Augmented Reality was not meant to hit the iPhone 3GS until at least the release of iPhone OS 3.1. Augmented reality uses your iPhone's camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users. The potential is endless.

Yelp's new iPhone app is now the first iPhone App with Augmented Reality. It takes Yelp information and overlays it into the real-world. It's actually a secret easter egg (discovered by Robert Scoble), which may be why Apple didn't reject Yelp's augmented reality app. We have screenshots and a demo video to show you what this is all about.

How to Activate Monocle, Plus Screenshots

Robert Scoble has posted instructions on how to activate this new Easter Egg:

Download the new Yelp app (came out yesterday). So you shake your iPhone 3 times. That activates a feature called Monocle. A message should come up if you activated it. A blue box will come up saying "the Monocle has been activated." It will create a button in the top right corner. Now you should be able to look at the bars, restaurants, etc. Only works on iPhone 3GS.

It took our Jennifer Van Grove several tries and many shakes to get it to work, but if you have an iPhone 3GS, it works. The result is this:

















Screenshots don't tell the whole story though, so Jennifer Van Grove took the Yelp App out for a spin. Here is the full demo. Prepare for pure awesomeness:









It's astonishing that Yelp was able to sneak this one past Apple, but we're so glad they did.