Tag: app-subdomain-redirection:google-goggles

Google has announced the release of a new version of one of their most innovative mobile apps, Goggles. The new Google Goggles 1.3 is now smarter than ever: it can not only read barcodes faster, but also recognize print ads on popular U.S. magazines and newspapers, and even help you solve sudoku puzzles.

The barcode scanning technology in Goggles has improved a lot in this new version. Hold your phone over any barcode on any product, and in just a second the device will vibrate and display search results related to that product, without requiring any other extra interaction. The print ad recognition feature is also quite amazing. It’s meant to work with ads on all major U.S. newspapers and magazines from August 2010 onwards, and enables you to perform a search about a certain product by simply capturing its image on the ad with Goggles.

But the one feature that has caught my attention is Goggles’s new ability to solve sudoku puzzles. All you need to do is take a clear picture of the puzzle and Google will tell you the solution. Just the kind of technology you need to see in action before you can believe it!

Google Goggles 1.3 is available as a standalone app for Android on the Android Market, and as a module in the Google Mobile App for iPhone.

Google Goggles has just been released for iPhone, as part of an update to the official Google Mobile App. The app allows you to point your phone at an object such as a building, a book or a piece of art, and instantly get information about it from Google. Check out what it can do in this quirky promotional video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezc108DTaug[/youtube]

Although it doesn’t yet work with faces, Goggles is still a very cool piece of technology, and you feel a bit like you’re looking through Robocop’s visor when you’re using it. Now I think about it, many of the tools in the Google Mobile App replicate the functionality of  futuristic cyborgs of the 90s. There’s the ubiquitous homing device (Google Earth), speak-to-search (Google Voice), instant remote communication (Gmail and Buzz), and a powerful interpreter (Google Translate) that would put C3PO to shame.

Oh, and you should bear in mind that Google Goggles functionality only works on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 devices.