Time Out New York is using mobile augmented reality in its August issue - the first magazine to do so on its cover, it says. Readers can point their smartphones at the cover to render a video of PS 22, the award-winning fifth-grade chorus from Staten Island. (via VizWorld).

Augmented reality is becoming a technique that, if not yet commonplace, is increasingly being used by magazines to draw attention and readers. The July issue of BBC Worldwide's science and technology magazine Focus used augmented reality in an image of a scream-style mask on its cover. Readers would have to visit the 3D section of Focus magazine's website, holding the image on the cover up to their web camera, to see a spider crawl out of the eye of the mask and run across the page.

Other examples include the July 2009 issue of Popular Science magazine, which ran an interactive 3D augmented reality magazine cover, followed by Entertainment Weekly’s September 2009 issue, whose AR cover showed a video through a small screen integrated into the pages of its magazine. Another example is the London newspaper The Sun, which published a 3D edition with 3D-color ads and editorial for the World's Cup. However, mobile augmented reality is far less common.