{"id":3831,"date":"2010-12-17T15:06:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T23:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2011-04-25T10:39:27","modified_gmt":"2011-04-25T18:39:27","slug":"translate-realtime-iphone-word-lens-augmented-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/translate-realtime-iphone-word-lens-augmented-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Translate text in realtime on the iphone with Word Lens: a form of augmented reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Word Lens <\/a>just came out today and the buzz is pretty crazy.\u00a0 The fact it was on CNN could have something to do with it.\u00a0\u00a0 The app is pretty darn sweet, much like PicTranslator except it works with live video.\u00a0 In other words as you look at the text on your phone, the letters are translated and replaced by new letters.\u00a0 Looks cool right?\u00a0 but how would this work in the real world where the text is composed of a more complex sentence?<\/p>\n

The app requires 4.0 and I only have my 3G with me at the moment, so I could not test myself, but found a number of videos posted with people using it.\u00a0 Must of the time, it works well. I have not seen anyone really test it on complex backgrounds, but that is not the point of the app anyway.\u00a0 The real win here is the Augmented Reality part of it.\u00a0 The fact that it replaces text with the detected background then overlays new text AND background colour is nothing short of amazing. There are limits. If the text is too small the app cannot read it in real time well enough. Right now it only iphone ipod, but it will be on the next version of the iPad which will have cameras.\u00a0 I would also expect to see this on the Android platform by the end of Jan 2011.\u00a0 Now, could you get the value by just taking a picture and translating that?\u00a0 Sure, but what fun is that?<\/p>\n

Well lets have a look.\u00a0 First the ‘demo’ video.<\/p>\n