[miffed]

OK , so how it looks in a demo , and how reliable it is in the real world may be very different things ....

...But you have to admit this is pretty cool , to the point that I thought "Fake" as soon as I saw it , but it seems it is genuine

http://www.wimp.com/iphoneapp/

[Hands0n]

And its free? !!! http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-lens/id383463868?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Not quite. It is free to download and install. Then you need to use in-App Purchase to buy the various language packs that you might want.

But nevertheless, it is a very clever bit of programming!

[Ben]

Word Lens looks incredible - if it works as well as it looks then it'd be a fantastic companion when abroad! A 'wow' app that should probably get bought by Apple and shipped in every iPhone :)

[DBMandrake]

A cool idea but it seems like a bit of a gimmick to me. I tried it on my 3GS (which admittedly doesn't have as good a camera as the iPhone 4) and it was very hit and miss. For free you can test the word reverser and word eraser modes, and even when holding the phone steady pointing it at a page of well focused brightly lit printed text, the words on the page would randomly flicker in and out...

Nice idea but I don't think the technology and algorithms are there yet - at least on smart phone level hardware...

[miffed]

I LOL'd at how quickly this became mediocre , looking at some of the feedback comments on the app store !

TBH I would expect this to be a little flaky , the way it performed in the video was almost breathtaking IMO

It's not so much how useful this is as a translation tool that impresses me , but more the potential WRT augmented reality
... I can almost someone wearing a visor , looking around themselves and seeing an "version" of reality that is solid enough to be real , yet "altered" for whatever purposes are necessary.

Of course , none of the technology is revolutionary - Phones have been able to read text for ages , and translation is easy - but the way that it renders the reproduced text to look like it is part of the original picture is the clever bit , not the translation or recognition part .

Great to see this stuff progressing !

[Hands0n]

I suspect that the iPhone is going to be a strong catalyst for the understanding and acceptance of Augmented Reality (caps on purpose) as a technology. I fully expect to see, in due course, something along the lines of glasses with HUD containing such AR technology built in. And I do feel that we're only beginning to realise the possibilities. Coupled with other "back-end" technologies the potential use for AR is extensive.

I can visualise Police officers, for example, wearing AR kit that will allow them to "see" people, vehicles, situations that warrant their attention. Emergency services, also, could use AR to track the location of a person [lost or in trouble] localising their position by the use of cellphone tracking into their AR headsets. Perhaps, even, extensive use of AR could help public service vehicles such as buses and coaches to take optimal routes to their destinations, information appearing on an AR HUD in front of the driver. Just a few examples that spring to my mind.

What is incredible, though, is that the technology has been squeezed into the confines of a fairly modest device like the iPhone itself.

I am certainly sold on the idea but not the specific product. If I were a traveller and there were more languages then I would almost certainly be a buyer. Although I do wonder about the wisdom of walking through Milan's Duomo waving £600-worth of technology in front of me. The chances are that the local Roma would see me relieved of it within minutes!

This stuff has got to get less conspicuous and more discrete, part of regular "clothing"