If you’re like me, you probably use your iphone/android/whatever phone camera as a visual journal. Certainly I shoot creative photos with it, but I’m also constantly generating snapshots of things I like, patterns, ideas, magazine covers, ads, and other stuff that act as inspiration or reminders for me to check out something in greater detail later when I’ve got more time.
Well, Google’s new-ish app “Google Goggles” capitalizes on this. Snap a photo, do a search with that photo as the input, and get results. I’m only just starting to play with it, but Google claims that in addition to text the app recognizes landmarks, books, wine, artwork, logos and more.
And, since I shoot a lot of advertising imagery, what really got my attention was when they recently announced advertising partnership “tests” with Disney, Buick, Delta, T-Mobile and Diageo. Use the app to snap a photo of certain enabled print adverts in a magazine, billboard, or whatever–hit “go”– and you’re suddenly immersed in a rich media experience with results galore to explore.
If this is the case, how soon will it be that all your images will be recognizable by visual search rather than simply the Google Goggle enabled campaigns, or the metadata attached to the image. Or even cooler, when your un-tagged images have been sniffed and are returned in search based on their pixel content. Will a search for “Toyota” soon return this image of mine, will a search for “diabetes” return this one, or perhaps even a search for “women’s underwear” might soon return even this one? I’m banking that it won’t be long.
I think my mind just exploded.
A couple videos about how Google Goggles works, plus a link to download the apps and find out more after the jump. Hit ‘continue reading’ below.
This vid is the original one about the basic functionality
This vid is the one that really got my attention, where Google announces it broadened effectiveness in partnerships with a handful of print advertisers.
Get the Google Goggles app for iPhone, Android, and find out more here.
Also, how soon will you be able to find your photos being used without permission? I know there are sites like that now, but this would be very cool for that.
Equally interesting question, since image recognition and facial recognition are evolving and improving at a similar clip, how long will it be before anyone can use these tools to search for a photo of you, all the photos you show up in, the metadata associated with it (location, time) from anywhere across the net? Hmmmmmm… that might make a few people nervous ;-o
Wow. Just…. WOW. I need an ANDROID Phone NOW – hahah
Ive been using this for a while. I have Android, so I cant speak for iOS, but if you use it to take a picture of a business card, it will save the info into a contact.
Will keep an eye out for this and see how it develops, could be really cool
Awesome! I am interested to see how far they go with this one. There could be some really interesting applications with this kind of technology.