by Craig Bachmann

• Added April 25, 2010

Still doesn’t roll off the tongue – but “AR” and “Business Applications” have a destiny that seems a natural evolution of the “Location Based X” (LBx) environment.  It almost seems like cheating – the ability to correlate information, helpful hints, creative insight, based on where you are and what you are looking at.  Mobile access to all the information you need, the view finder is the new browser, interacting in the thin green line between reality and the virtual world. 

Ok, maybe not quite yet.  But more than any mapping product, location-based AR, has the potential to interface with sensors, do analysis, and enable a new type of business user.  In attending Where 2.0 2010 and looking back at 2009, it seems like an incredible amount of technology and innovation has taken place. 

Yes, there was the new Location Rock Stars of the social networking approach – I can be Mayor of X, connected to my friends in so many dimensions – and rise above it all to deliver incredible support to the Haitian disaster recovery.  This technology can change it all.

But the evolution of AR… it seems so simple – based on my location, give me access to everything I might need to know.  The demos, the panels, the debates – AR was beginning to show up at Where 2.0 like a slowly rising tide.  The common debate seemed to follow the old browser debate – do you “curate the data” or “enable a user search”.  This is where business applications come in.  Pulling together AR environments for business will test every data ethics issue – privacy, copyright, compliance, transparency .. we hope that the Where 2.0 developers will continue these debates. 

It may take 2 years or 5 years, but clearly the technology of virtual gaming will become the technology of commerce in the “real” world and “augmented reality” will be the Location game changer.  Kudos to Brady and the team for another great Where 2.0 conference.