Word Lens
Encyclopedia
Word Lens is an augmented reality
translation application for the iPhone
from Quest Visual
. Word Lens uses the built-in phone camera to identify text, such as a sign or a menu, in one language and have the words shown translated into another language. The words are displayed in the original context, on the original background, without connection to the internet. Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and received significant amount of attention soon after, including Wired
, The Economist
, CNN
, The New York Times
, Forbes
, The Wall Street Journal
, MIT
Technology Review
, and ~1.4 million views on You Tube in the first 3 days, growing to ~2.5 million by the beginning of day 6. Since the application held a #1 position on the lists of Top Free Apps and Top Grossing Apps on Apple Inc.'s iTunes
for a few days following its release, it is currently described as Top In App Purchases. This application is currently available as Word Lens 1.0.1.
capabilities and instantly translates these words into the desired language. It requires iPhone 4
, iPhone 3GS
, iPad 2
, or iPod Touch
with a video camera.
At the release on December 16, 2010, only English and Spanish were supported, but other language dictionaries were planned, with European languages expected first. A free version is available however, it only contains the 2 demo modes: erasing words or reversing words. Each language pack (e.g. either English-to-Spanish, or Spanish-to-English) must be purchased separately.
Even though Word Lens was initially released for iPhone
only, Quest Visual
planned to expand to Android, Windows Phone 7
, Palm
, and BlackBerry
, with Android likely to be targeted first.
According to its description, Word Lens is best used on clearly printed text and was not designed to translate handwritten or stylized fonts. This application was created to help tourists understand signs and menus, and it is not 100% accurate. The developer Otavio Good commented: "I will be the first to say that it’s not perfect, but perfect was not the goal". However, testers who took the app to other countries said it had been useful. Further, even though the application was not designed to read books, the Wall Street Journal journalist Ben Rooney managed to understand a page from Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban.
, a former video game developer and the founder of Quest Visual
; John DeWeese, who previously worked on the Electronic Arts
game Spore
, and a programmer Maia Good.
application for Android and iPhone
has the capability to translate text or identify objects in an image, but it requires users to take a picture with their phones, and an active internet connection. Word Lens does it on the fly, meaning it's interpreting frames in video, almost in real time. A similar app called LookTel, designed to help blind people, scans print on objects such as packages of food and reads them aloud."
The New York Times journalist David Pogue
included Word Lens in his list of "the best tech ideas of the year" 2010 (10 ideas total). See 2010 Pogie Awards video.
In the Wall Street Journal article by Ben Rooney, Word Lens received a rating of 4/5 and was described as "a sort of magic".
Word Lens was chosen as a finalist for the 2010 Crunchies Best Technology Achievement award.
Ellen of The Ellen DeGeneres Show
demoed Word Lens and referred to it as 'amazing' in her segment Ellen Found the Best Apps!
Otavio Good won the 2011 World Technology Award
in the category IT-Software (Individual) for creation of Word Lens.
Table updated on April 15, 2011 based on ref.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is...
translation application for the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
from Quest Visual
Quest Visual
Quest Visual Inc. is an American private company that develops an augmented reality translation software Word Lens.-Products:Quest Visual's first product Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and is currently available as Word Lens 1.0.1 for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, and iPod touch...
. Word Lens uses the built-in phone camera to identify text, such as a sign or a menu, in one language and have the words shown translated into another language. The words are displayed in the original context, on the original background, without connection to the internet. Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and received significant amount of attention soon after, including Wired
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
, and ~1.4 million views on You Tube in the first 3 days, growing to ~2.5 million by the beginning of day 6. Since the application held a #1 position on the lists of Top Free Apps and Top Grossing Apps on Apple Inc.'s iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
for a few days following its release, it is currently described as Top In App Purchases. This application is currently available as Word Lens 1.0.1.
Application
According to the description, Word Lens is an application which recognizes words using its optical character recognitionOptical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
capabilities and instantly translates these words into the desired language. It requires iPhone 4
IPhone 4
The iPhone 4 is a touchscreen slate smartphone developed by Apple Inc. It is the fourth generation iPhone, and successor to the iPhone 3GS. It is particularly marketed for video calling , consumption of media such as books and periodicals, movies, music, and games, and for general web and e-mail...
, iPhone 3GS
IPhone 3GS
-Camera:The iPhone 3GS features an improved 3 megapixel camera manufactured by OmniVision. In addition to the higher megapixel count, it also features auto-focus, auto white balance and auto macro and is capable of capturing VGA video...
, iPad 2
IPad 2
The iPad 2 is the second and current generation of the iPad, a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple. It serves primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, presentations and web content, and is available in black or white...
, or iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
with a video camera.
At the release on December 16, 2010, only English and Spanish were supported, but other language dictionaries were planned, with European languages expected first. A free version is available however, it only contains the 2 demo modes: erasing words or reversing words. Each language pack (e.g. either English-to-Spanish, or Spanish-to-English) must be purchased separately.
