In the wee hours of this morning, around 4:30AM, I had my first experience with augmented reality. No, I wasn't dreaming. This was the real thing, just augmented!

"What is augmented reality?" you ask.

Let me explain.

I love Yelp, an application for the iPhone. Yelp is a social network in which those who participate share information about businesses. I first learned about The Veggie Grill through Yelp. Hundreds of people had eaten there, had liked it, had rated it highly, and wrote glowing comments about it. So I tried the restaurant, and now it is one of my favorites in LA.

The new version (3.0) of the Yelp application has a hidden feature. Apparently fearing the App Store might not approve the new concept, or perhaps this was a stroke of genius by the marketing department, no one knew the application had "The Monocle!" You have to go through secret gyrations, rather literally, to activate the hidden augmented reality feature set.

Monocle is sort of like a one-eyed Oracle. You launch the new version of Yelp on your iPhone and then shake the phone violently. After two attempts, the screen welcomed me to "The Monocle!"

Now, I hold my iPhone, running Yelp's Monocle, up in front of me and peer through the screen, which has activated the camera and shows me, on the screen, what is actually out in front of me--reality. As I move the iPhone around in 3D space, information overlays appear in the direction of restaurants ahead of me in that direction--augmenting reality in real time with overlaid information. I just follow.

I can touch any of the overlays (which contain a name, up to a 5 star rating, general pricing information, and the businesses category) to get detailed information about the business from the Yelp site. As I walk, Monocle guides me to the location I choose!

This is nothing short of radical!

Imagine the day you walk in front of a restaurant and the Monocle shows you the menu. Or, you walk by a store and the Monocle shows you the sale items inside!

Below is a screen shot from my iPhone when I was standing on the balcony looking out over the street below. Five restaurants were near me. (As you can see, I waited until day break to make the screen shot.)

We chose a nearby French restaurant, Creme de la Crepe Café, that had numerous positive reviews and a high rating. One touch later and Google Maps was providing us with turn by turn directions. I must recommend Creme de la Crepe Café, pictured below. The food was indeed authentic and delicious. The staff was French.

The challenges presented for this technology to work well: your databased longitude/latitude information must be spot on; you must have clear, unfettered access to the GPS signal and the compass. Also, when too many places are nearby, the screen becomes really difficult to read!