Image Recognition & Mobile Photo Interaction – A Dream for Advertisers

In a world where user’s have the ability to snap a photo of virtually anything, and have an instant link to all the relative online information available, don’t think advertiser’s are chomping at the bit. With this kind of extreme targeting, and a new way of quick searching using photos instead of typed keywords, advertisers have a whole new way to approach consumers. Opening this option up for mobile users will boost searching, and boost advertising revenue at the same time. Advertising companies can come up with new ad-serving technologies and targeting methods using the new information they’ll have available to them. When a user snaps a photo of the street in front of the bar or restaurant he’s been at all night, he could then be served with paid listings of cab companies nearby based on the geo-location information provided from his phone when he searched. This is just one of many examples this technology could be used for. It will be interesting to see what new startups focus on this, and which large companies eat them up first. If someone did it right, and launched it on a large scale, I think people would definitely use it…

Point, Click a Photo, Search Social Networks for Profiles….

With all the potential privacy issues aside, it is interesting to think about possibly being able to see someone, snap a photo of them, and instantly see all their online profiles from MySpace, Facebook, etc. to learn a little more about them. With so many people providing photos of themselves and their friends on these social networking sites, it would be relatively simple to produce a script that could match image properties from user’s snapped photo’s to a central database of all the photos from profiles of the major social networking sites. There could even be security benefits to such a mobile application. If you suspect someone is up to something good or bad, you could instantly check them out against any photo that may be on the web with them in it, as well as google search information for background information.

Social Networking sites could even incorporate this type of mobile interaction. User’s who see each other out and about, could snap photos, interact and upload new photos, and expand their online and mobile social networking further. I think mobile image recognition will play a huge role in mobile applications and social networking in the future. The security benefits of face recognition, of course on a much larger scale, is already being deployed worldwide. As camera’s on mobile phones and devices improve, the usage will improve as well because the whole process will work quicker for the end user.

The Perfect Mobile Recognition Application..What Would People Use.

I’ve read about so many different bits and pieces of new technologies, and I wanted to put together what I think would be the perfect mobile recognition application for real-world use. Yeah, you can point and click at a movie poster and get a trailer downloaded after a minute or so, or you could snap a shot of a product advertisement and possibly get a review of it depending on how fast your mobile connection is, but I think it could all be better….

That’s where I would start. Mobile Image and Barcode recognition applications obviously need an internet connection to function, and since it has to process so much information through connecting to databases, etc. it needs an ultra-fast connection to be fast enough to satisfy every-day consumers. When mobile networks gradually transform into broadband-speed connections, it will allow for more advanced applications to be deployed. Until this happens, and the recognition process is streamlined, user’s aren’t going to use it.

Second, being able to take a picture on your phone, and text or MMS the photo to a certain number works, but again it adds several unnecessary steps for the end-user. There needs to be a phone with a built-in, or a third-party application that is separate from the camera app, but also brings up the camera image. The user could then snap the shot and instantly be provided with a series of options. Once the option is selected, the app could respond immediately and provide it’s content.

Third and most important, the content needs to be very relevant and user-friendly. The user has to actually want to interact or receive the information. There needs to be a system that will allow several different forms of content to be delivered that could include videos, audio, interactive images, and much more.

I know all of this can and will happen in the near future, but until some variables come into place, it will be slow going.

A Cell Phone That Could Save Your Life?

I came across an article on Switched.com that discussed a recent trip by its editors to the CEATEC, which is Japan’s Consumer Electronics Show. An interesting product they reviewed was a cell phone running software that would monitor several areas of your body throughout the day, and if a problem would arise, the phone would call the appropriate authorities on it’s own. The software monitors includes a portable pedometer, heart rate monitor, calorie counter, breath analyzer, and more. It can them collect this information and transfer it to your physician, diet specialist, or hospital automatically. The article didn’t go into much detail about how exactly it works, and how it collects this information, as well as who makes it as well, but it’s a cool piece of technology. We’ve been thinking about barcode and image recognition using your mobile device, but never thought about your phone possibly recognizing other factors of our life….

Mobile Image Recognition Without Any Special Mobile Software

Most of the companies that are currently offering, or are in development of mobile image recognition technology for use on mobile phones uses a system that relies on linking image properties to a central database to relay content to the user. This works well, the only problem is that most of the time, users have to download a simple program to their phone to be able to facilitate the image recognition process. All this does, in my mind, is make this technology less apt to be adopted on a large scale. The only technologies that become mainstream, especially here in the US, when it comes to mobile devices, are the features that come pre-installed, or features that are available automatically such as text messaging, and MMS. The reason these features are used so heavily, is because every mobile phone user has the option to send text and MMS messages right out of the box.

Another example of this would be barcode recognition via mobile phones in countries like Japan. Because mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia are beginning to package their devices with a program to recognize barcodes via the camera, user’s can start utilizing the technology right out of the box. In the US, to be able to read barcodes via your mobile device, you most likely have to find, download, and install a third party application to your device. Because of this, the idea of mobile barcode recognition hasn’t caught on like I think it should have.

The solution. A company called FotoLink, Inc. has entered the mobile image recognition industry, but in a different way. The idea is the same. A user points their mobile device at a picture in any type of situation, be it a newspaper advertisement, a movie poster, etc. The difference is that instead of relying on an application installed on the user’s phone, the user simply sends and MMS message of the photo to a number pre-determined by FotoLink. By doing it this way, it opens the use of this technology to everyone with a mobile phone, without having to do anything to utilize it. FotoLink uses it’s own central server to store image properties and to facilitate the recognition process. When the image is recognized, the system automatically sends an MMS back to the user with the content associated with the image.

This is a large step forward in this technology becoming more available and usable.

Australian Company Issues over 10,000 “Mobile Tickets” During 1 Event

An australian company named Bcode, which is a service provider of “mobile ticketing” said in a press release that they issued more than 10,000 m-tickets at an event named CeBIT. They claimed they’re firm was chosen because they’re platform sends m-tickets using SMS messages instead of other image-based transmissions. This allows their service to be deliverable to nearly 99% of mobile user’s worldwide.

I think with statistics like this, it won’t be long before U.S companies begin offering this exact same service. Mobile carriers themselves could even benefit from providing such a service. They could profit from the SMS usage. Obviously there is huge profit potential in this, 10,000 times any amount of money in one night is a good number. The ease of use, speediness of redemption, and the fact that it’s almost impossible to loose or forget your ticket. Upon simple verification, they could issue you another ticket on the spot at the turn-style. It adds benefits to all parties involved really, and I just can’t understand why this hasn’t caught on like it has in other countries. It amazes me how we’re ahead in so many aspects, but when it comes to mobile usage, and mobile technology, the United States has never been a leader.

Using Image Recognition Software instead of Barcode Recognition

Nokia has just acquired a small startup called Pixto who developed an application for mobile devices that would take images captured by the camera on the mobile device, and bring up recognition options accordingly.  Nokia has began calling this technology Point & Find.  It works by letting people point a camera phone at an object or picture and find out more about it or buy it just by clicking once when options come up on the screen. It works by somehow linking certain image properties of the captured image with a URL for information about what’s in the image. When a user points the phone’s camera at something, the system compares what the viewfinder sees with sets of image properties in a database. Also taking into consideration the user’s location via image specific information or GPS, it then delivers useful information about what the person is looking at.

An example of this might be when a user sees a movie poster their interested in, while walking down the street.  They could point their camera phone and snap a shot of the movie poster, click a button, and a WAP site would be brought up with more information about when the movie is coming out, where it can be seen and times, as well as options to purchase tickets right there while standing in front of the poster that caught your eye.  By utilizing GPS sensors on the mobile phone, the WAP site the user is directed to can automatically be associated with the nearest theater to the user.  Another example was that a user could snap a picture of the street, and a page would automatically come up with contact information to the nearest cab company.

Here’s what I think.  This technology would definitely be more useful and intuitive than barcode recognition, simply because it wouldn’t rely solely on barcodes for data recognition.   Also, consumers could immediately start using this, instead of waiting for retailers,  and manufacturers to develop mainstream barcoding techniques.  The negatives I see are that mobile phone cameras will have to be high quality to take high resolution images enough for recognition.  Older VGA camera phones might not work as well, or slow down the recognition process by having to take numerous shots of the object.  We’ll have to see what happens as this technology evolves.

How to make Mobile Advertising less obtrusive..

Advertising is going mobile, there’s no question about that.  The hurdle to cross, is simply making the advertisements non-obtrusive, less annoying, and more apt to get clicked.  With the limitations on mobile devices, such as the screen size, plug-in support for flash, and java, and the fact that most people simply don’t use their mobile devices for internet usage as much as advertiser’s would like to think, the whole thought of mobile advertising is taking longer to adapt to then in other countries where mobile use is more mainstream.

In the way of making ads less obtrusive, Google will probably lead the pack, along with other PPC providers by serving very small, relevant text ads alongside content that the user is accessing.  This, as opposed to banner ads, and more flashy traditional ads, will be more apt to get a higher CTR for advertisers.  A leader in mobile advertising, AdMob has already proved to be successful in serving banner ads on mobile sites, with relatively high success for marketers, but it’s still to early to know for sure how successful it will be.  As more user’s get comfortable with using their mobile phone or device for accessing everyday content, the number of ads served will increase as well as the overall usage and implementation of mobile advertising as a whole.

The difference will be seen when new techniques and ways to serve ads are introduced.  GPS based ads will probably lead the pack, only because of it’s extreme targeting attributes.  Proximity advertising using Bluetooth, SMS and MMS will most likely become relatively mainstream as well, once people get more adapted to it.

Hosted & Installed Open Source Software by MoVa Media Co.

MoVa Media Co. has launched a new serviced aimed at giving individuals and business’s the ability to use and enjoy the various open source software titles and platforms that are freely available. The problem many people have is that since it’s freely available, user’s find themselves with a bunch of code, and no idea what to do with it. We will bridge the gap between poeple having the need to implement enterprise quality software at a fraction of the cost. We will host, install, setup, configure, and teach you how to use every single software title we offer. Are normal charge for all of this is $9.95 to $39.95 based on the complexity of the software. Hosting for all software is $9.95 per month, no matter how many user’s are enabled.

We know this service is available from numerous companies on the net, but we establish ourselves by offering very reasonable prices for installation and configuration of sometimes very complex software platforms and applications. Also, hosting for everything is always $9.95 per month, period. Most hosted SaaS’ application providers charge a monthly cost per user using the system. We also offer full support and training on how to properly configure, administer, and run your new software.

Coming soon to www.MoVaMedia.com and available now on www.ebay.com *Search – Open Source Software

Posting to your online accounts via SMS and MMS.

I ran across an interesting post today that featured ClickIndia.com and a new feature they’re offering that allows users to post classifieds for free, and in real time by sending an SMS or MMS for posts with photos to a certain number, and the post will show up on the site within hours.  I know this concept really isn’t new, but I started thinking about the many useful applications for such a data input medium.  A problem I have, as well as many others most likely, is that good writing ideas, or blog post discussion ideas always come to me when I’m away from my computer and any other note taking tools.  I miss a lot of good ideas by not being able to jot it down.  How nice would it be to simply jot the idea down as an SMS, send it to a number, and have that idea make its way onto your blog, or document manager automatically.  You would never miss a great idea again!

Software could easily be created for mobile devices to carry out this operation more easily as well.  A small Java app could allow you to post quicker and more securely, as well as taking away the character limits associated with most phones.  The program could also have a simple list of options asking where you would like to send this information.  Send to blog? Send to CRM? Send to Doc Manager? Send to participating Newspapers? The possibilities are endless.

Do you have any ideas of applications for this platform?  Post a comment and let us know your thoughts, whatever they may be!  Here at MoVa Media Co. we’re always looking for new ideas for mobile applications, and will most likely begin developing a mobile application and WAP gateway that would facilitate such a task, so check back often!