Now I know this has been out for a while but for those who haven’t seen this…a cool app is a cool app worth revisiting…especially a controversial one.
Imagine you are on holiday in Paris and you are enjoying the culture and the atmosphere and the friendly people but there is this big tower thing in the middle of town which looks like a great big telephone mast jutting out from the beautiful landscape. What on earth is it, you ask yourself?
Google Goggles is a visual search tool for Android phones (version 1.6 and above) which opens up search to a whole new dimension. What it does is offer you search results based on a picture you take with your Android phone. By going to Android market and searching for ‘Google Goggles’ you can grab yourself the latest version, and its free. According to Google it is not an augmented reality application but is instead a visual search application, even though it achieves much the same as an augmented reality tool.
Here is a video to explain how it works:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Still in its relative infancy, Google Goggles has a lot of potential to change the way we search. (Assuming you have a Smartphone that uses Android and the app downloaded of course.) The internal GPS and compass lets you, like it explained in the video, get results from many outdoor locations and objects providing information without you having to type or even say anything. It has claimed that it can recognise tens of millions of objects and places.
Now, part of the information Google gives you on Goggles is that it currently doesn’t work well with things like food, animals and plants. Since its launch at the end of 2009 this does not appear to be a fraction of the things it struggles to bring you results for. I came across countless forums for the, granted amusing, but no less inaccurate results for a range of different objects. While this is not a tragedy, it did lead me to wonder when the next update and improvement was coming for this exciting app.
What might be the stumbling block for improvement is the fact that Goggles development may well have been put on hold due to recent press. Goggles has been one of many targets amidst the current trend for privacy controversy. Google has refused to rule out extending Goggles features to include facial recognition technology much like that seen in Picasa
When Goggles was launched in December 2009, spokesman Anthony House, said:
“We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal. But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.
“So if someone uploads a picture of a stranger on Goggles there is no process to identify them and the search will come up with “no matches found.”
“We will have talks with privacy advocates and consumers before we consider any changes – it may be people want such a service, but we don’t have a rigid timescale on when any decisions will be made.”
Google have made it clear that they do have the technology and feel that they will add it to Goggles but want to do it in a considered and responsible way. After the recent Street View data gobbling incidents and the Buzztastrophy which saw personal details revealed without permission, Google are quite right to be cautious.
Do you think it would be a step too far to allow any stranger the opportunity to take your picture and have access to search results about you?
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