Web 2 Ireland

Hugely impressed to hear the latest news from RateMyArea; they have created an augmented reality version using the the Layar Reality Browser which has been getting tons of attention in the tech press recently.

The idea behind augmented reality is that you look “through” your smartphone and it adds lots of contextual information to what you see based on your location and the direction you are pointing in. So for example a famous building will have Wikipedia information displayed.

Here’s a screenshot of the system in action:

Their layer covers over 110,000 POIs (Point of Interest) across 400 different categories in the following cities: Dublin, Galway, Belfast, London, Brighton & Hove, Cardiff, Oxford, Swansea, Bristol and Edinburgh.

At the moment it is only available on Android devices (Oi! Vodafone, O2, Three, Meteor, where are the bloody Android phones already?!) but will be on iPhone 3GS in September.

With Layar and Wikitude launching in quick succession on Android, it’s going to be an exciting 12 months in the world of location based services.

Mike Brennan has contacted us to announce the launch of RateMyArea, a site dedicated to helping people find, review, share and discuss their favourite places. It’s a hyper-local social search site which currrently is concentrated on Dublin but they do have plans to expand their coverage.

It’s a very attractive looking site with lots of information already in the system and an intuitive UI built around Google Maps.

This is a highly competitive area with startups like OnTheMap and large businesses like YourLocal and GoldenPages trying to get the critical mass required. The ones who nail it should do very well for themselves and shouldn’t require the massive spend of US businesses like Yelp to get scale. WeLoveLocal in the UK had a nice exit after barely a year and got most of their growth in London.