Hustle off to the newsstand and grab a copy of the December issue of Popular Science magazine, which features the 21st annual "Best of What's New" review. The magazine describes it as "a celebration of our wildest technological dreams" and spotlights dozens of "long awaited or completely unexpected, (and) equally amazing" recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs.
Even better: Popular Science used SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get solution to make the entire Best Of What's New section interactive -- just use your camera phone to snap a picture of any of the pages (see the magazine for specifics), send the image to [email protected] (AT&T, Verizon and Alltell users can send via shortcode 070707) -- and you'll get a spiffy digital image of a vintage Popular Science cover, an instant response from some of the Best Of What's New award-winning companies, and a chance to win a Garmin nüvi 500 GPS device.
Educating Silicon has published an interesting review of Snaptell Explorer for the iPhone
Snipped from the post:
SnapTell just released an iPhone client
for their visual search engine. A little sleuthing reveals that the
index contains 2.5 million items - apparently most books, DVDs, CDs and
game covers. If the recognition rate is as high as it should be,
that’s a pretty impressive achievement. In principle the service was
already available via email/mms. In practice, an iPhone client changes
the experience completely. Image search becomes the fastest way to get
information about anything around you.
Almost all of books and CDs I had lying around were correctly
recognised, despite being pretty obscure titles. With 2.5 million
objects in their index, SnapTell can recognise just about any book, CD,
DVD or game. Once the title is recognised, you get back a result page like this
with a brief review and the option to buy it on Amazon, or search
Google, Yahoo or Wikipedia. For music, there is a link to iTunes.
I spent a while “teasing” the search engine with badly taken photos,
and the recognition is very robust. It has no problems with blur,
rotation, oblique views, background clutter or partial occlusion of the
object.
SnapTell is in glitzy company this week. Us Weekly, a celebrity and entertainment news magazine, has used SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform to mobilize select ads in its current issue.
Readers use their camera phones to Snap any of the interactive ads in the issue, Send the image to [email protected], will Get a chance to win a trip to attend an Us Weekly celebrity luncheon. Each Snap.Send.Get-enabled ad also offers readers free goodies -- including exclusive ringtones, and chances to win holiday gift baskets and gift certificates from leading retailers.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it
enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize
existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
SnapTell’s first European campaign has just gone live in “My Life” a German health-centered publication from the Burda publishing group. The magazine covers Sports and Fitness, Food and Entertainment, Beauty and Spa, and the environment.
Selected ads in the current issue of My Life have been made interactive with SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get
mobile marketing platform. Readers can look for the SnapTell logo in
ads throughout the issue, and then use their camera phones to Snap a picture of the ads that interest them, Send the picture to SnapTell, and Get special promotional offers and/or content. They will also have a chance to win one of 50 subscriptions to My Life magazine.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it
enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize
existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
I am an iPhone Apps junkie. I download the things on a whim,
impressed by the capabilities, only to discover weeks later that they
have almost no practical application what so ever. However, I happened
upon one today, that just might prove useful.
SnapTell is a free iPhone app that… Well here’s the description:
Snap a picture of the cover of any Book, DVD, CD, or
Video game and within seconds see a rating, description and links to
Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDb and more. If you like the item, click on a
link to buy it right away.
CogDogBlog reviewed the app, and added some interesting thoughts on image recognition app use in educational/museum settings:
I’ve been playing a little with the QRCode readers like NeoReader on the iPhone, especially in Japan, where there where QR codes in the newspaper, on stores, on public signs,
but its a challenge because you have to get a square on framed shot,
it’s hard to get a good photos of the small ones. It takes too much
effort.
So I gave SnapTell a quick test last night, taking a picture of a
paperback that has been traveling with me, so its front page is curled
and torn, and I took this photo under room light, what I would call
non-optimal photo conditions. So I took the image in the SnapTell app, clicked “use photo” and within 5 seconds it correctly identified it. 100% correct as Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry. More than linking to Amazon, it ferrets a relevant link in Wikipedia to the author plus a link to a preset Google search (and Yahoo) for more information.
Thanks, everyone! And if you haven't tried SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone yet you can download it for free here, from the app store.
Harley-Davidson is launching its 2009 V-Rod Muscle bike with
an innovative marketing campaign featuring American super model Marisa Miller and
SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform.
The campaign went live on October 13th in magazines
such as GQ, Esquire, Playboy,Complex, Road & Track and Trader,
with ads featuring Miller reclining on a sleek, black V-Rod Muscle. Snap a
picture of the ad with your camera phone, send the picture in an MMS to the
number cited in the ad, and you get access to exclusive content from Harley
Davidson.
