The View From Above: In Hard Focus Round-up (August 25, 2011)

Tesco Virtual QR Code store becomes a reality (sort of): 2D Code reports that South Korea’s Tesco is taking their virtual shopping model from a concept to reality with a trial store located in a major subway station. Commuters simply use the Tesco Homeplus app to scan QR codes located below items, purchasing them in-app. While you may be waiting for your morning train, you won’t have to wait for groceries, as there’s day-of delivery if you scan your selections before 1 pm. Let’s hope there’s enough cell service to make this virtual store worthwhile. See photo above.

Pinpoint your questions with Quora’s location tagging: Want to ask Quora what monument you’re looking at in downtown Atlanta? According to TechCrunch soon you can, thanks to Quora’s upcoming mapping feature, which will allow you to connect questions with specific locations on Google Maps. When you consider the amount of people these days turning to smartphones for answers on the go, it’s no wonder Quora’s getting into the game. Thinking in reverse, imagine checking a location on Quora and getting recommendations based on existing queries. 

AR Layar application connects with anonymous peer-to-peer sharing: We’ve covered the Augmented Reality company Layer, but what’s cool about the company is all the integrations it is inspiring thanks to Layar Vision, its competition around creating interesting and useful ‘layers’. Recently, SciFi writer Bruce Sterling got on board to create a layer called Dead Drops that leads people to USB drives, facilitating file sharing among strangers. Not sure why I’d want to pull out a laptop and plug it into the side of a building, but does make you think of all the interesting use cases that will come out of this challenge, and of Augmented Reality applications as a whole.