Augmented Reality!
With the launch of 3DS Nintendo seems to be going big with AR, but so is everyone else.
Qualcomm (the people who made & then pulled Flo TV among other things) are looking to bring AR to all mobile phones with apps and other things, but its the 'other things' that has me curious. CNN just showed a flat map of an office that kind of looked like a 'Sim' game once a Verizon phone's camera focused on it. There were people walking around and they noticed when the phone was over them, and you could then pick them up and move them or just drop them for fun or for punishment for them being lazy, as the demonstrator did. They also made the point that this could be taken beyond gaming, with military purpose like looking at a plebian map and getting troop info on the device. The CNN host also thought of using between people also with a map for marking points of interest, which made me think of treasure hunts.
I find this all very interesting, and I hope that some ambitious company does do a treasure hunt 'thing' where when people find one item its taken off the map, and other items/sites pop up as the adventure goes on. This could even help the 3DS's Streetpass feature since it could encourage users to have their systems on and congregate in certain places.
Imagine if a 'game' you buy comes with a miniature map that displays your closest metropolitan area and the 3DS alerts you to nearby Nintendo/gamer events then you look at the map with the camera and AR to see where the event is. This could be used for other things like those unannounced concerts and meet-ups of like-minded people like NWR fans. For example, at a Disturbed concert there could meeting spots for people who like TOOL, Chevelle, Metallica and other bands. For Nintendo this could also be used to mark free wifi spots, VC and Pokemon giveaways etc.
There are so many ways for this technology to be used, I'm hoping that this is the 'next big thing'.
My only worry, as I started to say before, are the 'other things' (like maps) you need.