“Augmented reality” is rather a new phrase for quite an old idea – ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). Mark Weiser coined the phrase “ubiquitous computing” back in 1988 (21 years ago!) and referred exactly to what we call “augmented reality” today – a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.

Many people foresaw AR to be an important new trend for 2010, but in Japan, the cradle of many innovations, this is nothing new. They have embraced AR to their everyday lives years ago and are now coming up with an amazing AR experience.

The N Building is situated in a shopping district near Tachikawa station and is now covered top-bottom in a QR Code – a two dimensional code that holds information and can be read by digital cameras with the right software.

QR codes have great and creative applications for advertisers – you can put them on your posters, business cards, on your websites, etc, and users can decode it to instantly access more information. This practice is widespread in Japan, but in US and Europe we are still new to this.

The QR Code building facade was created by Qosmo Inc. and Teradesign. Qosmo also released an iPhone app that enables users to instantly “decode” the N Buidling. You can get store information, make reservations and – here is the craziest thing that scares people – read real-time tweets by inhabitants with their GPS feature enabled. Here is a video showing how it works.

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

The thing is that it does not matter how we find this – amazing or terrifying (i guess it can be both), because this is the future. If you happen to know japanese, you can read more about it on Qosmo CEO Nao Tokui’s blog. And if you live in Japan or are about to visit, you can try the app itself – don’t bother going to iTunes, just request it by emailing to “info [at] qosmo [dot] jp”.