google goggles

We're able to peel CNET television Editor Ty Pendlebury's eyes away from the Sharp 80-inch smart TV he's reviewing right now to sit down with us for a show about language translation apps, overused QR codes, Batman impersonators, and more.… Read more

Google is working on augmented-reality goggles, say goodbye to Blockbuster Express kiosks, and Redbox and Verizon team up to take on Netflix.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Here's one that's sure to make art lovers go googly-eyed. Google has teamed with the Getty museum in Los Angeles to bring its Google Goggles visual search feature to museum-goers.

This means Getty-goers with the Google Goggles app on their Android or iOS device can just point their gadget at any painting in the Getty museum's permanent collection to snap a picture and instantly access mobile-optimized versions of the work from around the Web.

They'll also be able to get audio commentary from curators and conservators and biographical information about the artist, and locate other works by the creator at the Getty. We're betting Google Goggles for Getty (try saying that 10 times fast) will also make a great tool for those who get museum overload and want to further reflect on the "Adoration of the Magi" once they've escaped the crowds.

Google first launched its search-by-site tool for Android phones in late 2009 and made it available for the iPhone about a year later. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, product logos, and more, and can also instantly translate text that has been captured by your phone's camera. Google refers to its Goggles search method as "computer vision."

The Getty says it's the first museum to work with Google to make its entire collection of paintings available virtually via Google Goggles. We'd love to see Goggles pop up at more museums, as long as people remember to turn their flashes off and look up while they're Google Goggling. … Read more

I've never been completely sold on the accuracy or practicality of Google Goggles, but an update to the Goggles for Android app makes this experiment in photo searching more useful day-to-day.

The new Google Goggles for Android 1.3 adds three significant features--faster Google's bar code and QR scanner, the ability to recognize print ads like in newspaper and magazines, and (for a curve ball) Sudoku.

Google's bar code reader was an early addition, and in fact, Google's teams introduced the first bar code scanning app when the Android platform was just stirring--we saw it even … Read more

As a longtime user of both the iPhone and Android, I was pleased to see Google's Goggles service make its way to iOS devices this past week. Even though it's missing a feature or two compared to its Android sibling, both versions are able to figure out what you've just taken a picture of, and give it back to you as a Google search.

It's one of those simple applications that I keep coming back to, mainly for its speed and accuracy, which can be scarily good. Though, when Google released it on the iPhone, it … Read more

Voice search is improving all the time, and Google brings the best we've seen to date. Its stellar iPhone app uses the accelerometer to activate search. When you hear a beep after lifting the phone to your ear, start speaking your search term. The accuracy of the listening software combined with the MyLocation feature brings (mostly) spot-on search results that are localized to your whereabouts. As with versions of the Google Mobile App on other mobile platforms, this one also includes a tab of shortcuts to other Google services, including Talk, Reader, News, and Photos (Picasa Web).

While the … Read more

It's been almost a year since Google released a beta of its Goggles visual search app for Android phones, and now it's time for a new milestone in the product's life cycle: Google Goggles for iPhone. Google Goggles (spell that 10 times fast) creates a visual search out of what the smartphone's camera sees through its lens. In other words, the app will scan your image when you focus on a landmark, a sign, a label, and so on, and search for matches in its database. Google refers to the Goggles search method as "computer … Read more

Good news for iPhone users who had lusted over the Android-only app Goggles from Google. It's set to hit the App Store sometime in the next three months.

A report by The Register, which was covering the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University on Monday, makes note of Google staff engineer David Petrou's keynote, wherein Petrou said the application was, in fact, still in the works. Better yet: pending Apple's approval, it's scheduled for release by the end of 2010.

Goggles was unveiled by Google last December as a way for users to search the Web … Read more

This past weekend I was at a wedding where the bride, groom, and both of their families came from different sides of the Pacific Ocean (Japan and central California to be precise). At the party the night before the ceremony a few of us broke out our phones to play with translation apps, which of course, led to comical results.

One of the highlights was when the groom-to-be (who happens to be bilingual) looked at my attempt to translate "I think you've had enough beer," from English to Japanese and said "That's good, but far … Read more