Cell phones can do so much these days. You can check the weather, stay in touch with people instantly from all over the globe, get satellite-fed directions, and even look up the answer to any question you could ever imagine. Cell phones are great, cell phones are awesome; but they are not good enough. Who wants to have to hold something all day anyway? If you hate having to use your hands to multitask, then 2012 is the year for you.

The definition of the word wearable is simple and self-explanatory: capable of being worn or suitable to be worn. The term has seemed pretty ordinary for hundreds, if not thousands of years. That’s all about to change. Some of the biggest names in technology are fine-tuning devices combining the coolest in 21st century gadgetry, that can be worn on your wrist, around your neck, and even on your face.

If you haven’t yet heard of Augmented Reality (AR), then brace yourself for a game-changer. Unlike virtual reality which attempts to bring real life into a virtual world, AR overlays artificial information about the environment and its objects onto the world we live in.

Augmented reality is a “live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” You may have seen early forms of AR on your cell phone. There are several apps out, such as the night sky app, that recognize an image, and project new data on top of the image. With augmented reality, the possibilities are both endless and entertaining. Business cards, for example, are changing forever, with personalized secret messages only visible through the AR spectrum. Check out an amazing example below.