Taking a page from their novel video conferencing technology, iVisit spins off their technology to start a new service called LookTel which helps the visually impaired community identify and recognize objects, landmarks, tags, and text.
Doing all of this using video, the blind user can identify objects in real time instead of having to take photos and making sure they aim right. When I talked to the CEO about this, Orang Dialameh said “Using video was important to grab as many frames as possible to capture a good image for fast recognition.” Asking how this was done quickly over a phone, he said “it’s done by pairing the phone and connecting to a remote computer acting as the base station which helps aid in the processing of the image for recognition by using our ivisit video streaming solution”
Definitely a cool app that combines the needs of many features into one convenient application with built in accessibility
Here’s a video of the demo. To see them in action, visit their website at http://www.looktel.com
This is really old news, can’t believe this is getting this much traction on popular sites like Engadget and MobileCrunch but Fring has released a new app that allows video chat on Symbian.
That might be about to change. The popular P2P VoIP service Fring has just announced that they have begun to add support for Skype video calls to their messaging client. Skype has hundreds of millions of users, and this service allows for mobile-to-desktop calls – in other words, mobile video chat finally has a chance at being useful and — more importantly — used. -MobileCrunch.com
If you’re looking for another company doing this, it’s iVisit. They not only do video chat but also multiparty video with up to 8 users. Think of them as skype but on steroids in the video space. I’m surprised not a lot of attention have been given to this company yet… Check them out at http://www.ivisit.com.
They have this software available on Windows Mobile phones. I think they have an iPhone app somewhere…. Apple can you open up the camera for them?
Pretty interesting concept. Imagine a blind or visually impaired user that needs visual assistance using their mobile phone as their virtual pair of eyes. I don’t know how they manage to get the mobile processor to do the real time image recognition but I bet they have a whole slew of upcoming technologies taking advantage of augmented reality scenarios with geo-located image overlays and a database of products for the blind to access and identify.
Check out iVisit to see their consumer level face-to-face video chat application that works cross carrier 3G and WiFi. http://www.ivisit.com or pr@ivisit.com
And did you guys know they also won CTIA E-Tech’s Enterprise Health vertical in 2009? I bet this is a great health app when they actually market it in this segment…