Mobile and Technology

Lonely Planet is set to embed augmented reality features into new, Android versions of its mobile city guide apps, overlaying place-of-interest information on pictures seen through travelers’ cellphone cameras.

Published: 04 Aug 2010

Lonely Planet is set to embed augmented reality features into new, Android versions of its mobile city guide apps, overlaying place-of-interest information on pictures seen through travelers’ cellphone cameras.

According to a report filed by paidcontent.org, guides are priced at $4.99, in dollars even in non-U.S. markets, because it is onerous to deduct tax from Android Marketplace downloads outside of America.

“This is a way of us testing the Android Marketplace,” Lonely Planet’s innovation ecosystems manager Matthew Cashmore tells paidContent:UK. “There is potential here. We have 25 guides —if things go well, we will roll out the rest.”

It was in October last year when Lonely Planet stated that it became the first travel publisher in the world to make new ‘augmented reality’ products available for Google Android handsets launching a series of Compass Guide applications to highlight points of interest in cities.

“We got three million downloads in 24 hours across the apps we gave for free,” Cashmore reportedly said. “And the halo effect in to the paid apps was absolutely phenomenal—our paid downloads went through the roof.”

Augmented reality is new technology that melds real-life views with overlaid digital information as tags delivering a sensory experience that feels real. The handset’s GPS capability determines the exact location a person is standing, while an internal compass determines the direction the user is looking.

That time the city list included Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco.

Lonely Planet worked with Austrian developer Mobilizy to make points of interest in city guides compatible with augmented reality technology.