Multi Search Topics

There are demos a plenty of taking photos of book covers to retrieve reviews and online prices. If you are new to augmented reality then it’s actually not that new. SnapTell have both an iPhone and Android application that provides this functionality. Just take a picture of the cover of a DVD, CD, Book, or Video Game and the software uploads the image to the SnapTell server and runs image recognition to compare the picture against likely matches. Once a match is found you get the usual mix of online reviews and cheaper prices.

Recognising a barcode image I would assume is a lot less complex than recognising a book cover since there are less colours and shapes to contend with. Barcode shopping is another feature of Google Goggles and again there are various products available that provide the same functionality, ShopSavvy on the Android or RedLaser on the iPhone are just a few examples. I use RedLaser from time to time to see just how obscure the product range is. GoCat Tuna and Herring cat crunchies is the most obscure product I have managed to have recognised so far. To compete with Goggle’s logo recognition there’s GetFugu for the Android, iPhone and the Blackberry so again nothing new there. Goggles will search on wine bottle logos which as far I as know is unique as I don’t know any other application that does that today, but I’m sure it’s only a small leap from recognising a book cover to recognising a wine label.

You might think that I’m having a dig at Google but far from it, just becuase they are not first does not make the application any less cool. There are some really fantastic features in Google Goggles that make me drool. I’m no art buff but Goggles will enable me to become an art critic and give me relevant information about major pieces of art, all I need to do is sneak a crafty picture when the security guard isn’t looking and Goggles will tell me the name of the picture and the artist. Fantastic if you are walking around a museum but again it’s probably not a huge step in recognising the Mona Lisa or a paperback copy of C++ for dummies, ultimately it’s a blob of shapes and colours that are compared. Nether the less it is a fantastic use of image recognition.

My personal favourite and the piece de resistance of Google Goggles is a feature that must have the CEOs of the various augmented reality browser companies laying awake at night as Google are about to change the way location aware augmented reality browsers work.

The way augmented reality browsers work today is they use LBS to figure out your current location and the compass to see which way you are facing. With that information they can determine what points of interest you might be facing. Most of the time it works pretty well but I’m sure you know that GPS is not accurate, sometimes my tests have been accurate to 30 meters and sometimes it strays to up to a mile. If you are facing a landmark the visual indicator provided by the augmented reality browser may or may not be shown near by the object you are looking to locate. The second problem is there could be a building between you and the point of interest; the application has no way of actually knowing what is in front of you and what you are really looking at.

Google Goggles however uses image recognition on the landmark. If you are standing at Big Ben in London it sends a copy of the image to the database, performs an image match and then tells you precisely what you are looking at, not what might be around you and in that general direction. The accuracy is so good you can sit at home in California and look at your holiday snaps of Big Ben and it will still recognise the landmark. Fantastic when you get back from a trip and wonder just what all those photo’s are actually of.

Google’s strength is obviously search and the vast array of seemingly endless images that have that their disposal. Properly indexed there would seem to be no limit to what can recognise, particularly if they open up the API for developers to produce our own plug-ins. What breed of cat is that? Cat recognition plug-in tells me is a British Short hair and it’s favourite food is fish. That’s a nice car what is it? Car recognition plug-in tells me it’s an Aston Martin DB7, insurance group is a 31 and it has a top speed of 186mph, but I can’t afford it because my bank plug-in is warning me based on my current salary I would have to save for 30 years.

You can’t help think that terminator vision has just got a step closer. Some six or seven months ago we got our first augmented reality browser, now at the end of the year it seems like we are about to take a huge step forward in augmented reality with Google’s arrival. It will be interesting to see how the current crop of augmented reality browser providers respond to the Google play and what is up their sleeve for the future..

The video walk-through below well worth a look at some of the features of Google Goggles.

Excellent overview of Google Goggles.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA7wwKIC24s

The first video is a rather ambitious look at the year 2012 but I think it will be more like 2020 before we see anything like this

iPhone 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n83XjFSSvM

Next is an interesting take on why it wont be a good idea to answer your holophone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBZO43h75Cw

Finally to prove that there’s an app for just about everything, there is an hologram creator application for the iPhone. The images don’t leap out the screen but it’s still an interesting application.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V2NXI6pjlY

Take a look at this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpgd8OsGtA

I’m at a bit of a loss on how to describe it, but here goes. Sticky Light is a 3D tracking technology developed by the University of Tokyo. In simple terms you point the ‘smart laser scanner’ at something, eg a drawing and it will trace the outline. You can draw in real-time and the light will continue track what you are drawing, or use your hands to interact with the laser and play pong with a buddy just by hitting the light.

