Google Goggles Makes Your Phone's Camera Smarter

Google Goggles is an application that's sometimes useful, but it's not good enough to use it every time you want to find something about an object. The Android app has a new feature that integrates it with the Camera app, uploads all the photos you're taking to Google's servers and shows notifications in the status bar if Goggles found something useful. It may sound spooky, but it makes your phone's camera smarter.

"With this new opt-in feature in Goggles, you can simply photograph an image using your phone's camera, and Goggles will work in the background to analyze your image. If your photo contains items that Goggles can recognize, the app will notify you," explains Google. The feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it from the settings page by choosing "Search from Camera".



It's probably a good idea to only enable this option when you're on vacation or when you're planning to photograph barcodes for products you want to buy. It's also useful if you're in a bookstore and you want to "bookmark" some books.

Google Mobile's help center informs that "each Goggles query consumes approximately 100 KB of data" and you can limit the amount of data that's consumed by selecting "Search on WiFi networks only" under "Mobile Connection".

"Search from Camera" is one of the features that won't be available in the Google app for iPhone because iOS' background APIs aren't that powerful. If you have an Android device, install Google Goggles 1.6 from the Android Market.

Your smartphone camera is now smarter with Goggles 1.6

Today, we launched a new version of Google Goggles that enhances the camera on your Android-powered phone. With this new opt-in feature in Goggles, you can simply photograph an image using your phone’s camera, and Goggles will work in the background to analyze your image. If your photo contains items that Goggles can recognize, the app will notify you.

Let’s say that I’m going on vacation, and I decide to use my Android-powered phone as my primary camera. Goggles would identify landmarks, paintings and other interesting objects in my photos. I can share these facts about my vacation with my friends right from my Goggles search history.

(l-r) Goggles has found a search result for this popular landmark; Find out more about this item in your photo within Google Goggles

Photos you take with your phone’s camera will only be seen by Goggles if you enable the Search from Camera feature. Here’s how:

• launch Google Goggles
• tap Menu > Settings > Search from Camera

Manage your opt-in status from the settings menu

Google Goggles 1.6 is available for Android 2.1 and newer devices. Download by clicking here or by scanning the QR code below:

Posted by Pavel Vodenski, Software Engineer

The J. Paul Getty Museum collection comes alive with Google Goggles

The Google Goggles team has worked with The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to “Goggles-enable” their permanent collection of paintings. You can use the Google Goggles app on your phone to take a photo of a painting from the collection and instantly access information about it from the Getty’s mobile-optimized website and the rest of the web. It's possible to fit only a small amount of information on the wall next to a painting but visitors with Goggles can now enjoy the full story online.

Google Goggles results and the Getty webpage for Portrait of the Sisters Bonaparte

Learn more on the Official Google Blog.

Posted by Shailesh Nalawadi, Product Manager

Google Goggles learns Russian and gets a new view

Some of you may already be using the new optical character recognition (OCR) and translation of Russian in Google Goggles that we previewed at last week’s Inside Search event. Starting today, we’re pleased to introduce some additional new features, including a map view of your Search History and the ability to copy contact and text results to the clipboard. We’ve also changed the results interface to make it easier to view and navigate through your results.

Russian optical character recognition (OCR) and translation
Since Google Goggles first launched in 2009, it has been able to recognize and translate text in a number of different languages, as long as the language used Latin characters. With the launch of OCR for Russian, Goggles is now able to read Cyrillic characters. Goggles will recognize a picture of Russian text and allow you to translate the text into one of over 40 other languages. Russian OCR is also available for users of Google Goggles on the Google Search app for iOS. Очень полезно!

You can take a picture of Russian text and translate it into over 40 languages.

Map view of your search history
If you’ve enabled search history on Goggles, your history contains a list of all the images that you’ve searched for, as well as some information about where you performed the search if you chose to share your location with Google. Sometimes this can be a pretty long list, so we wanted to give you another way to sort and visualize your Goggles results.

We’ve added a map view, which shows your Goggles image search history on a map so you can quickly zoom and pan to find a query from a particular location.

Easily toggle between map view and list view with the button in the upper right.

Copy contact and text results to clipboard
Finally, imagine that you wanted to grab a URL or telephone number from a sign and email it to yourself. Now, Goggles gives you the option of copying the recognized text to your phone’s clipboard, allowing you to paste the test into a number of applications.

To try these new features download Google Goggles 1.5 from Android Market, or scan the QR code below with your phone.

Posted by George Nachman, Software Engineer

Share and personalize your Google Goggles experience with Goggles 1.4

Since its launch, we have worked to make Google Goggles faster and more accurate when returning search results for a wide variety of images. Today, we are taking several steps to make Goggles a better and more personal experience. Goggles 1.4 for Android devices introduces an enhanced search history experience, the ability to suggest better results to Google if we are not able to accurately match your image, and improved business card recognition.

Enhanced search history
The new search history experience lets you search your Goggles results, make personal notes on specific results and share your results with friends. When you add a personal note to a Goggles result, the note will appear in your search history. I’m trying to learn more about wine, so when I taste something new, it’s easy for me to add a note to help me remember what I liked about the wine. Later, I can search my search history for words in my note to help me find that bottle that went so well with steak. Read more about how to enable search history for Goggles here.

To make a personal note, tap the pencil in the corner when viewing a search result.

Notes are intended to help you better organize your search history, so if you choose to share a result with a friend, your notes will not be shared. However, you can always add a personalized message to your friend when you share your results with them.

Share a result by sending a link to your friends.

Suggest a better result
We are constantly working to improve the accuracy of Goggles at recognizing certain categories of items, but visual recognition is still a complicated task. With Goggles 1.4, you are now able to suggest a better result when Goggles cannot find an image match, or the quality of the result is poor.

To send your suggestion to Google, tap “Can you suggest a better result?” on the results page. You can then select the relevant part of the image and submit a tag. Tags will be used to improve recognition in object categories where Goggles already provides some results, like artwork or wine bottles.

When suggesting a better result, you can crop the image and add a description.

Improved business card recognition
Business card recognition is one of the most popular uses of Google Goggles, so we're rolling out some new updates to make the experience even quicker and easier. Additionally, instead of simply recognizing the content as text, Goggles now recognizes the information as a contact, making it easier to add to your phone's contact list.

Call or add the person directly as a contact

Google Goggles is available for Android 1.6+ devices. Download it by visiting Android Market or by scanning the QR code below:

Posted by Jacob Smullyan, Software Engineer

Google Goggles History

Until Google releases a desktop version of Google Goggles, you can see your previous visual queries at http://www.google.com/goggles/history even when you don't have your phone with you. Click on one of the images and you'll see the results, similar images and links to related web pages.


It's surprising to see that this service is not yet integrated with Google Web History and it's not part of Google Image Search.

{ spotted by François Beaufort }