Get started in augmented reality with Poistr

If we asked you to show us augmented reality, you’d likely fire up apps like Layar or Junaio, both leaders within the augmented reality space. But, what if we asked you to create some AR elements? Where would you start?

As this space grows, to remain relevant, it will be critical for business owners to be visible in the AR world and a new service called Poistr aims to simplify the entire process.

Poistr enables non-developers to create elements and points of interests that will be viewable using the Layar app, one of the world’s most popular AR browsers.

It works like this: Users begin by creating a “Layer” of information which can display a variety of elements in augmented reality including images, links to a website or a telephone number.  To start creating the layer an address or specific location must be provided. If you were creating this layer for your business, you’d be able to input the venue’s address to trigger your elements within the Layar browser.

Users can create various objects within the layers coupled with a way to set the range of each action (the active range in meters your objects can be triggered). The intuitive interface for developing layers makes it easy to add videos, images and audio by simply giving Poistr the URL to the media file. Additionally, details about the location such as the telephone number, SMS, website URL and email address can be added.

Another cool feature of Poistr allows users to easily import multiple POIs or locations via KMZ files and GeoRSS (Coordinates from Google Maps). Alternatively as we’d mentioned, the address can be manually input as well.

Poistr is still in beta and it’s currently free. As it stands today, the layers are only viewable within the Layar browser (within Poistr’s demo layer) but it’s planning on extending the service to Junaio soon.

When the final version comes out, users will have the ability to publish their points of interest to Layar and Junaio and it will be viewable by anyone using the apps. Poistr appears to have a section for pricing however it hasn’t released any details as of yet.