Instantly transform yourself into a ravenous, brain-hungry zombie and join the ranks of the undead with the App Store's first true live-video Augmented Reality (AR+) face tracking app. Get it here.

This is more than just image manipulation… Blurring the line between reality and fantasy, ZombieMirror uses cutting-edge AR face recognition to track your movements and perform frightening undead transformations, all in real-time.

Configure your undead identity with maggot-infested wounds, dangling bloody eyeballs, skull-embedded axes and machetes, and much more. There's enough zombie combinations to last an undead lifetime.

Whether it's a zombie you or an undead friend, take photos of the action and share the horror on Facebook or via email. Save photos to your camera roll, or even assign them as friends' contact pictures for an undead fright every time they call!

WARNING: in the event of a zombie apocalypse and your inevitable degeneration into zombiehood, ZombieMirror will only serve to make you an even freakier zombie. Please seek urgent medical attention in the form of a shotgun blast to the face.

Rock'em Sock'em Robots is a two-player boxing game that was first manufactured by the Marx toy company in 1964. It features two robots that fight each other, using simple mechanical manipulation to allow the players to control their robot. The game is won when one of the opponents loses their head - the robot that is, not the player!

A number of different versions have been produced since then, and the game has sold in the hundreds of thousands, becoming something of a minor pop-culture phenomenon.

In 2000, a remake of the classic version was developed by Mattel, at approximately half the size of the original model. You can still buy this (at the time of writing) from Mattel's ecommerce shop.

Now Mattel are enabling a whole new generation to experience the Rock'em Sock'em Robots game, but this time via Augmented Reality on an Android SmartPhone!

Augmented Reality implementations on SmartPhones have actually been around for a while, but have tended to be somewhat basic graphics-wise, using floating tags to indicate points of interest. There have been examples using 3D graphics, but the limited processing power and display capabilities of mobile devices has made for a less than ideal experience... until now that is.

Mattel's AR Rock'em Sock'em Robots game features graphics that are more akin to what you would expect from a desktop Augmented Reality experience, and it enables a high degree of user interaction by using two phones to control the action - one for each player.

The game is the first incarnation of a sophisticated AR development system by chipset manufacturers Qualcomm, running on an Android 2.1 handset with a Snapdragon processor. This game has essentially been created to demonstrate the potential of this system, however it is not available yet commercially, sadly.

We will however start to see more engaging and graphically rich mobile Augmented Reality experiences like this start to appear over the coming months, as SmartPhone hardware and software continues to improve - so watch this space!

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: