Lately with the buzz around the December 20009 issue of Esquire magazine, the James Cameron Avatar movie and the augmented reality applications that are appearing on mobile devices here in North America, it has been impressive to see many major news media outlets beginning to cover or I should say ‘discover’ augmented reality.

I want to take this opportunity to aggregate some of the major news sites that have had some articles that basically cover the basics of augmented reality and a lot of examples of the major applications that have made generated buzz.

I believe we will see more and more main news outlets covering augmented reality as “virtual reality”, “3D”, “holograms” and other keywords. Once this happens, I can already start seeing alot of the industry news sites and publications such as iMedia, AdAge, and others begin to cover augmented reality and we will start seeing some relevant case studies and successful integration of AR in digital marketing.

It will be refreshing to see AR covered more than just for the wow factor or gimmicks to differentiate a marketing initiative.

Top News Outlets Covering Augmented Reality

1. Washington Post

Washington Post

“‘Augmented reality’ fuses your world and the Web” by Rob Pegoraro

Rob give a short introduction on augmented reality and describes some mobile browsers such as Wikitude and Layar.

He seems to be covering augmented reality more from the mobile device standpoint as this medium will only grow as more mobile devices become faster and integrate GPS capabilities.

Key elements to make successful augmented reality applications.

2. CNN.com

CNN covers Augmented Reality

“New phone apps seek to ‘augment’ reality” By John D. Sutter

John covers augmented reality once it became available on the iPhone and again the coverage is mostly on mobile devices and how augmented reality will begin to take off because of the fact that consumer mobile technology is now able to support AR.

There is a nice quote from Blair MacIntyre, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has taught classes in augmented reality for a decade. He says “Within a year, mobile phone applications will become much more functional, he said, and in the foreseeable future, augmented reality will move off of phone screens and onto futuristic sunglasses, whose wearers will see blips of information about everything around them”.

3. Business Week

Business Week coverage

“Augmented Reality: Not That Real Yet” By Stephen H. Wildstrom

This is a more recent article on augmented reality from Business Week. It was covered earlier in November by Rachael King who’s story is titled “Augmented Reality Goes Mobile” – The technology for meshing digital data with actual images, or augmented reality, makes a jump to smartphones, and the market is taking off.

Clearly Business Week seems to understand that augmented reality will explode due to mobile devices as well. It’s refreshing to see Stephen cover augmented reality for smartphones as not quite there yet due to certain limitations such as GPS coordinates not being absolute and the fact that the camera can only recognize locations if they are in the line of site of the AR application.

He does concede to the fact that all of these small issues will only be resolved with time and by then all of these features should be ubiquitous on most smartphones.

Additional News Sources

• cNet – Augmented reality: iPhone 3G S killer app? by  Scott Stein
• Huffington Post – Esquire’s December 2009: Augmented Reality Issue With 3-D Animation by Andrew Vanacore
• The Economist - Reality, improved – Computing: Thanks to mobile phones, augmented reality could be far more accessible—and useful—than virtual reality.
• The Web Strategist – Three Future-Looking Videos Of Augmented Reality For Business by Jeremiah Owyang