Lonely Planet Augments Your Reality

What if you were exploring a new city and you wanted to know about that statue or building over there? Wish you could pull the info out of thin air? Now you can, with Lonely Planet’s new Augmented Reality tour guides for the Android phone. GoMoNews.com explains:

At its simplest level, Augmented Reality (AR) means adding a layer of information over the world around you. It means being able to look at a building and automatically access information about it. It means having a giant arrow in the sky that always points in the direction of your destination. It means being able to access information and articles that someone has left floating in the street.

Lonely Planet has teamed up with Mobilizy, an AR service maintained by a community of users and editors. The two companies have launched Lonely Planet Compass guides, with 10 city guides (U.S. only) now available for Android phones (Boston, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington D.C. are available so far). The guide allows you to access through your phone any information that Lonely Planet provides about at the point of interest, and also lets you to create your own itinerary and use your phone to help you follow your planned path.

Photo of Washington Square Park from Lonely Planet Compass guide to NYC, via GoMoNews