We may soon be adding travel guides to the list of endangered species. New models of smartphones enable us to access data or graphics provided by the Internet layered over our physical surroundings. That means you can hold up your smartphone to a street in your neighborhood and see listings for real estate values, restaurant reviews, historic landmarks and information on how stimulus money has been spent on road repairs. Even the stars in the sky are now labeled.

The technology is called "augmented reality," or AR to the techie crowd. All you need is a phone with a fast Internet connection, a camera, global positioning system reception and a compass. Marines use AR to track real time troop movements. CEO's making a speech use it to identify who is in the audience. The market for AR applications is so new that it has gone from virtually no users in 2008 to an expected 600,000 by the end of 2009.

Apps are on the way that display details about paintings when pointed at artwork in a museum, identify flowers and trees during a nature hike, or look up the names of people in your vicinity.

Ivor Tossell is a tech columnist for the Toronto Globe & Mail. He's with us to augment our reality on what's next in AR.

The Globe & Mail: ‘Augmented reality' comes to an iPhone near you

Business Week: Augmented Reality Goes Mobile

The Washington Post: 'Augmented reality' fuses the Web and the world around you

The Telegraph (UK): Advertisers pile into augmented reality

The Christian Science Monitor: Top five examples of Augmented Reality

(Photo courtesy Eric Rice via Flickr/CreativeCommons)