AKQA’s website for the US Postal Service (USPS) uses augmented reality to allow users to work out what size of packing they need, saving money and reducing extra packaging. Users simply print off a 3D barcode from the USPS website and position it in front of a webcam. The Flash Augmented Reality Toolkit recognises the barcode as a placeholder and renders a model on top of it. The user can place their package on the printout and adjust the options to suite. Is this the first real world implementation of augmented reality that is actually useful and beyond a simple gimmick? I believe so.

USPS Priority Mail – Virtual Box Simulator

Wikitude AR Travel Guide – Augmented reality for Android. Mobilizy, Austrian-based business specializing in software for smartphones, has created a new software for the Android platform, Wikitude AR Travel Guide. Wikitude AR is a mobile travel guide with augmented reality functionality based on Wikipedia and Panoramio, creating a very handy application for planning a trip or for use on a trip to find out about interesting landmarks; over 350,000 world-wide points of interest are currently accessible via GPS or address and are displayed in a list view, map view or cam view.

You may search landmarks in your surroundings and view them on a map, list, and on an augmented reality (AR) camera view. You’ll see an annotated landscape, mountain names, landmark descriptions and interesting stories.

The augmented reality arena just became a bit hotter with Urbanspoon’s implementation of augmented reality into the existing feature set. You can now browse or search for a good restaurant or, with a simple shake your iPhone will reveal a random local restaurant. Building upon the results the new “Scope” feature uses Google Maps to show your position in blue and the local restaurants in red pins.

Point your iPhone at the horizon and the real fun starts, the app detects the change via the accelerometer and flips the phone to camera mode, in doing so revealing an augmented reality overlay for each of the restaurants within the viewport. Bright circles map to the restaurants, closer the restaurant, larger the circle. Urbanspoon is a social rating system that allows app users to rate each restaurant, the average rating then appears in the circles – most liked restaurants appear bright orange and restaurants with a low rating fade into shades of grey.

Sadly, the scope feature will only work with the latest iPhone 3GS.

Urbanspoon iPhone Demo

This is probably one of the sleekest uses of Augmented reality I have seen, fitting in perfectly with the above-the-line campaign. Users can turn their desk (or in fact anywhere) into a canvas for the BMW Z4 to drive around controlled by the user’s keyboard – cool.