There's a phrase used in software all to describe a utility
that's so essential, so brilliant, that it simply sells the hardware
around it: The Killer Application.
Not
as deadly as they sound, it should be pointed out. Windows, in its
time, was a killer app. So was the original Netscape browser, so
(arguably) was id Software's Doom. Killer Applications don't even have
to be applications that launch a new idea as much as they refine an
existing one, and if you want proof of that, look at Google. When Google
launched, there were a plethora of general purpose search engines on
offer. These days, if Microsoft wasn't pouring buckets of money into
Bing, there'd only be Google.
One of the big buzzwords that has
been labeled as a killer application in recent years has been the
concept of Augmented Reality. This is taking a device with an inbuilt
camera (typically a smartphone) and often location awareness (usually
GPS), and matching the two to enable the screen on the smartphone to
display additional information about the location around you. To date,
it's largely been used simple games and for navigation-style
applications, such as pointing out where nearby restaurants are, or for
interacting with Wikipedia entries for local points of interest.
Reasonable stuff, although the number of people actually willing to
wander around unfamiliar environments holding an expensive smartphone up
to their faces is, not surprisingly, rather low.
I've recently
been testing out something that could well be the next great killer
augmented reality application, even though it's on a platform that's
very well established: The iPhone. As with all things iPhone, it's an
app, and in this case, it's a translation application called Word Lens.
And as with most killer applications, it's not really in what it's doing
-- which is essentially just crude machine-based single word
translation -- but in how it melds existing technologies with new ones
to achieve its purpose.
The use of software to aid in language
translation goes back decades, but until relatively recently it was
largely limited in use to those in fixed positions. What Word Lens does
is use the iPhone's camera to capture text, then translate it on the fly
and superimpose it over the onscreen display. The end results can be a
little shaky depending on how well you're focusing the camera and
whether the font used on the text is easily readable or not, but for
basic translations, as long as you're aware of the essential context of
what you're looking at, it's surprisingly good. For those with a sense
of the impish, it'll also reverse words or blank them out altogether in
the free demo version. For now, it'll only support English to Spanish or
Spanish To English, but apparently other languages are in the works.
Word
Lens isn't the only augmented reality application with utility at its
core on the market, even though it's one with immediate impact for any
traveller, especially as it works without an active data connection.
Google's been slowly improving its Google Goggles application (available
for Android and iPhone), which uses the same kind of image recognition
for immediate searching as well as simple translation via optical
character recognition, although its text-handling capabilities are
nowhere near as good as that offered by Word Lens.
Where Augmented
Reality applications like Word Lens or Google Goggles get it right is
by reducing the need to interface with the application down to a few
seconds, rather than a constant connection. You're much more likely to
pull out a phone and take a quick snapshot than you are wander around
with your phone on prominent display. Equally, by providing a genuinely
useful service, such as translation or the display of a quick search to
help you understand something, they've got the real ability to provide
genuine value.
