Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

A First Glimpse at What is to Come

In a recent piece I wrote for Mashable, I blogged about how to make the most out of Google Maps. In doing research for mobile tools, I found the first application that actually has me jealous of Android phones—Wikitude AR Travel Guide, an AR mobile app for Android.

It’s dead simple and yet oh so powerful. Phones with the Android OS can use their camera as a lens to see beyond the surface of the real-wold view. When you point your camera in any direction, you’ll see the actual view with a layer of Wikipedia location-based content specific to your view of the world. The video below demonstrates just how cool (and powerful) the app really is.

This is Going to be Huge

This is just the beginning for AR. As more AR-ready devices are released to the public, you’ll begin to see a whole new view of the world—virtual data in actual life. Just image having your camera, camera phone, video device, or AR enabled sunglasses (that would be kinda neat) combine the actual world with a custom view of your already established online presence. You could be walking around seeing your social graph as an added visual layer to the phsyical world you already know and love. At the very least, AR could solve the relativley new problem of never being able to remember someone’s Twitter name. Think SecondLife, but substitute your real physical world—a true merging of your online and offline identities. Exciting…and a tad scary.

What happens after you complete a phone or online survey for a business you recently frequented? Absolutely nothing. You spend upwards of 5 minutes answering inane questions, probably never getting to say what you truly think, and you never hear from the company again. It’s almost like a bad one night stand. Jeff Whitton, CEO and Founder of SuggestionBox, is hoping to help improve upon the customer-company feedback loop with SuggestionBox, serving as an online suggestion management system that allows any customer the opportunity to provide and track feedback to any company.

After reading both the TechCrunch and MarketingProfs articles, I sat down with Whitton to get the real story beyond the press release. It turns out that Whitton is a serial entrepreneur with a spirit that has inspired him to dabble in business ventures since his childhood. The idea behind SuggestionBox originated from his perpetual thoughts of wanting to improve upon or enhance existing businesses. Whitton would find himself thinking, “I would love to buy that business and change A, B, & C,” but in the end those thoughts weren’t feasible. So instead of opening up his own consultancy, Whitton opted to create an online experience that would serve as the middleman between consumers and the businesses they patronize.

The suggester experience is fairly straight forward. As a suggester, a member can create a suggestion for a company, track suggestions, comment on other suggestions, and rate other suggestions. The experience is exactly what you would expect from an online suggestion box. Probably the coolest thing that I’ve yet to see reported on, though, is that SuggestionBox actually takes those customer suggestions and does their best to put them in the right hands. According to Whitton, each message is delivered to the company in question, even if the company is not a paying SuggestionBox client – they actually take the time to track down the appropriate contact information and deliver the message on your behalf.

A company, however, can use SuggestionBox to manage and follow-up on the influx of suggstions. To test the functionality, I created a SuggestionBox for the San Diego Tweetup group I organize. The feature set is pretty darn impressive. The image to the left, (see the full size image) depicts my dashboard, where I can easily update the status of a suggestion (new, under review, future, coming soon, implemented, filed away, deleted), respond to a suggester, internally score and comment on the suggestion, categorize the suggestion, and forward the suggestion via email to other people.

As a company, I can also choose from a variety of widgets and buttons to display on any of my web properties to get the word out about my SuggestionBox.

Quick Facts

• XXX,XXX – the domain name cost Whitton an undisclosed 6 figure amount
• $49.50 p/month or $495 p/year – costs for a company to have their own suggestion box
• 1 block – the actual distance from the office to the beach (seriously)

To Watch or Not

Right now SuggestionBox is privately funded, and Whitton hopes to continue bootstrapping the businesss with the paid company suggestion boxes. I couldn’t get any specific information regarding the number of paying companies, but I definitely got the sense that Whitton was less than enthusiastic about where things stand. Obviously, success hinges upon companies feeling compelled enough to own their suggestion box, which is only likely to happen if SuggestionBox garners a mainstream consumer audience. Once the consumers come, companies might be nudged into forking over $495.00 a year just to maintain a good reputation.

Some features that might help both consumer and company adoption rates are slated to be coming soon, including an API for integration between the company site and their SuggestionBox, as well as video suggestions. The site was actually built to support video suggestions, and given the latest 12seconds.tv craze, a partnership could very well be in the works.

Dan Larsen (@danlarsen) is Qualcomm’s Senior IT Manager in charge of Web Infrastructure, Web Collaboration, and Search. As a large company with locations across the globe, Qualcomm is faced with many challenges – hundreds of internal web properties, distillation of proprietary information online, and thousands of employees who can’t find each other. Dan and I chat about tackling these problems by standing up internal versions of popular social sites using open source technology – “providing secure enterprise alternatives,” and the challenges associated with doing so. What’s really interesting is that Dan is actively exploring ways to create an internal version of twitter (he doesn’t believe Identi.ca/Laconi.ca is the right answer just yet).

One of my client’s is an amazing non-profit that is dedicated to inspiring kids ages 6 – 18 to pursue science and technology through four different robotics programs, two of which are partnered with LEGO. The Wired Science video below is a really cool example of how important and powerful robotics are in the real-world.