There’s a whole flurry of tweets and articles popping up today about Esquire Magazine’s Augmented Reality issue. For background reference, in case you haven’t heard, Esquire has released a print magazine that features visual barcode blocks that can be held in front of webcams. The user runs an application on their computer, and holds up the magazine to view special video-based content. View the details here: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/esquires-augmented-reality-issue-hits-newstands/

But that doesn’t make it Augmented Reality (AR). That’s just media tagging. I’m sure there’s some other buzzword out there for this type of interaction, but AR is not it.

This is where all the dismissive article writers are falling short; They are assuming, incorrectly, that AR is about taking something from the real world (the magazine) and extending it into the virtual world (web). See http://www.hanskmeyer.com/archives/86 and http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/opeds/oped_esquires_augmented_reality_misses_the_point_141838.asp for examples of articles that “miss the point”.

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