About a year ago, after facing the difficulty of finding trustworthy travel information on the Internet, we made a striking observation. We all follow the same pattern when preparing for a trip, whether it is looking for a great hotel in Hawaii, or simply a place to spend a Sunday afternoon when an old friend comes to town.

Recommendations from family and friends is the number one influence in making decisions.

We browse the Internet, we Google, look at hotel leaflets, consider a happy hour voucher, trawl through tons of websites. And of course, the more important our trip is, the more time we spend researching. But when it comes to nailing down a decision, what do we do? We talk to friends.

You, your friends and family own a great pool of knowledge altogether and most likely you share common interests. The best tips are mostly shared by word-of-mouth, you’re all connected through social media, and there are over 100 Mio FB posts a day!

So we thought why not build a app around that! An app that is built around the fact that friends and family are the Nr. 1 influence in making decisions.

You can try out Wikitude MyWorld (beta) here.

Augmented Reality on small screen smartphones is one thing but holding a 10 inch display in your hands takes it to a whole new level of user experience. With a special user interface, Wikitude is now the first Augmented Reality Browser which is Android tablet optimized and is available on all Android Honeycomb devices (Android versions 3.0 and 3.1). Some of the popular devices which are compatible with Wikitude include the LG Optimus Pad, Samsung P4, Motorola Xoom and Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

“With so many great tablets coming to market, we are excited about this new version of the Wikitude World Browser with specifically tablet users in mind. This tablet optimized version of Wikitude offers a split screen, which enables you to see the Augmented Reality view and the World selection screen at the same time. It’s now really easy to switch between the different worlds around you without losing the camera view or having to return to the home screen” explains Andreas Hauser, Head of Android Development at Wikitude.

Split screen also available in the Map View

The Wiktiude 6.1 update for Android is not only a tablet version but also contains upgrades for Wikitude Android smartphone users. Changes include language support in Czech, Polish and Portuguese as well as some great UI updates.

Check out Wikitude on Flickr for some more screenshots and impression of Wikitude 6.1 for Android.

Wikitude 6.1 for tablets and smartphones is available in the Android Market today. Download this latest version here.

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery (more details).

An Augmented Reality Browser scans your surrounding for (e.g.) geo-referenced content using the camera and the device’s sensors. The obects’ information is displayed in the cam right where the real object is located.

There are millions of places to discover in Wikitude whereat you are most likely interested the ones nearby. The World Browser collects the closest places of all local content providers, so you immediately know what’s happening around you. Each place (or POI, Point Of Interest) belongs to provider, a so called “Worlds”. Local Worlds are listed on strt-up, each one providing information of places around you. E.g. check “Wikipedia” to see all Wikipedia information around you. You can then watch it in a List, on a Map or in the Cam (AR-View). This way you always know what’s around you, no matter where you are.

One may want to find places relevant to a specific search-term – Wikitude also provides a powerful Location Aware Search, which scans all local Worlds for the specific term (e.g. enter “Pizza” to get everything related to Pizza around you).

Wikitude requires Compass, Accelerometer, GPS and Camera and is available for almost all devices with the requested hardware:
Android Phones, iPhone (3Gs, 4) but also some Nokia smart-phones.

If you want to upload your Content (and be listed as a “World”) feel free to contact us or have a look at Wikitude.me to you find more details on publishing places via file-upload or web-service.

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