I wrote about Augmented reality back in 2005, but little seem to have happened in this field until this year, when good demos and sturdy real life applications started to pop up everywhere. Here is a collection of my favorite examples.

Animated Lego Digital Box at Downtown Disney Orlando

Wikitude World Browser – AR Travel Guide part 1

Wikitude World Browser – AR Travel Guide part 2

Good: Very useful, and very global since it is based on Wikipedia and Panoramio, and probably uses Google Maps api. It also has it’s own api and a site for users to add points of interest themselves (especially useful in smaller communities where wikipedia policy prevents people from adding info, for instance about local shops or sights, like “great place to swim”)
Bad: Runs on Android :) (and how does he calculate distance/ aim at specific object? Probably have to thumb through a few points manually?) How does it work in a city like Rome, where the landmarks are EVERYWHERE?
Web: http://www.wikitude.org/

Nearest tube

Good: Very useful when you are in a foreign city. And you can easily understand the potential for this tech for displaying locationaware information in any form!
Bad: Very useless underground because you loose GPS!

Layer

Good: Cool interface, and you see the potential.
Bad: UI looks cluttered. And I don’t give a crap about property prices in the netherlands

TwittARound

Good: I am a big believer in finding ways to physically connect people. Twitter and other open social media platforms lowers peoples barrier to make contact, makes us all more playful, and when paired with a way to look around us at our physical environment like this, we can safely explore our neighbours. I you can see them, they are probably interested in talking, but you can gage their mood quickly by scanning their last few twitter messages.
Bad: Perverts!

NRU, from http://lastminute.com

Good: Does not overlay video = saves battery and leaves a cleaner interface.
Bad: Is based on a single source of info, lastminute.com, I suppose, and probably in a propriatary format. Content is king, and because we are a traveling species we want an app that gives us content for every city on the planet aka based on Google api?