The campaign was pre-launched on Oct. 6 on Harley-Davidson’s
official YouTube channel, with a “making of” video that takes viewers behind
the scenes at the Marisa Miller V-Rod Muscle photo shoot . Motorcycle bloggers and
Harley-Davidson fans and friends on Facebook and MySpace were exclusively
tipped off to the campaign.
SnapTell is pleased to be part of this iconic brand's marketing campaign. For more information on the new V-Rod Muscle visit Harley Davidson's website. To find out more about SnapTell’s Snap.
Send. Get mobile marketing solution, please email us and/or visit our website.
The SnapTell Explorer for the iPhone is now available for download on the Apple App Store.
This free download, powered by SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get image recognition technology, gives camera phone users instant information on virtually any book, movie DVD, video game or music CD.
We all know you can’t judge a book by its cover, and the same goes for films, music, and games. But fret not, because SnapTell’s new Mobile Movie Explorer can help make sure that you never have buyer’s remorse again -- just snap the picture, send it to SnapTell, and you’ll get comprehensive information and reviews for the product you’re interested in right on your iPhone.
Don't own an iPhone? No problem. You can access the same information on virtually any camera phone, just snap a picture and send it via MMS to [email protected] or use the shortcode SNAPIT (762748).
ESPN The Magazine partnered with SnapTell to
create an interactive magazine packed full of sports-themed free rewards. To reap the bounty readers simply explore the pages of the ESPN The Magazine’s NFL Preview Issue (September 2008),
use their camera phones to snap a picture of ads that offer the rewards they are
interested in, send the picture to SnapTell via MMS, and they'll get their goodies immediately.
The rewards offered include:
SportsCenter ringtone
Breaking sports news, scoring and fantasy team alerts
NFL Live ringtone
Vodka Recipe from Absolut Los Angeles
Free standard shipping on purchases
College Football ringtone
Free Can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup
Converse One Star Ringtone
Plus, every reader who snaps and sends a picture of any SnapTell-activated ad in the NFL Preview Issue is automatically has a chance to win a trip for two to Tampa, Florida for the ESPN The Magazine Next ’09 Big
Weekend Event, starting Friday, January 30 2009.
Brands participating include Progressive, Sony, GMC Sierra, Absolut Los Angeles, Under Armour, Toyota, Wolverine, Campbell’s, Converse, Target, HBO, Mobil, and Champs.
Advertisers get significant benefits as well, including real-time, personalized, interactive on-demand brand communication with their target audience and additional exposure in the magazine.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
SnapTell-activated ads are returning to the pages of Rolling Stone, after our successful debut in the magazine last May.
Selected ads in Rolling Stone issue #1062, now on newsstands, have been made interactive with SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform. Readers can look for the SnapTell logo in ads throughout the issue, and then use their camera phones to Snap a picture of the ads that interest them, Send the picture to SnapTell, and Get special promotional offers and/or content such as:
A chance to win a Pulsar watch
Exclusive wallpaper or video clip from Sci Fi
A killer pick-up line from Pentel
Free Deep Cleaning Shampoo sample from Gillette
A chance to win a $50 voucher from Greyhound
Exclusive ringtone from Energizer ® Advanced Lithium
But wait; there’s more! Everyone who snaps and sends a picture of any of the SnapTell-enabled ads in the magazine is also automatically entered to win a trip to an upcoming Rolling Stone Live concert.
Readers of Rolling Stone aren't the only ones to benefit of course. SnapTell's "Snap.Send.Get" mobile marking solution transforms static print ads -- or any existing marketing collateral -- into a measurable,
two-way communication tool for brand owners.
For more information on our Snap.Send. Get mobile marketing platform, please visit our website or email us.
Attention adrenaline addicts: the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers show will be returning to a TV near you in mid-October! The coming season features new high-tech
tricked-out vehicles, new teams and new strategies for delving into the heart
of Mother Nature’s most intense experiences without getting your face and/or assorted appendages ripped
off in the process.
And to soothe your Storm Chaser needs until the new season premiers on October 19th (Sundays at 10 p.m), pick up a copy of Wired Magazine’s October issue (on sale now). There’s a great ad from Discovery Channel with information on one of the coolest Storm Chaser trucks, a dictionary of weird weather terms (do you know what a “Wedge” is? Animal Precipitation? Anvil Zits? If not, you will after you read the insert).
And there’s also a terrific bonus offer that will totally blow you away: Snap a picture of the ad using your phone’s camera, Send it in an MMS to [email protected], and you’ll almost instantly Get an exclusive
Storm Chasers clip on your mobile phone.
The Discovery channel used SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform to power their Storm Chaser clip offering. Snap.Send.Get can turn any image associated with a brand into a dynamic mobile marketing campaign. 100% permission-based, Snaptell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution enables brand owners and retailers to communicate directly with consumers, within seconds of the consumer's request for information. For more information, please email SnapTell.
