Many of you have probably wondered where martin's been. Okay, maybe a couple of you. Scratch that, the people at my local Tim Hortons certainly have been wondering. Anyway, I was on holidays participating in a cross-country skiing meet in Denver Colorado called Ski For Light. For more information on that, check out:
www.sfl.org.
That and other various work projects have been keeping me away from my beloved blog, but I digress. During my holidays, I was coerced into trying an IDevice app called OMoby. I'm usually one for trying new apps and the first to jumping on the "You've got to try this app", bandwagon. But for some odd reason, I never really paid attention to this one. I'm sure glad I finally tried it however. The price is right, it's free. Furthermore, it's an app that was designed for the general public. It just so happens that it's useful for people with visual impairments as well. How cool is that? An app that is accessible only by coincidence. That's what I like to encounter and it's happening more frequently. Oh oh, I feel a soapbox coming on. But enough with my rants, let's get back to business.
What is OMoby?
Essentially, OMoby is an online-based image recognition system. Yeah, that really clears it up Martin. Okay, let's try this again. Imagine this scenario. You've got a box of something in your cupboard, but nobody around to tell you what it is. You don't have one of those snazzy talking barcode readers, so what do you do? It's easy as taking your IDevice out, snapping a picture and waiting for a result.
The process works as follows:
- Click the "Take photo" button in the app,
- Try your best to focus the item within the photo area. I find this is best done by being about a foot away from small items; although it also works fine with taking pictures from further off.
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Find the "Take Photo" button and double tap on it to start the procedure.
Your IDevice will now take a picture and send it to the oMoby service. An online search of the photo database will commence. If it is unsuccessful, human intervention will take place. If this also fails, a result will still be sent back in the form of: dark, blurry, unknown. So now the fun starts. Take pictures of odd things to see if the system will recognize them. I took pictures of my favourite beers and the system came up with the brand and style. Quite impressive. Just make sure that you move your fingers away from the lens when you're taking a picture, as it will recognize that as well. Yes, that was personal experience.
There are other features within this app which I will let you investigate on your own, such as the shopping option, the say it option and the dictionary. If you decide to try the shopping option, I would suggest going into the setting menu within the app and turning on the "use GPS". This will localize the results.
For more information on oMoby visit the following web page:
http://omoby.com
This is Martin the now addicted shutterbug signing off.
I just took a picture of my dog and the system sent back the result as "dog". Wow, who knew?