Utilities

Augmented Reality apps that overlay information on visuals from your mobile device’s camera definitely have the potential to be more than a trend. Uses like viewing restaurant reviews, real estate listings, or pointers to the nearest subway stop just scratch the surface of the game-changing power of Augmented Reality. Sometimes two great tastes don’t taste great together, though, as in the case of an Augmented-Reality-Meets-Twitter app set to launch soon in the iPhone app store.

The iPhone app is called TwittARound, and it overlays nearby tweets on your surroundings. The idea here is that people will have posted useful information about the places they’ve visited, and you can access it just by pointing your camera at something. It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t jive with the reality of Twitter, which is that the vast majority of tweets lack context or useful content. Nobody reads the public timeline on Twitter because at least 90% of it is going to be irrelevant to them, and filtering by location doesn’t help all that much. TwittARound looks like a really impressive proof-of-concept, I’m just not convinced that AR and Twitter are a match made in heaven.

[via PSFK]