Jeremy Gilbert : Design Thinker, Professor and Multimedia Journalist

Hours earlier, I tried to impress upon some Medill students the potential of various mobile technologies. Augmented Reality generated the most interest and skepticism. What I didn’t know was that John Markoff had already been shown a demo of Autonomy’s Aurasma by their CEO Michael Lynch.

…The best part of the demo came when Mr. Lynch held an iPad up to a copy of a recent New York Times. For everyone who has seen Harry Potter and his magic newspaper, the implications are obvious. The above-the-fold photo of Hillary Clinton at a news conference on the front page springs to life in the form of a video image of the news conference she was speaking at. It’s technically impressive because the video appears to play correctly within the frame of the newspaper page even as the iPad moves about.

While the demo implies that tablet owners would have a newspaper to point at — definitely not a certainty — it raises exciting possibilities for all kinds of other media interactions. Like watching Jackson Pollack paint the canvas in front of you. Or re-living movie magic filmed on the street in front of you.

And as Augmented Reality merges with Wearable Computing the future for news delivered when needed and with geographical context seems bright.