What is Zappar? It's a clever little app that can see and recognise images and objects in the world around us, using augmented reality.

Finally back from London after attending the London Book Fair earlier this week. It was an exhausting couple of days, but I got to see some interesting seminars. One of the ones that stuck out the most was about augmented reality in publishing. There was a demonstration of an app called Zappar. It works by opening up the app and pointing it at a book or object that uses the technology. There's a little symbol that it has to read in order to activate it. One really cool example was a book about dragons where the app scanned the cover and then it opened up to reveal a dragon egg that hatched and you could interact with. 

The seminar also gave an overview of what augmented reality is and how it can best be used in conjunction with the publishing industry. Of course, it has to add value to a publication and not simply be used for just gimmicky purposes. I definitely think there is a future for this kind of thing in the publishing industry, specifically for children's books, special editions, and non-fiction/text books. Although, the dragon novel was also really cool, but I can't see it being used too much for adult genre fiction. 

"Spotted this morning at Earls Court tube station #lbf14"