Even though Word Lens was initially released for iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
only, Quest Visual
Quest Visual
Quest Visual Inc. is an American private company that develops an augmented reality translation software Word Lens.-Products:Quest Visual's first product Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and is currently available as Word Lens 1.0.1 for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, and iPod touch...
planned to expand to Android, Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
, Palm
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
, and BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, with Android likely to be targeted first.
According to its description, Word Lens is best used on clearly printed text and was not designed to translate handwritten or stylized fonts. This application was created to help tourists understand signs and menus, and it is not 100% accurate. The developer Otavio Good commented: "I will be the first to say that it’s not perfect, but perfect was not the goal". However, testers who took the app to other countries said it had been useful. Further, even though the application was not designed to read books, the Wall Street Journal journalist Ben Rooney managed to understand a page from Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban.
Developers
Word Lens 1.0 was created in ~2.5 years by Otavio GoodOtavio Good
Otávio Good is an American computer programmer and inventor. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Quest Visual Inc. Good previously co-founded Secret Level Inc., which was acquired by Sega in 2006 and became Sega Studios San Francisco...
, a former video game developer and the founder of Quest Visual
Quest Visual
Quest Visual Inc. is an American private company that develops an augmented reality translation software Word Lens.-Products:Quest Visual's first product Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and is currently available as Word Lens 1.0.1 for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, and iPod touch...
; John DeWeese, who previously worked on the Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
game Spore
Spore (2008 video game)
Spore is a multi-genre single-player god game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game was released for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems in September 2008 as Spore...
, and a programmer Maia Good.
Competition
"Google GogglesGoogle Goggles
Google Goggles is a downloadable image recognition application created by Google Inc. which can be currently found on the Mobile Apps page of Google Mobile. It is used for searches based on pictures taken by handheld devices...
application for Android and iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
has the capability to translate text or identify objects in an image, but it requires users to take a picture with their phones, and an active internet connection. Word Lens does it on the fly, meaning it's interpreting frames in video, almost in real time. A similar app called LookTel, designed to help blind people, scans print on objects such as packages of food and reads them aloud."
Reviews
Articles in the Wall Street Journal and Tom's Guide cited Clarke's Law describing Word Lens: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".The New York Times journalist David Pogue
David Pogue
David Welch Pogue is an American technology writer, technology columnist and commentator. He is a personal technology columnist for the New York Times, an Emmy-winning tech correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, weekly tech correspondent for CNBC, and a columnist for Scientific American...
included Word Lens in his list of "the best tech ideas of the year" 2010 (10 ideas total). See 2010 Pogie Awards video.
In the Wall Street Journal article by Ben Rooney, Word Lens received a rating of 4/5 and was described as "a sort of magic".
Word Lens was chosen as a finalist for the 2010 Crunchies Best Technology Achievement award.
Ellen of The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, often shortened to Ellen, is an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it is produced by Telepictures and airs in syndication, including stations owned by NBC Universal. For its first five seasons, the show...
demoed Word Lens and referred to it as 'amazing' in her segment Ellen Found the Best Apps!
Otavio Good won the 2011 World Technology Award
World Technology Award
The World Technology Awards are presented annually by The World Technology Network at its World Technology Summit to individuals and corporations achieving significant, lasting progress in categories pertaining to science, technology, the arts, and design...
in the category IT-Software (Individual) for creation of Word Lens.
History of updates
| Version | Release Date | Size | New Languages | New Devices | New Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word Lens 1.0 | December 16, 2010 | 3.6 MB | English, Spanish | iPhone 3GS IPhone 3GS -Camera:The iPhone 3GS features an improved 3 megapixel camera manufactured by OmniVision. In addition to the higher megapixel count, it also features auto-focus, auto white balance and auto macro and is capable of capturing VGA video... , iPhone 4 IPhone 4 The iPhone 4 is a touchscreen slate smartphone developed by Apple Inc. It is the fourth generation iPhone, and successor to the iPhone 3GS. It is particularly marketed for video calling , consumption of media such as books and periodicals, movies, music, and games, and for general web and e-mail... , iPod Touch IPod Touch The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line... (4th generation) |
Snapshot or real-time video translation in color |
| Word Lens 1.0.1 | March 22, 2011 | 3.9 MB | None | iPad 2 IPad 2 The iPad 2 is the second and current generation of the iPad, a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple. It serves primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, presentations and web content, and is available in black or white... Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G 3G 3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union... |
Content localized for Spanish users |
Table updated on April 15, 2011 based on ref.
External links
- Word Lens on iTunes
- Quest Visual homepage
- Original video demonstration of Word Lens
- Otavio Good explains Word Lens 1.0
- Otavio Good explains Word Lens 1.0.1 (interview with ReutersReutersReuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
) - Independent demo of Word Lens
- Building 43 journalist Robert ScobleRobert ScobleRobert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He is married to Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble. He has three children; one from a previous...
interviews Otavio Good about Word Lens