Der Bioinformatiker

I just tried out a new iPhone application called Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy.

This is the first real augmented reality application on the iPhone 3GS. It uses the compass and tilt sensors to automatically turn the view of the night sky and shows the corresponding information.

It seems minimally buggy, especially when the tilt reaches certain angles, but it is an awesome proof-of-concept and shows what is possible with this hardware. After you see this, it’s easy to imagine other augmented reality applications, which also use the camera for additional input.

Soon, people will have this second layer of information at their fingertips. Now if only someone would bring out something like this for the iPhone….

MyExtraLife.com had a nice posting on how people in the past thought about computer games in the year 2000.

Interesting, how many of those prohecies came true, especially when looking at today’s prophecies about HCI…

It looks like there will be a huge leap in the way we interact with computers soon. No more inconvenient keyboards and inflexible mice. The iPhone is only the first commercially available gadget with multi-touch interface… the things possible with this technology can be seen in this video: