Word Lens — Augmented Reality Translation

Barence writes "PC Pro has a review of a new augmented reality iPhone app that translates from Spanish to English on the fly. 'Point the camera at a decent-sized chunk of Spanish text and within a couple of seconds you'll get a rough and ready translation,' said the reviewer. 'And most magnificently of all, the translation is overlaid, at the correct size, on the original object.' The team behind the project has produced a video of Word Lens in action."

Re:Not going to lie

[mveloso]

Sorry, the iPhone is the easiest platform to monetize right now. It'll almost always be the first choice for apps.

Being an android user is a lot like being a Mac user waiting for Windows games back in the day. It sucks, but that's how it is.

Re:Not going to lie

[mark72005]

I'm guessing it's probably the easiest for a corporation to develop for, since the hardware is a known quantity and for the most part the OS versioning is too, you will get consistent function across devices. It will also be tested by Apple before they allow it on the app store.

Certainly a slick and quick way to get an app to market.

This shows how full of shit Steve Jobs is

[jez9999]

... when he says that one of the reasons the iPhone won't run Flash is because it doesn't have the processing power.

You're telling me it can have the power needed to do something like this - analyze an image for text, decode it, put sentences together, translate, match the most appropriate font and colours, scrub the original text, render the new text at the appropriate angle and position - but not to play Flash movies. I call bullshit.

Re:Another story about how badly it works

[MrMarket]

Overall, not worth the money...

What did you expect for 5 bucks?

Re:This shows how full of shit Steve Jobs is

[dzfoo]

I call your bullshit. I don't ever recall Steve Jobs saying that the iPhone does not have the processing power to run Flash. He has said that Flash is buggy, crashes often, and does not have good performance in mobile devices. (All of which I agree with.)

Basically, his position has been that Flash is too crappy for the iPhone, irrespective of whether the iPhone can run it or not.

            -dZ.

Re:Monty Pythons Hungarian Translation Book

[citizenr]

Google Goggles already does translations of pictures. Google Translate already turns voice English to voice Spanish. Word Lens sounds pretty cool, but it's really not that far ahead of other similar projects.

It doesn't require Internet connection.