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Episode 47 of the Digital City, where we install Apple's new Snow Leopard OS update; discuss the current round of game console price cuts; check out some Netbooks with HD displays; and find out why Time Warner Cable's new "Mystro" cable box firmware update makes us want to give up on TV altogether.

Related links:
>>All things Snow Leopard
>>New price cuts upend console value landscape
>>Rise of the high-def Netbooks

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Yelp shows me what's outside my window.

(Credit: Screenshot by Scott Stein/CNET)

The hot trend of 2009 has to be augmented reality, particularly with all the impressive tech demos and futuristic games currently in development across the world.

On the iPhone in particular, several companies have promised Twittering, search, and other navigation using layers of real-time data overlaid onto live video from the iPhone's camera. Imagine a heads-up display on reality itself, and that's what augmented reality is promising.

Apple has been onboard with these developments, promising that the upcoming OS 3.1 will provide full compatibility for AR apps. But it turns out we don't need to wait after all. In addition to French and British AR map programs hitting the App Store early, a much better and cooler solution has been lurking under our eyes the whole time.

Called "Monocle," it's an Easter egg within Yelp. As in, Yelp 3.0, the one that's currently available on the App Store. When I first read a tweet about it, I was disbelieving. But all you have to do is shake your phone three times like in some fairy tale to trigger the Monocle button, which suddenly appears on the top of the screen.

Launching it brings up honest-to-goodness overlaid restaurant and bar information that moves as you move, aided by the iPhone 3GS's built-in compass. It resembles the demos seen by the Layar browser.

That compass is key for AR apps to work properly, because it senses direction. GPS alone won't cut it, which means you'd better have a 3GS to pull this off. Give it a try, though, and let us know if your 3G will work on it. And don't forget to update the Yelp app before shaking.

Will we use this? Maybe not so much, but we sure will enjoy showing it off.

(Via Fast Company)

Augmented reality--in case you haven't been following, is a technology blending video cameras and computer graphics enabling you to interact with virtual creations in the real world. In practice, it looks like virtual reality crossing over into actual reality. You may have heard the buzzword, but as of late, it's becoming a serious gaming trend. At last week's PlayStation holiday preview in New York, one of the most talked-about titles in Sony's fall lineup was its hi-tech attempt to take on Nintendogs, called EyePet.

While it was definitely one of the most impressive augmented-reality game demos we've seen, it's far from the only one. Here's a rundown of EyePet as well as some other augmented-reality games of the future we're looking forward to playing. And is it just us, or is the angle of most of these titles to "make little animals appear next to you?" Clearly, if this is any indication, get ready for a whole lot more hallucinatory ghost creatures dancing on your coffee tables for holidays to come.

Eyepet (Sony, PlayStation 3)
Sony's been quietly leading the pack in U.S. augmented-reality game development, starting with 2007's bold but unsuccessful trading-card battle game Eye of Judgment. Although interactive PlayStation Eye software has been available on the PSN Store that achieves other AR effects, EyePet is their first major push at a mainstream home entertainment product. ... Read more

Layar running on Android, but the iPhone 3G S could up the augmented ante.

(Credit: SPRXmobile.com)

While video recording, more storage space, faster processor speeds, and better games have been the main calling cards for the iPhone 3G S, the biggest reason to upgrade may be yet to come--and it has to do with the seemingly most innocuous feature of all, the magnetometer.

Imagine a browser in which you view the real world through a camera lens and a heads-up display picks out interest points amid the living cityscape. This type of augmented reality has been the stuff of science fiction, but the cell phone browser Layar by Dutch software developer SPRXmobile claims to make it real. See the video for yourself.

Layar takes the sort of GPS POI data in current map-based apps, like ATMs, houses for sale, or nearby hotspots, and displays them overlaid on the landscape as seen through the camera lens.

It's debuting later this month for Android phones in the Netherlands--not exactly a huge starting demographic, but if it works, this could be the start of something big. ... Read more

E3's come and gone, but some oddities still linger. Shown during the Sony E3 press conference and discussed little after that, Invizimals is a curious game using the PSP's camera to create augmented reality "animal ghosts" that appear in real-life settings. Coded capture cards seem to attract the beasts, after which they do battle to each other. Nintendo DS-like blow-and-shake controls add extra input to the critter-fighting.

Confused? Check out the trailer. Would augmented reality gaming be something you'd like to see more of? Would it be something you'd trust the children with? And, most importantly, where is our PSP camera? Perhaps it is on its way with a certain Invizimals?

Hopefully the end result will be more compelling than the admirable but incredibly arcane augmented reality PlayStation Eye trading card game The Eye of Judgment.

Now you see it, now it's augmented.

(Credit: Marco Tempest)

For decades, slightly cheesy sleight-of-hand artists around the world have promised that "you won't believe your eyes!" before demonstrating ageless moves handed down from generation to generation.

Now that an ever-accelerating cascade of eye-popping visual technology such as augmented reality has threatened to steal some of the magic dust from old-fashioned magicians, along comes a pasteboard prestidigitator who folds augmented reality into his own YouTube-ready routine.

Enter Marco Tempest, a renegade cardsharp and AR artist who assembled an open-source, real-time theater of the future for your entertainment, called Augmented Reality Magic 1.0.

Is this, ladies and gentlemen, magic of the future?

Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.

This technology will be great for navigation apps, and for games.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--While it sounds like a traveling magic show, Mobile Augmented Reality is actually the future of how we'll access information on our wireless phones.

Though researchers around the world have been developing the technology for a decade, Nokia gave us a peek at its foray into the field Thursday when it opened its Nokia Research Center (NRC) in Palo Alto, Calif. And yes, it is a little bit magical.

Combining mobile cameras, GPS, orientation sensors and wireless devices, mobile augmented reality lets a device capture an image of a location, like San Francisco's Union Square, for example. Using GPS, names of locations would pop up on the image. The text could then be hyperlinked to give more useful information, said David Murphy, research engineer at NRC.

For instance, if looking south from Union Square, you could point the camera at The Cheesecake Factory on the top floor of Macy's and check how many tourists you'd have to wait behind to gorge yourself on a giant piece of cake.

And looking even further into the future, with the deployment of indoor positioning systems, mobile augmented reality could allow information on things like museum exhibits to be available instantly and at the click of a button.