I recently traveled with a client of mine to attend the ’09 IAAPA conference. Basically, it’s a huge international expo that brings together everyone from amusement parks and any entertainment venue (e.g. Chucky Cheese, Six Flags). While wandering around the expo, I noticed this fantastic photo booth that puts augmented reality into motion.

The company that developed this mentioned that this is yet to be released to the public- but it will be very soon. Check out the short video blog (above) I shot of me demoing the photo booth. I wonder if it’s possible to allow multiple people to do this type of a photo booth at the same time?

If you’re plugged into the tech industry blogs- recently several companies are releasing “augmented reality” preview video clips. The lamence translation of augmented reality is: it provides detailed information on what you are physically pointing your camera phone “at” in real-time. When you watch the demo videos of how the technology “could” work, it certainly is enough to get the average geek excited. Take a look at the example below.

Cool huh? It’s a great concept. However, I’d like to play devils advocate + the realist perspective: Will people really want to OR remember to breakout out their cell phones and point them at stuff? I can’t help but think- while augmented reality could provide valuable data in a very unique way, from a practical standpoint, will the mainstream really use their phones to do this? Think of all the research studies regarding camera phone usage and how low the numbers are. How often do you use your camera phone?

That said, there seems to be a bigger shift needed here more than the development of the technology itself that is required first. When this technology is introduced- the socialization of how to use this technology I think will be a big hurdle that can’t be overlooked. It’s not at all impossible, but I think it’s going to be harder for the adoption of use of this technology than people think …just quick food for thought about a great technology that is certainly still in it’s infancy. It’ll be fun to track where and how fast this technology develops.