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This article is for those who love to imagine. So imagine this you’re walking down a road and you see a building and you wonder “what does this place have to offer?” Fortunately we are in the 20th century and we have something to help us get that particular information without interacting with other people. It’s called Goggles a new offer from Google. A mobile based application that uses quick identification and data manipulation to provide all your needs by a click of your mobile phone. We have search engines where we may input text or voice and obtain the information required, but now information can be collected just by a click of a picture or video.
The advancement of technology has brought forth ways to simplify the way our world works, Imagine you’re in a country where the language is unknown to you and the people are not too friendly. How would you manage to discovery the culture and history of the country on the move! The answer would definitely be Goggles which shall allow you to move around with a guide in your pocket. The concept of Goggles is simple it allows you to communicate your thought through pictures rather than text or voice. Supposing I look at some artifact I don’t really know what it is? So how can I just search about it online! If I have a text based search option I really won’t know what to type or even for a voice based search option this won’t be helpful. For such situations the Goggle concept has emerged where we don’t really need to say or think in order to obtain information, we need just point our mobiles at what is being perceived by the eyes and obtain valuable information! That’s really cool.
Goggle lets you send photos of landmark, contact, artwork, places, wine, logo, book cover or even bar code from your Android-based smart phone (Support to other smart phone to be released soon) to obtain the relevant details direct on your smart phone.
Google Goggles is currently available for Android devices running Android 1.6 and above (i.e. Donut or Éclair). Google Goggles works great with T-Mobile G1, HTC Dream G1, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, HTC Tattoo, Samsung i7500, Motorola Droid. So if you have any of these smart phones and you want to try out Goggles, start downloading the apk file by clicking here.
After installation, the process is pretty simple; snap a photo by centering your image in the Goggles screen and pressing a small camera icon button at the bottom of the screen. A scan is initiated in Goggles which analyzes the image. The image could be of a contact, Goggles separates the information into fields and lets you put the details into your Google Contacts database. If an image of a book, the app offers to let you purchase or research the specified book. If it’s a store or landmark, Goggles fetches details about the location. If it’s a wine bottle, the app offers to let you purchase it at the nearest outlet or provided you details about it. At present this application may not support object such as cars, animals or people according to the instructions but it’s a start to something new and big.
As soon as I heard about Goggles I immediately grabbed a Droid smart phone from a friend, installed the app and started clicking away at business cards, books and barcodes. Results were mixed, depending on what I was aiming at. I do think Goggles did pretty well on books it identified most of them. When the books were identified by Goggles, it provided price comparisons and previews of the book at Google Book Search and displayed Web search results. For business cards the results were more mixed. I think the data base has to be enhanced for this to work better with business cards. For identifying a store front in India was an interesting exercise. Nothing came up, while I read from other user that on their scan of store front, the names of several nearby restaurants drifted back and forth on tiny tags along the bottom of the screen, picked up by Google Latitude and/or Maps. The outcome was not so great, hope in time it could be clearer. The best example that did improve with time was Google Maps; it’s so handy now-a-days that it provided you pint point information about Bangalore city. Google Goggles need to grow, as it’s in its beta version. The range of object or items you can ID is limited. Google Labs is continuously tweaking Goggles and soon a more stable and pin point accurate application should be released. I have provided the download link do try it out.
What we could expect from such an invention as a future use, imagine a Goggle (In various designs) that would provide us information about each object that comes in view. Example: I see an individual walking by me while I am wearing my Goggle, detailed information would pop up about that individual. Supposing you’re a bachelor, you set your eyes on the most gorgeous dude or a dame based on your preference, you could get his/her contact details on the lens of your Goggle. That would be great.
“Jokes apart they would defiantly make some details private or options to make your details private [:(]”
These Goggles could provide you all the information just by a wink of an eye instead of a mouse click!
Published in January 2010 - Unibytes.
This article is for those who love to imagine. So imagine this you’re walking down a road and you see a building and you wonder “what does this place have to offer?” Fortunately we are in the 20th century and we have something to help us get that particular information without interacting with other people. It’s called Goggles a new offer from Google. A mobile based application that uses quick identification and data manipulation to provide all your needs by a click of your mobile phone. We have search engines where we may input text or voice and obtain the information required, but now information can be collected just by a click of a picture or video.
The advancement of technology has brought forth ways to simplify the way our world works, Imagine you’re in a country where the language is unknown to you and the people are not too friendly. How would you manage to discovery the culture and history of the country on the move! The answer would definitely be Goggles which shall allow you to move around with a guide in your pocket. The concept of Goggles is simple it allows you to communicate your thought through pictures rather than text or voice. Supposing I look at some artifact I don’t really know what it is? So how can I just search about it online! If I have a text based search option I really won’t know what to type or even for a voice based search option this won’t be helpful. For such situations the Goggle concept has emerged where we don’t really need to say or think in order to obtain information, we need just point our mobiles at what is being perceived by the eyes and obtain valuable information! That’s really cool.
Goggle lets you send photos of landmark, contact, artwork, places, wine, logo, book cover or even bar code from your Android-based smart phone (Support to other smart phone to be released soon) to obtain the relevant details direct on your smart phone.
Google Goggles is currently available for Android devices running Android 1.6 and above (i.e. Donut or Éclair). Google Goggles works great with T-Mobile G1, HTC Dream G1, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, HTC Tattoo, Samsung i7500, Motorola Droid. So if you have any of these smart phones and you want to try out Goggles, start downloading the apk file by clicking here.
After installation, the process is pretty simple; snap a photo by centering your image in the Goggles screen and pressing a small camera icon button at the bottom of the screen. A scan is initiated in Goggles which analyzes the image. The image could be of a contact, Goggles separates the information into fields and lets you put the details into your Google Contacts database. If an image of a book, the app offers to let you purchase or research the specified book. If it’s a store or landmark, Goggles fetches details about the location. If it’s a wine bottle, the app offers to let you purchase it at the nearest outlet or provided you details about it. At present this application may not support object such as cars, animals or people according to the instructions but it’s a start to something new and big.
As soon as I heard about Goggles I immediately grabbed a Droid smart phone from a friend, installed the app and started clicking away at business cards, books and barcodes. Results were mixed, depending on what I was aiming at. I do think Goggles did pretty well on books it identified most of them. When the books were identified by Goggles, it provided price comparisons and previews of the book at Google Book Search and displayed Web search results. For business cards the results were more mixed. I think the data base has to be enhanced for this to work better with business cards. For identifying a store front in India was an interesting exercise. Nothing came up, while I read from other user that on their scan of store front, the names of several nearby restaurants drifted back and forth on tiny tags along the bottom of the screen, picked up by Google Latitude and/or Maps. The outcome was not so great, hope in time it could be clearer. The best example that did improve with time was Google Maps; it’s so handy now-a-days that it provided you pint point information about Bangalore city. Google Goggles need to grow, as it’s in its beta version. The range of object or items you can ID is limited. Google Labs is continuously tweaking Goggles and soon a more stable and pin point accurate application should be released. I have provided the download link do try it out.
What we could expect from such an invention as a future use, imagine a Goggle (In various designs) that would provide us information about each object that comes in view. Example: I see an individual walking by me while I am wearing my Goggle, detailed information would pop up about that individual. Supposing you’re a bachelor, you set your eyes on the most gorgeous dude or a dame based on your preference, you could get his/her contact details on the lens of your Goggle. That would be great.
“Jokes apart they would defiantly make some details private or options to make your details private [:(]”
These Goggles could provide you all the information just by a wink of an eye instead of a mouse click!
Published in January 2010 - Unibytes.
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