Google Goggles - Android Virtual Assistant

Since I got my hands on the HTC Desire smartphone with Android 2.2, I noticed that both the services I use and my daily habits have changed considerably. For example, instead of reading news portals over breakfast, I browse social networks in the mobile TweetDeck app; twice during this time I've driven using GPS (Navigon); a couple of times I've used Shazam while listening to music on the radio (or TV) to get information about the artist from an audio snippet, and so on.

Today I found a still-young but no less interesting app - Google Goggles. The app is based on two things - image recognition using the phone's camera and an online connection with Google Labs. Together they allow you to photograph an image, send it to Google's vast networks and receive a processed result in return.

 At this point the app offers the following actions with the captured image:

1. Image recognition and translation

Recognises English text (Latin characters) well. Recognises Latvian text, just without the diacritics. Does not recognise Russian text at all. Offers to translate the recognised text - you can translate, for example, from English to Latvian.

2. Architectural objects and monuments.

Recognised the Freedom Monument from a photo :) Also recognised some politicians, but didn't recognise others (such as Bojārs junior).

3. Books

Recognised a book in German (Linus Torvalds - Just for Fun) both as a book and by the Linux penguin. Did not recognise locally (Latvian) printed material, unless it had logos on it.

4. Business cards

Recognised email, www well. Recognised phone numbers well when written in full format: +371 etc. Had no trouble recognising text from a business card with a black background and blue text.

5. Works of art

Recognised the Mona Lisa painting in both the Art and Masterpiece categories. Things were harder with Vilhelms Purvītis. It recognised some works as images (i.e. suggested it was Vilhelms Purvītis), but didn't recognise others at all.

6. Wine bottle labels

From what I tried with available labels, it recognised them more or less in the Wine category. Be that as it may, what was visible in the demo - Product Search was not offered. Unfortunately there was no beer bottle to hand; perhaps it would recognise those too?

7. Logos

I didn't bother testing big brands - it's obvious it will find them. I tried draugiem.lv - recognised. Rīgas Satiksme - not recognised. The Latvian coat of arms was recognised in the logo category, albeit as "Latvia, President".

8. Sudoku

Sudoku fans will probably be disheartened - this app also offers to solve sudoku :) At least the classic (3×3). Non-standard format sudoku it didn't offer to solve. Below is a video showing how that process works.

Although object recognition is still far from perfect and has room to grow, the results are noteworthy and the potential of such an app is real. In the future, Google promises the app will also be able to recognise plants and leaves.

Google Goggles takes up 3.5MB of phone memory. Can be properly uninstalled and moved to the SD card. Current version - 1.3.