[France] Nomao defines itself as a personnalized search engine. It helps you to find places, based on what you like or what you Facebook friends like and where you are. Their search is using not only the data they have about the places, but also what they found on the web about them (a kind of aggregator). To show the tool what you like, you just have to use a “like” button, and to find what you friends like, you can connect to Facebook.
They have had a web version for a long time that helped them to build a good database of places (classical ones such as restaurants, bars or hotels but also any kind of shops, theaters, sport centers etc. or even dentists :p) but it also showed interest in mobile from the beginning, with a mobile version. Even if Nomao on the web is available in different languages, their iPhone app is only available to French users by now.
Their iphone app, with its new release, brings augmented reality to their mobile search, allowing people to visualize very easily the results of their search arround them, with all the details coming from the Nomao database or what it’s found on the web (recommendations, details, pictures etc…) The AR feature has been developed in house by the team (and not using Layar Framework as lots of AR apps do).
Nomao has been founded by serial French entrepreneurs (one of them is the co-founder of Dailymotion, and three others founded Over-Blog that is now the number one Blogs portal in France, with almost 9 million unique visitors per month) and are self-funded. The team is based both in Paris and in Toulouse.
Qype, or the number one iPhone app for discovering places recommended by friends in France called Dismoiou/Tellmewhere have not yet improved their applications with augmented reality. In fact, Yelp had incorporated an Easter egg with AR during the summer, and Qype reviews are present in the AR iPhone app called Wikitude (with wikipedia content).
Augmented Reality is already a huge trend, especially in the mobile industry. In case you missed them, here is a list of announcements or players worth checking:
- Sekai Camera has finally published its app
- Layar 3.0 is ready to add new features
- Metro Paris Subway iPhone app with AR (one of the first to have been published)
- An application for Meilleursagents.com to see the prices of real-estates with AR (Article in French)
- 2009 Readers Choice Augmented Reality Awards by Augmented Planet
- All TC articles about Augmented Reality