I feel like I am trying to explain the unexplainable, watch the demo and you’ll want one.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9noMfsg486Y

Is it just me or would a Tron Fisbee game made with Sticky Light be cool?

Sky TV have announced that from next year they plan to broadcast in 3D, all you need is a Sky HD box and a compatible TV and oh yeah and a pair of polarised glasses for everyone in the family. (maybe a couple of spares for guests as well).

More info over at T3.

Got a burning idea for what UI you would like to see on Symbian devices in the future?
The best way to get your idea out there is to share it.

Symbian have setup the UI brainstorm website to collect and share your ideas. Visit the site to see the existing submissions, you can also email the UI guys to share your ideas. You never know, the next phone you buy could be running a UI you designed.

http://symbianuibrainstorm.wordpress.com/

In the meantime Nokia have announced a few other devices based on S60 5th Edition. (Symbian)
The E72 (click here for a review) which is an updated of the highly successful E71 and the 5530 XpressMusic (click here for a review) which is a 5800 clone.

Nokia E72

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAbgKV92E_U

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hLXeLYLu0A

Editoros Online (Brazil) hit upon the idea of using QR Codes to engage with the younger generation (that makes me feel officially old), by putting QR Code around a city in Brazil and inviting people to take pictures. They would then receive a message of either Love or Hate depending on the code. The messages they received were harvested from live twitter accounts.

They then produced a book based on the codes. The book contains 200 pages, 100 messages of love and 100 messages of hate and can only be read with a mobile phone. As there is no shortage of love/hate messages on twitter the book updates itself every week so it’s always changing.

Watch the video below, the book sold out completely and they are already looking at this as being the future of books. Imagine a school book that is always up to date with the latest content.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG4thXVM2qk

There are a lot of watch phones available, particularly on eBay from dodgy Far Eastern manufactures, but nothing that makes me want to part with my hard earned £££ (or $$$). The SpecialOPS from Phenom on the other hand actually looks pretty cool, and has a ton of features.

Features

• Watch video/movies
• FM radio receiver
• Built in camera (can also be used as a PC webcam)
• MP3 player
• Send SMS
• Bluetooth
• Vibrate mode
• Built in speaker phone

www.youtube.com/watch?v=99yjYd7nVVQ

What normally lets a watch phone down is the cumbersome UI, fiddly buttons to press and the battery life.
The SpecialOPS has an external dialling keypad as well as a touch UI (you can either use your fingers or the stylus) and the battery life (according to their website) is 2 hours call time and 120 hours (5 days) standby.

It actually looks like a nice watch, and for $295 even I’m feeling tempted.

Talking about fiddly UI’s and the danger of buying from eBay.
Imagine you’re in a bar and you just met the boy/girl of your dreams. They give you their number and you type it in to your super smart watch phone.  And this is your experience:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr17cJ1BOOs

Yeah that would freak me out as well.

I saw this on the twittersphere last night and thought ‘what a cool idea, why didn’t anyone think of it before’.

Using a twitter/AR mashup, and putting a marker on the tee-shirt, the application is able to recognise the embedded twitter username and fetch the last tweet associated with the account. Read the full blog post here.  Pretty powerful when you think about how you can use that to present your brand.

PaperTweet3d: Augmented Reality T-shirts from squidder on Vimeo.

Squidder has promised the source code to this project so keep an eye on his blog. Fingers crossed it will be on Symbian OS.

Face recognition

Nitin proposed an interesting idea several posts ago about having an AR application that looked up a LinkedIn profile. So when you are at a conference and you meet someone you’ll know who they are and how you know them. I hate it when someone comes up to you and they are so excited to see you while you rack your brains trying to figure out who the hell they are. Nitin’s idea required some kind of face recognition software so you could point your smartphone at a person’s face, and have it recognise them and show you the relevant details.

This could be step one towards the future.

Facial recognition meets Twitter (kind of) from squidder on Vimeo.

As Squidder points out in his blog, the demo is not recognizing a specific individuals face, BUT what if?