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Augmented reality (AR) developers Mobilizy, makers of the Wikitude World Browser, are close to releasing their latest creation, Wikitude Drive, an app that combines AR technology with turn-by-turn driving directions. The app works by taking live video of the road captured by a smartphone mounted on the dashboard or windshield and super imposing the direction data onto it. The company announced late last week that beta testing with 2,000 volunteers had been concluded, signaling that the company may be close to publicly launching the app on the Android marketplace.

In January, the Austria-based company Mobilizy updated the Android version of its mobile augmented reality browser Wikitude to include a new feature they dubbed "Worlds," which are similar to the layers found in the alternatively popular Layar AR browser. On Thursday Wikitude 2.0 for the iPhone (version 4 on Android) was released on the iTunes App Store, brining these new Worlds to the iPhone.

Popular travel book publisher Lonely Planet has begun selling Augmented Reality apps for 10 US cities for $5 each in the Android Marketplace. The apps were built in conjunction with Mobilizy, the company behind user generated content AR app Wikitude.

In addition to offering Lonely Planet content overlayed on top of locations you view through your phone's camera view, you can also plan itineraries and get step by step directions from the app. Augmented Reality is a technology in a formative stage but support from the Lonely Planet brand is a big, if unsurprising, step.

This year has seen an explosion in the development of mobile augmented reality applications, from games and parlor tricks to incredibly useful applications that provide more information about the world around us.

Today, Austrian smartphone development shop Mobilizy, creator of the Wikitude World Browser, has announced it will be presenting a standard AR markup language (ARML) to the the AR Consortium. Such a step would remove one of the five barriers to AR that we recently wrote about: interoperability. Cross-platform, open development standards would allow users more ways to see more AR content. Read on for a video and details.

Wikitude Drive from Austrian-based developers Mobilizy, is, at its core, a GPS navigation app. What makes the app stand out, however, is that instead of a map, you just see a real-time view of the street ahead of you and the navigation data is shown on top of this video. Wikitude Drive is currently under development and will run on Android phones. According to Mobilizy, the app will offer all the standard GPS navigation features that drivers have become accustomed to. In addition, though, the company also plans to offer "social navigational features" that will help users, for example, find their friends' locations.