Robert Scoble demos Near U, a free augmented reality app from lastminute.com that overlays nearby restaurants and bars on your iPhone camera. It uses the compass to guide you toward them, and works best on the iPhone 3GS.
Questions this video answers
Near U
Dragan Babanovic
Robert Scoble
July 15, 2009
lastminute.com (the app is described as a lastminute.com application)
That's not your name. It's not quite spelled right, but you got the coolest iPhone app and we're here in London, so I wanted to get a real short demo of what. What is this anyways?
Okay, so this is called Near U and it shows you nearby things to do.
And we're going to find it by searching the itunes store for nru.
Nru. It's going to launch hopefully in a few days. We're just waiting for Apple to approve it.
Okay.
And so what I've got showing at the moment is nearby restaurants. And when you hold it flat, you can see them kind of arrayed around you.
Yeah.
So there's like some in this direction, some in that direction. It's hard to see. Is that a little bit of reflection there? Okay.
Yep.
All right. And when I hold it up, should I do that?
Yep.
All right, here we go. The display is going to change a little bit and now you're going to see a sort of straight ahead view of things in different directions. As you move around, you can see there's a big gap there because that's the Thames river and then there's a bunch of restaurants kind of that way. And if you want to.
So as you're aiming this iPhone around, it shows you which direction things are. So if you want to find a bar, you can see there's a bar across the street or that way.
And it really is for people who are kind of in a city wondering what to do and you think, okay, bar, restaurant, cinema, all kinds of things. Find one, click on it with the restaurants you can go through, book a table, see if there's a special deal. So this is lastminute.com application and this is one of the products that we have.
How much will this cost?
It's free. Free, absolutely.
Very cool. And it uses the compass, so you need the 3GS iPhone.
So yeah, without the 3GS it will still work, but it won't have the movement, unfortunately. So you do need the new phone to get the full functionality.
Very cool. Well, this is the coolest thing I've seen in uk. Maybe Spotify is competitive with you, but this will work on my phone in the United States. So I'm very happy. Thank you very much.
Okay.
And by the way, how do I spell your last name?
Should I give you a cod?
No, no, no, just say it.
Okay. It's B, A, L, A B, A, N O, V, I, C. Very cool.
