Coveting your neighbors belongings just got a whole lot easier.
How many times have you been out somewhere, spotted something you really wanted to buy in the future, but had no way to write it down? Thanks to camera phones, you can now snap a photo and look it up later, but SnapTell does all of that for free.
Take a picture of a product--like a book, DVD, videogame, or CD--and upload to the SnapTell servers. Image recognition software identifies the item in moments over EDGE or lightning-quick on Wi-Fi; the smooth process seems to be run by magical elves. Once it figures out what you've photographed, you'll get links to Google reviews, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Barnes and Noble, and eBay for more info or to make a purchase. But Amazon is notably absent from the list.
In our tests, SnapTell has worked with blurry photos, images obscured by fingers, and photos where half the item was covered by a reflection of a lamp. It's even identified an old hardback copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Although it thought a copy of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume I was The Annotated Mother Goose. Not so elementary.
The program sometimes freezes momentarily after taking a photo, and sometimes you'll have to tell it to resend an image to the server. However, those moments are rare.
SnapTell Explorer identifies products for shopping in such a fun way, that we kept testing it against things we already own.
SnapTell Explorer 1.1
COMPANY: SnapTell
CONTACT: www.snaptell.com
PRICE: Free
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone with 2.1 software update.
Identifies items extremely accurately. Photos don't need to be perfect. Lists prices and places to buy.
No Amazon links. Sometimes freezes briefly after taking a photo.
