String Labs' augmented reality showcase app for iPhone

Want to see one of the ways that you're going to use that iPhone in the future? You should do yourself a favor and check out what String Labs is doing with their new augmented reality engine, String. What is AR, you ask? It's the merging of both your real-world environment and a virtual one, allowing for a unique experience that you can then interact with in various ways depending on the application. Did you see the first down lines on the field during yesterday's Super Bowl? That's one form of augmented reality -- the field is, of course, physically there, but the lines are superimposed over it for us to see at home on the TV.

To celebrate the launch of their platform, String Labs recently released a showcase app (free download on the App Store) that demonstrates several games and ideas which use String's AR engine. After installing the app on your iPhone and printing out the targets on their site, users can experience AR for themselves at home. This isn't the first AR app on the store by a long shot, but String's play is a platform one, not a one-off app or feature in an app.

String aims to provide developers with the "easiest-to-use and fastest augmented reality SDK on the market." It's currently only available for iOS developers, but it will soon be ready for Android and other platforms. We've seen some cool uses for AR, like in the Where To? app and Word Lens (one of my favorites), but if some of these things in the showcase app are only the beginning of what AR can do, I am really looking forward to what the future holds.

Click Read More to check out video of Pharaoh's Fury, an AR game demo.