Word Lens is an amazing new iPhone app that instantly translates language right before your eyes. Using the video camera on your iPhone, Word Lens can scan, for instance, the words on a sign or menu. The app then runs that text through optical character recognition software and displays the translated type in context. Because Word Lens looks up words in its onboard dictionary, you don’t need to be connected to the internet for the app to work; there is no delay, roaming fees, nor reception problems to contend with. It’s a $4.99 paid app, which for the moment offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation.
Techcrunch reports that the app is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. Good says in the video below that he got the idea for the app when he was in a foreign country and couldn’t read the language on a sign. He thought to himself “why doesn’t my cellphone do this?” Now that the translator is complete and deployed to the App Store, Good notes that Word Lens is not perfect, but it usually gets the point across. It doesn’t work on handwritten type, very stylized fonts, or cursive. . Sometimes the translation will have mistakes, and may be hard to understand. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in.
Until such time when a certain bleeding-edge technology provides shallow depth-of-field no longer dependent on the optics of large pieces of glass in a tube, you can immediately graft said glass tubiness onto your wee iPhone using Photojojo’s iPhone SLR Mount.
Will this eventually allow for shallow depth-of-field without the need for large lenses full of pieces of glass? Tiny, smartphone lens images manipulated into focal lengths of various lenses. Obsoleting iPhone accessories like Olloclip and the SLR Mount.
Newton interprets each 2D layer as a rigid body in a real environment. Once simulation is completed, animation is recreated in After Effects with standard keyframes.
Czech artists Vladimir Turner and Ondřej Mladý made a video performance on the streets of Prague mounting a pico projector to the bike handlebars to display a DIY digital bike lane.
ot to be confused with the world’s smallest stop-motion animation character which happened to have been shot with a Nokia N8 smartphone, Dot is an eyeball attachment for the iPhone 4 that allows you to shoot video in 360 degree panoramas.
Flavorwire has desaturated and uploaded 10 films that they claim provide a better viewing experience in black and white.
The Oona looks like a useful tool for rigging up your iPhone in tight shooting situations or as a car mount.
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