Dragons!

So what's the first item of the day? Well, as I was strolling through the latest MIT Technology Review, the headlining article caught my eye right away. Actually, it was the accompanying picture that got my attention. Rising from the pages of an unopened book was a 3-D dragon perched on top of a hill of treasure. Sweet as.

Turns out that a publishing company in the United Kingdom has released the first book to be enhanced by augmented reality. This term was pretty new for me, so I had to do some brief research:

Augment Reality is the by product when the real and virtual world come together. The real world, in this case, is live streaming video that is enhanced by computer generated imagery. I didn't know this until now, but the yellow first down makers seen on televised football games are examples of AR. Nifty.

This book, Drake's Comprehensive Compendium of Dragonology, uses the same technology to bring a 3-D dragon to life. After installing a software plug-in, a web cam reads markers on the page as spatial reference points and recreates the dragon on your computer screen. The dragon is as life-like as possible; it moves, roars and even naps. As you rotate the book in front of the camera, the dragon similarly turns allowing for a complete perspective.

AR may possibly rejuvenate print media. As newspapers and magazines are becoming completely accessible through electronic sources, printing on paper has simply become costly and inefficient. Even books are being replaced by technology like the Kindle. Using AR to enhance print media may just save the dying medium. AR will not only create an entirely new experience with print, but perhaps an entirely new way to retrieve information.

Augmented reality is becoming increasingly more prevalent in our lives and it's exciting to see what will come next.