video aspect of the application.

But nevertheless a step in the right direction!

View the presentation and get more information about the company.