Augmented reality trip

Augmented reality is the sort of thing that sounds as though it occurs after a few too many whiskies or several puffs on a deliciously mellowing joint. Actually, it's more like everyday, but better, more colourful - and confusing. 


Until last month my experience of augmented reality in the gadget-function sense was limited to holding a cleverer-than-average mobile phone a few inches in front of me and remarking on the way the mean streets of King's Cross had been magically mapped out and the thronging traffic magically relegated to the background. 


See - like reality but better. A bit like the human-but-not-quite-all qualities of the characters in a certain TV series called Heroes, in fact. 


Not uncoincidentally, Heroes creator Tim Kring has been in London this summer as part of a project known as the Conspiracy For Good. Being a do-gooder know-it-all, when Nokia got in touch to explain the concept, I was intrigued by the phrase, though how it all worked initially escaped me. 


Part game, part charity fundraiser and awareness-raising project, Conspiracy For Good blends storyline with secret forums and codes and plausible-sounding privacy-busting plans to use the capital's extensive CCTV network to track and record citizen's every movements. It uses technology - including the augmented reality feature on the Nokia X6 mobile phone - to help it kick against the system. 


Managed by the fictional Blackwell Briggs security company, the surveillance society rings alarm bells with Conspiracy For Good Unmembers, who set out to do their best to disrupt the Big Brother-style monitoring. 


Word of the Conspiracy For Good and its forerunner group of Unmember activists has spread organically across the web and through a series of secret websites unlocked by codes hidden in other sites. 


July and August has seen the action move from web to mobile web as gamers and CFGers joined together in four London-based live action events. We took part in the first in which singer Nadirah X who, in the guise of a conspirator, was bundled across town with the assistance of CFGers who followed in her path to a temporary safe house thanks to clues in the form of video messages delivered to suitably sophisticated mobile phones - the aforementioned Nokia X6. 

The clues themselves were embedded in buildings and signs scattered across a two-mile stretch of London, with delivery triggered by pointing a specially set up handset at a image described in the previous clue. Object recognition rather than face-recognition drove things, in other words. 

Augmented reality in action: a specially developed version of the Nokia Point & Find app allowed video messages to be embedded in secret locations around London

Though I was sceptical about how much 'good' would come from the Conspiracy For Good, Nokia says several charities have benefitted significantly. Beneficiaries include five libraries in Zambia that are set to receive 100,000 books from the Pearson Foundation and the Room To Read project, donations of new toys to give as Christmas gifts to be distributed by charity Kids' Company and volunteers helping clean up the Thames riverside. 


For more details and to join the game or to become an Unmember, see www.conspiracyforgood.com.