User Friendly
IPhone game turns ordinary into fantastic
Augmented Reality
When what you can see with your own eyes isn’t interesting enough, there’s always augmented reality. Sure, Boston Common has an excellent playground, paddle boats, an ice rink for cheap dates, and sprawling meadows for rallies. But where are the dragons, fairies, and genies?
The Hidden Park (www.thehiddenpark.com) brings these fantastic creatures to your iPhone camera’s view of the Common. For me, a guy who failed to plan anything for my 6-year-old, Maeve, this summer, the game will help keep her engaged on those days we find ourselves strolling through town.
The $7 iPhone game mixes augmented reality with turn-by-turn directions, geocaching, and animation.
The phone’s camera and GPS transponder set the stage for Hidden Park. Armed with a Dora the Explorer-like map, you follow a troll named Trutton past the Common’s benches, over its bridges, and around its ponds. Hidden Park uses a location-based service to recognize your iPhone’s proximity to particular landmarks and then provides directions to the next spot in the game.
You will be challenged with riddles and puzzles along the way. And you’ll find the answers in real-life sights and signs. In this way, Hidden Park works like one of the augmented reality tours from Boston-based Untravel (www.untravelmedia.com).
Hidden Park works in a handful of other public parks and gardens. Visitors to Central Park and Kensington Gardens, for example, can also play the game on their iPhones.
As you photograph various landmarks around the Common, you’ll find Hidden Park cartoon characters appearing in your shots. When you’re done, you will have an album full of things you never really saw. I think of it as meeting Walt Disney characters, without worrying about who might be lurking inside the suit.
Future of entertainment
AT&T's Mobile TV offers new way to kill time, catch up on news
The future of mobile television will be on (and, eventually, in) our heads, and feature eyeglasses and contact lenses embedded with micro displays. But for now, the best way to kill time at the MBTA station or catch baseball scores while at a picnic is through your mobile phone.Thanks to the recent conversion to digital television, which freed up some room along the radio spectrum, AT&T says it can now offer its Mobile TV service not only in Boston, but also in Providence, New Haven, and several other New England cities.
Mobile TV will cost you $15 per month. Because the service airs over a separate network, there are no data usage charges.
The Mobile TV service’s picture quality is fair; the audio is good. Watching the Fox News Channel’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s death last week, I had no trouble reading the tiny scrolling headlines at the bottom of the screen. (I viewed the channels on an LG Vu phone.)
MSNBC, CNN Mobile, and Comedy Central are among the networks you can also check out through the new service.
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