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WHOA! How freakin' cool would this be on Google Glasses when traveling abroad! Everywhere you look... the text is just translated for you.

inkaudio 14y ago
I conveyed this to the developers[1] a few months ago, this would be a great acquisition for the Google Glass project. [1]https://twitter.com/inkaudio/status/195677653049683969 https://twitter.com/inkaudio/status/195677653049683969
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  An acquisition would only make sense if they had relevant patents to purchase, which they do not.
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    Not always. While it is highly likely that Google could hire (or already has) the talent to build the same thing, acquiring a finished product and the talent that built it can be cheaper and faster than DIY. But yes, having a patent would make a deal even sweeter.
  - inkaudio 14y ago
    Don't underestimate the amount of work, expertise and experience required to arrive at word lens, to date I've to yet to see this technology duplicated elsewhere. Google has acquire hire before recently with milk inc, I don't see why they can't with this team.
    - iandanforth 14y ago
      This. Wordlens is computationally intensive and required a significant amount of GPU knowledge to get working in the first place, and then a couple revs of the iPhone before the hardware caught up. Otavio has some serious graphics chops that made the product possible.
glhaynes 14y ago
If it can do that, it will be pretty easy to make it appear to "take the clothes off" people. (Note, I'm very much not saying this should be done, just that it will be done.) They say that to calm your nerves when public speaking, you should visualize your audience in their underwear. Will be psychologically interesting, at least, to see how that works out for the first Glasses-wearing presenter to try it. Strange world we live in.
- dnlhoust 14y ago
  I'm failing to see how you've made that jump? How does recognizing words, translating them and displaying the result compare to mapping a naked body from only uncovered skin? at best, you could get the correct skin tone on a model.
  - glhaynes 14y ago
    Oh certainly it wouldn't be an accurate representation, it'd have to just "guess" with a generic model transformed to closely match the position/shape/skin tone of the person. Anyway, didn't mean to get off topic (or sound horribly creepy!), it's just that there are a million "interesting" (in good or bad ways) apps that people will be playing with once they have these powerful, programmable devices that can filter/overlay their view of the world in real time. It will be a fundamental change in the way people interact with the world — whether you're wearing them or not, if this catches on, many of the people around you will be. Right now we all have a pretty good idea of what other people are seeing — in most cases its roughly what we're seeing, just from a different location; in the not too distant future, that may not be so.
    - jaredsohn 14y ago
      Staying off topic for a just a bit more, one obvious example would be to automatically give everyone you see a moustache. An app was on Hacker News that does this within the past month. People interested in developing these filters can start building them now by creating smart phone apps and then port them over once Glasses becomes available.
aclimatt 14y ago
Indeed, and it already seemed like this was definitely on their to-do list from the Glass keynote. I don't know how you could build a product like Glass and /not/ do that (other than it perhaps being an extremely difficult problem ;P). More than that, microphone + reasonable speech recognition = everybody you talk to is instantly subtitled. Also an extremely difficult problem, but one I'll bet will be commonplace in 15 years.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  Mind blown! Having everyone subtitled would be way cool for traveling abroad. But even more so for the hearing impaired.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  I take it that you are not familiar with the way the German language order words? Because there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English, other than knowing what he is going to say before he say it.
  - sadawi 14y ago
    Or just show the subtitles after a short delay. Or show a word-by-word translation in realtime. Or both.
  - megablast 14y ago
    Pfft. Just use the mind reader api. It works based on words already said, body language, and tone.
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    > there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English At one time I am sure there were people that said, "Mr. Wright, there is no way you can get that thing to fly."
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      A piece of unsolicited advice: Learn the difference between what cannot be done and what is impossible.

inkaudio 14y ago

I conveyed this to the developers[1] a few months ago, this would be a great acquisition for the Google Glass project. [1]https://twitter.com/inkaudio/status/195677653049683969 https://twitter.com/inkaudio/status/195677653049683969

s_henry_paulson 14y ago
An acquisition would only make sense if they had relevant patents to purchase, which they do not.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  Not always. While it is highly likely that Google could hire (or already has) the talent to build the same thing, acquiring a finished product and the talent that built it can be cheaper and faster than DIY. But yes, having a patent would make a deal even sweeter.
- inkaudio 14y ago
  Don't underestimate the amount of work, expertise and experience required to arrive at word lens, to date I've to yet to see this technology duplicated elsewhere. Google has acquire hire before recently with milk inc, I don't see why they can't with this team.
  - iandanforth 14y ago
    This. Wordlens is computationally intensive and required a significant amount of GPU knowledge to get working in the first place, and then a couple revs of the iPhone before the hardware caught up. Otavio has some serious graphics chops that made the product possible.

glhaynes 14y ago

If it can do that, it will be pretty easy to make it appear to "take the clothes off" people. (Note, I'm very much not saying this should be done, just that it will be done.) They say that to calm your nerves when public speaking, you should visualize your audience in their underwear. Will be psychologically interesting, at least, to see how that works out for the first Glasses-wearing presenter to try it. Strange world we live in.

dnlhoust 14y ago
I'm failing to see how you've made that jump? How does recognizing words, translating them and displaying the result compare to mapping a naked body from only uncovered skin? at best, you could get the correct skin tone on a model.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  Oh certainly it wouldn't be an accurate representation, it'd have to just "guess" with a generic model transformed to closely match the position/shape/skin tone of the person. Anyway, didn't mean to get off topic (or sound horribly creepy!), it's just that there are a million "interesting" (in good or bad ways) apps that people will be playing with once they have these powerful, programmable devices that can filter/overlay their view of the world in real time. It will be a fundamental change in the way people interact with the world — whether you're wearing them or not, if this catches on, many of the people around you will be. Right now we all have a pretty good idea of what other people are seeing — in most cases its roughly what we're seeing, just from a different location; in the not too distant future, that may not be so.
  - jaredsohn 14y ago
    Staying off topic for a just a bit more, one obvious example would be to automatically give everyone you see a moustache. An app was on Hacker News that does this within the past month. People interested in developing these filters can start building them now by creating smart phone apps and then port them over once Glasses becomes available.

aclimatt 14y ago

Indeed, and it already seemed like this was definitely on their to-do list from the Glass keynote. I don't know how you could build a product like Glass and /not/ do that (other than it perhaps being an extremely difficult problem ;P). More than that, microphone + reasonable speech recognition = everybody you talk to is instantly subtitled. Also an extremely difficult problem, but one I'll bet will be commonplace in 15 years.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago
Mind blown! Having everyone subtitled would be way cool for traveling abroad. But even more so for the hearing impaired.
tomjen3 14y ago
I take it that you are not familiar with the way the German language order words? Because there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English, other than knowing what he is going to say before he say it.
- sadawi 14y ago
  Or just show the subtitles after a short delay. Or show a word-by-word translation in realtime. Or both.
- megablast 14y ago
  Pfft. Just use the mind reader api. It works based on words already said, body language, and tone.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  > there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English At one time I am sure there were people that said, "Mr. Wright, there is no way you can get that thing to fly."
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    A piece of unsolicited advice: Learn the difference between what cannot be done and what is impossible.