Interface With Life

So I had forgotten that my phone, a Sony Ericson 580i, had a pedometer function. So being intrigued to know how much exertion occurs on any given day I turned it on at the beginning of the week to track my steps. I ride my bike to work everyday, walk around alot at work, and frequently pace about when I am deep in thought. The results were not that surprising, but impressive if I do say so myself. Yesterday I had to work and help my friend move and my final count was almost 9 miles.

The most awesome part however was the little app contained within that graphs your results during the week, tracks burned calories, but best of all it gives you achievements (akin to those of the Xbox 360 persuasion) for reaching certain goals. Such as I received a Gold "Vagabond" award for taking over 5000 steps in one day. This actually made me more excited to try and earn the others.



So I came to a realization about how awesome augmented reality games are. Instead of virtual reality or full immersion, I believe the next step in gaming is to bring the game to our realm. Like in place of us interfacing with the games; controlling what is going on in someone else's world, the games interface with our life In places that are more familiar to us. Fight aliens in our backyard, play football in the street with the pros, stuff like that. Like interacting with hallucinations only a computer is keeping score.

Here are some that I found that further this notion that augmented reality is the next step:





this ones kind of cheesy