Each industry has its own heroes, and for me, this guy, Takahito Iguchi – the CEO of Tonchidot – has to be my own personal choice for Augmented Reality’s very own hero.

Tonchidot have developed an iPhone App called Sekai Camera (World Camera in Japanese). It is a mobile social tagging system that uses the phone to link the real world with tags generated by other Sekai Camera users, Tonchidot itself, and information scraped from other web services.

Users walk around looking at the iPhone’s display to get further information on their surroundings. In a shopping mall, for example, the Sekai Camera tags will show you where you can find something to eat, or additional information about certain products that other users have tagged.

Despite a clear language barrier, Mr Iguchi held his own in a Q&A session at last week’s TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. He had the audience roaring in laughter and rooting for him, as he answered lengthy questions about how his service would actually work with brief responses such as ‘Imagination!’ and ‘Join Us!’. Here’s the Q&A session itself:

And here’s a demo of the Sekai Camera in action:

Each industry has its own heroes, and for me, this guy, Takahito Iguchi – the CEO of Tonchidot – has to be my own personal choice for Augmented Reality’s very own hero.

Tonchidot have developed an iPhone App called Sekai Camera (World Camera in Japanese). It is a mobile social tagging system that uses the phone to link the real world with tags generated by other Sekai Camera users, Tonchidot itself, and information scraped from other web services.

Users walk around looking at the iPhone’s display to get further information on their surroundings. In a shopping mall, for example, the Sekai Camera tags will show you where you can find something to eat, or additional information about certain products that other users have tagged.

Despite a clear language barrier, Mr Iguchi held his own in a Q&A session at last week’s TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. He had the audience roaring in laughter and rooting for him, as he answered lengthy questions about how his service would actually work with brief responses such as ‘Imagination!’ and ‘Join Us!’. Here’s the Q&A session itself:

And here’s a demo of the Sekai Camera in action: