Google Goggles Comes to the iPhone

And yet ironically?

Google Goggles still hasn't really come to my Android phone!

(I've got a Kyocera Zio and Goggles crashes completely out of the app as soon as it tries to use the phone's camera.)

So you talk to the waiter about what wine he recommends. He brings you a bottle from a local vineyard. Then, rather than converse with the waiter any more, you whip out your iPhone and snap a photo of the bottle label to get more info. I'd prefer asking the waiter.

You're wandering in San Francisco and see the large pointy building. If it were me, I'd simply ask a passerby if they knew what it was. But instead you can whip out your iPhone and take a picture of it, and let the device tell you.

It appears from this video that we as a culture are becoming lost in our technology, completely reliant on it for the simplest things. I can see it being useful to people in a foreign country who don't speak the language. But casual use in your own country (or a different country when you know the language) seems like overkill.

ok, i just recently deleted the google app from my phone, back to downloading it again

jayducharme said:

So you talk to the waiter about what wine he recommends. He brings you a bottle from a local vineyard. Then, rather than converse with the waiter any more, you whip out your iPhone and snap a photo of the bottle label to get more info. I'd prefer asking the waiter.

You're wandering in San Francisco and see the large pointy building. If it were me, I'd simply ask a passerby if they knew what it was. But instead you can whip out your iPhone and take a picture of it, and let the device tell you.

It appears from this video that we as a culture are becoming lost in our technology, completely reliant on it for the simplest things. I can see it being useful to people in a foreign country who don't speak the language. But casual use in your own country (or a different country when you know the language) seems like overkill.

Click to expand...

Yeah really. I mean from a technological standpoint it's pretty neat. But in all honesty, when are you really going to use this? Is there a situation anyone can think of where you'll be right in front of a place/product and not know what it is?

Wait until real facial recognition makes it to the masses. Scary to think about.

Great! It’s not perfect but it’s still useful and fun. It’s been working well with the things I’ve thrown at it. Some of these functions were already provided by SnapTell and other apps, while others are new.

One thing I can say: it’s handling QR Codes (like vCards) better than other free QR apps I’ve tried. (Although those will auto-recognize just by pointing the camera—no tap-to-shoot needed, while Google takes an extra tap and extra delay to reach their servers. And of course Google won’t scan QR Codes when away from Internet access.)

Tech companies sure do have their own definition of soon.

I took a picture of my TV remote just for the hell of it. It found the Sony logo and informed me that it was, in fact, the Sony logo.

Underwhelming.

I use the google app almost as much as any other - I particularly like the voice search. Convenient when on the go - to find the closest gas station, McDonald's, etc. I don't have to type, just talk.

Google Goggles . . . meh. Can't think of on instance when it's useful. Book or DVD covers, maybe. But if I have the book in front of me, why would I need more information about it, or why would I need to buy it online?

jayducharme said:

So you talk to the waiter about what wine he recommends. He brings you a bottle from a local vineyard. Then, rather than converse with the waiter any more, you whip out your iPhone and snap a photo of the bottle label to get more info. I'd prefer asking the waiter.

You're wandering in San Francisco and see the large pointy building. If it were me, I'd simply ask a passerby if they knew what it was. But instead you can whip out your iPhone and take a picture of it, and let the device tell you.

It appears from this video that we as a culture are becoming lost in our technology, completely reliant on it for the simplest things. I can see it being useful to people in a foreign country who don't speak the language. But casual use in your own country (or a different country when you know the language) seems like overkill.

Click to expand...

Agree... and when you're in a foreign country, most likely you won't have a data plan... so again, it become quite useless... but then, just in case in emergency, you use data roaming, maybe you translate a train schedule, a map or some emergency numbers, that could be useful, but it isn't google goggle, it's google translate with camera.

jayducharme said:

So you talk to the waiter about what wine he recommends. He brings you a bottle from a local vineyard. Then, rather than converse with the waiter any more, you whip out your iPhone and snap a photo of the bottle label to get more info. I'd prefer asking the waiter.

You're wandering in San Francisco and see the large pointy building. If it were me, I'd simply ask a passerby if they knew what it was. But instead you can whip out your iPhone and take a picture of it, and let the device tell you.

It appears from this video that we as a culture are becoming lost in our technology, completely reliant on it for the simplest things. I can see it being useful to people in a foreign country who don't speak the language. But casual use in your own country (or a different country when you know the language) seems like overkill.

Click to expand...

you're walking into an apple store and are after some new headphones, you find a pair that you like. rather than driving to the next available tech store to compare prices, you get out your iphone, snap a picture of the headphones you're after and let google goggles find other places that sell the product and immediately tells you how much cheaper you can get them elsewhere.

you see a car on the motorway in front of you and think to yourself "damn - what a lovely looking car" - too bad it's been de-badged so you can't tell what car it is. you get our your iPhone and let google goggles find out what it is for you.

google provides different ways for you to search for information. it doesn't mean you have to use it, but there are situations when it will come in handy and get you the information you're after quicker than by asking somebody else or typing your query into a search field.

fabian9 said:

you're walking into an apple store and are after some new headphones, you find a pair that you like. rather than driving to the next available tech store to compare prices, you get out your iphone, snap a picture of the headphones you're after and let google goggles find other places that sell the product and immediately tells you how much cheaper you can get them elsewhere.

Click to expand...

I already do this all the time with RedLaser via the barcode (which must be more reliable at turning up the actual product you're looking for).

This type of app is more "proof of concept" ....

The people saying it's not practical are missing the "big picture".

I don't think Google necessarily CARES if people find this app on their phones to be extremely practical/useful.

Right now, it's basically "fun to use", to see how many things it correctly identifies, etc.

Nobody's really suggesting this would make a great alternative to actually talking with a person next to you who could provide you with the same information.....

It's about advancing the technology itself, and building up a good database on Google's end that can make this sort of thing work well. Eventually, this will make a lot more sense when it's "seamless" enough to work without a user having to launch an app on a cellphone and then hold said phone up to objects to "see" them. Imagine this being integrated into a standard set of eyeglasses, so the user gets augmented reality details super-imposed over everything else, on-demand?

This is great mainly because it's fun to say google's goggle's.

Just playing around I took a picture of a toy tractor, google goggles doesn't identify it, oMoby can. I don't use either of them much, just fyi.

Page 1?!

Despite this being a climatic end to society and normal conversation, this is a really cool feature.

Why isn't this rumor on page 1 however?

It has enough merit it should have landed on the main page of rumors

It thought my iMac keyboard was a MacBook. It did correctly identify my cutout of Simon's Cat, however.

I partly agree with the proof of concept post. As more genres are added to the recognition list, it gets more useful.

A lot of people would love for it to recognize plants, but it's not there yet.

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For myself, I use Goggles mostly for books. My wife, who's a teacher, will show me a book from school and ask me to get a copy of it.

No problem. Whip out Googles, snap the pic and a few seconds later I'm clicking on the Amazon link to order it. Beats the heck out of typing it in.

I use it for my own books as well. I'll see something I'm interested in at a library, or at a friend's desk, and order it up right there.

I test out the apps by taking snap shot of photo in google image search, and so far it is very accurate, a lot of potential for this apps to develop in the future.

I can see it now - "The iPhone sux becasue you need special glasses to use the google app. My android phone does all that and more with out stupid glasses -sticks out tongue-"

useless cr@p: it doesn't work on iPhone 3G.

I'm pissed that it doesn't work except on 3GS and 4. They're leaving 3G and iPT4 owners in the cold.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm excited for where this will end up more than what it is right now. I commend Google for taking on such a lofty endeavor. Imagine being able to get information about anything without knowing what it is, first. Maybe you will be able to take a picture of a mushroom in a forest and Goggles will be able to tell you if it's edible. Perhaps Goggles will tell you the nutritional information of any food you point it at one day. With other objects in the scene, it might even be able to judge portion size. Maybe we can just point our phones at something and say "that was a lot of fun" and now that is a searchable review. Goggles with speech to text could be interesting. This one's crazy, but what if one day it got so good that it was able to identify lost pets?! I know I'm dreaming here, but we've got to start somewhere. Thanks Google!

OutThere said:

I already do this all the time with RedLaser via the barcode (which must be more reliable at turning up the actual product you're looking for).

Click to expand...

sure, or you can just type the barcode into google. i'm not saying google goggles is the only way to search for products on the iPhone, it's just another way.

rorschach said:

Yeah really. I mean from a technological standpoint it's pretty neat. But in all honesty, when are you really going to use this? Is there a situation anyone can think of where you'll be right in front of a place/product and not know what it is?

Wait until real facial recognition makes it to the masses. Scary to think about.

Click to expand...

I can see I-robot or terminator coming soon. Hopefully we will survive this century.