Qype recommendations for Layar Reality Browser

Hoppala announced two new layers for the upcoming Layar Reality Browser 2.0 on the Layar NEXT event in Amsterdam today. “Layar meets Qype” integrates the Qype.com recommendation platform into augmented space and “Stuttgart Region Clusters” showcases industry cluster visualization using augmented reality technology.

Layar meets Qype

Qype.com is the leading recommendation portal in Germany, Great Britain and France. “Layar meets Qype” now brings Qype recommendations of restaurants, bars and events onto your mobile phone. Using the Layar Reality Browser your phone’s camera display is turned into a local information and recommendation portal.

Imagine being on vacation in an unknown city, looking for a good restaurant in the area. Just use the camera in your mobile phone to view the area around you, and immediately you see all the local recommendations of the Qype community merged into your camera’s display. Small information widgets tell you details about distance, direction and rating, including thumbnail photos for a quick first glimpse. You can easily browse through all the community recommendations on your handset with just one click.

Learn more about “Layar meets Qype”.

Stuttgart Region Clusters

Stuttgart Region Clusters visualizes various industry clusters in the Stuttgart Region, South Germany. It was designed and created in cooperation with the Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation. It’s mostly used for marketing purpose.

Using Stuttgart Region Clusters on a Layar equipped mobile phone provides a totally new user experience on industry cluster representation, best done from an exposed view point. Therefore I went up the Stuttgart TV tower to show the power of AR industry cluster visualization from 150 meters above the city rooftops. Learn more about the TV tower experiment.

Augmented Reality

The Layar Reality Browser is a so-called “augmented reality browser” (AR browser) which overlays your mobile phone’s live video stream with digital data in a local context. Data access can be provided using the Layar API which connects your own database to the Layar service using web service technology.

Hoppala is one of the first 50 members of the Layar Beta Developer Program. We are working closely together with Layar to integrate more external data services, and the Hoppala team is helping other content providers to make more location-based content available online.

You also want to publish geodata to Layar Reality Browser? Please feel free to contact me to help you on developing your own layer webservice.

This entry was posted on Montag, August 17th, 2009.