Sekai Camera (World Camera in Japanese) was one of the coolest things shown off at TechCrunch50 and if you checkout the impressive video (after the jump) you will probably agree with me that it could easily be one of the killer iPhone apps.
The iPhone app developed by Tonchidot Corporation uses both iPhone's camera along with GPS or cell-tower triangulation to offer up a near real-time information of what you're looking at.
Sekai Camera is an iPhone app developed by Tokyo-based mobile application provider Tonchidot.
You can checkout the impressive video of the iPhone app to get an overview:
It is one of the best implementation of location-based social networks I have seen so far on the iPhone.
The iPhone app makes use of the information provided by the users in the form of little virtual "hobo codes", information generated by Tonchidot themselves and information scraped from other web services to display information of a user's surroundings.
The iPhone app identifies things like restaurants, local shops, and even products with links to user reviews and ratings. It cant even tell you how many calories are there in a chocolate bar by looking at it on your iPhone.
So you can use Sekai Camera to find out where to eat, and if you didn't like it, you can tag it and leave your review so that others can see it when they use the application.
According to Tonchidot, Marketing Director Peter Anshin, the technology does not use as much information from the camera as it does from your location using either GPS or cell-tower triangulation. He has confirmed that they are currently not using any image recognition technology, however did not divulge any more details at this point.
Unfortunately, there is no information as to when Sekai Camera will be released to public.
Based on the video and the information available, folks at Tonchidot seem to have a winner.
What do you think?
[via Gizmodo, TechCrunch50 Coverage]
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Wow I am surprised that no one commented on this. I Think this is the most futuristic app I have ever seen or heard of ever.I cant wait till this comes out but it doesn't look like it will come out any time soon…
"He has confirmed that they are currently not using any image recognition technology"
Hmmm, whats the damn point then? If its only using the GPS, its not really special.
this might be a "Proof of concept" sort of thing. Maybe in the future there will be image recognition..this is just the first stepping stone
I'm trying to figure out why you guys report on vaporware like this. Do they pay you for it?? It hurts your credibility to do stuff like this (not to mention the bad spelling and grammar).
How does this hurt their credibility? By reporting on apps that are new and potentially very useful? Makes sense…not
exactly impressive!
I like the potential community building application if organizations can use to "tag" members & find peeps nearbye via symbol or tag filtering.