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 Ever heard of 'Augmented Reality'? If no: read on to learn more about it. If yes: read on to see it live in action on the Xperia X10 :)

Augmented Reality is a term that covers a pretty wide area. It basically means a mix of real world information that is enriched (or augmented) by virtual data. It is used in swimming contests on TV for example, where a virtual line gets overlayed on the swim lanes, indicating the position for the current world record.

How does this fit into the mobile phone world? Thanks to increasing processing power and additional sensors such as compass, GPS and position sensors, the hardware preconditions are met for augmented reality applications such as Layar and Wikitude. So, how does it work? The cell phone camera pictures the reality, the GPS, compass and position sensors in the phone provide the information to determine exactly where the phone is facing. All of this information is passed to a service in the internet, which then delivers information that is blended into the camera picture.

Sounds complicated? It is not really - once you have seen it in action :) Let's head over to one of the currently two available Augmented Reality apps for Android, the Wikitude World Browser, in action. It shows the famous Madame Tussaud's Museum in New York through the eye of the X10:

As you saw in the video, Wikitude offers information, contact details etc. if you click on an object in the Augmented Reality. It uses the Wikipedia-approach of being an open library of information, where everyone can contribute and add more data which is then displayed in the Wikitude World Browser (have a look at wikitude.org for more details).

Layar follows a slightly different approach, since the user can chose between several layers of augmentation. There is for example a layer which only shows restaurant information, another layer shows search result of google searches, etc. The possibilities are quite interesting - just think of the tourist industry. What do you think? Too geeky? Too unhandy?

In our next episode of X(10)-mas in New York, we will show you another cool new application for the Android powered X10 called 'Google Goggles'. As the name implies, this app lets you see the world through Google's Goggles - take a picture of something you want to know more about, and Google provides information on that object. Stay tuned to find out how it works on the X10!