The last several years have brought about many new technologies, services and platforms that have been intriguing, inspiring or in some cases, ultimately worthless. Few have had created the jaw-dropping response that has come with Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality Television

For me, it started with the GE Smart Grid (check out a video demo here). I had never seen anything like that. Quite frankly, I was gobsmacked. Soon other examples followed that were more even more engaging, like the AR games for A&E’s Criss Angel program (hat tip to my friends at Circ.us on this one) and a mobile phone AR game called ARhrrrr where you kill zombies with Skittles.

 All of these are innovative and entertaining, but this isn’t all that Augmented Reality can do. Yelp, the popular review site created an iPhone Augmented Reality Easter Egg in their app.  Check out this video to see how it works:

 

Nick Burcher has been all over the AR explosion, check out great examples from Nick here, here and here.

 So how will Augmented Reality go from cool toy for nerds to must have tool for marketers and artists? It’s still a little tricky to use, and you have to have a web cam, so penetration is probably pretty small right now.  The tipping point will come when the NFL or a major music star produces some original content with Augmented Reality. The current AR applications also seem to be one-offs. Can AR be integrated into an ongoing program?

We’ve seen some great technology come and go in the past, this will be a fun one to follow.