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It is with great sadness that we report the death of one of our valued colleagues and dear friends, Mark (Monty) Montague.  A talented programmer with tremendous tenacity and attention to detail, Monty was part of the founding group of Evryx.  He was our “go to” guy to solve even the most difficult of challenges. 

On July 19th, he and his girlfriend were scuba diving off Laguna Beach.  He encountered some equipment problems and when they attempted to return to shore he ran into trouble.  Lifeguards pulled him from the water but were unable to resuscitate him.  A graduate of CalTech and alumnus of JPL, he was 43 and is survived by his parents and many friends.

He shall be sorely missed, but we take solace in knowing he was doing one of the things he loved.

Our thoughts are with Monty’s family ~

dwm

LinkMe Mobile has recently had the tremendous fortune of partnering with Ipplex, the team behind the very successful iVisit mobile video conferencing suite. They approached us initially for a license to our patents – being machine vision specialists involved with Neven Vision prior to the Google acquisition, they understood that not only were our recognition technologies superior to everything else in the market, but we hold the patents which define that market.

While we are thrilled with this license, we’re far more excited to be working with a team as forward-thinking and passionate as Ipplex. They’ve built a range of technologies which form a perfect complement to our own and together we’re actively working on a number of applications which will set new standards within the mobile market.

The power of this partnership is nowhere better evidenced than with LookTel, an Augmented Reality application for the visually impaired, which Ipplex is launching this week at CTIA Wireless. Not surprisingly, LookTel is a finalist in CTIA’s Emerging Technology (E-Tech) Awards, in the Healthcare/Public Safety/Transportation Category. In our opinion, nothing else comes close to having the same kind of potential impact on the market as LookTel.

The application itself is meritorious on a purely humanitarian basis. With 345 million visually impaired people globally and 11 million in the US alone (according to the WHO), plus millions of elderly – LookTel stands to make a direct, positive impact on the lives of a huge portion of the human race. By harnessing the incredible power afforded by various technologies within the mobile industry, including smartphones and our recognition technologies, LookTel allows us to take a significant step toward making society more inclusive of everyone. Smartphones don’t just allow us to manage emails and log-on to Facebook, they augment the senses we use to interact with our world. LookTel now does that for the visually impaired, by using image recognition capabilities to act as the “eyes” for those whose own eyesight can’t, and by using augmented reality to make the entire application simple, intuitive and as natural as possible.

LookTel also further proves the point we’ve been making for quite some time – relying on location as the basis for mobile phone user interaction is, in most cases, very limiting. Location is quite useful for navigation, but secondary to the type of data mobile phone users need in many situations. LookTel’s augmented reality uses true image recognition, not location, to determine what is in the phone’s field of vision. Other apps on the market use some variant of geo-location data to determine what the phone is pointing at relative to its location – this is completely limited. Aside from not accounting for real time environmental changes, it’s useless in recognizing what’s actually in front of you. You can’t point a location-based AR app at a twenty dollar bill and have it tell you anything meaningful. You can, however, point LookTel at a street corner and have it tell you exactly, precisely where you are.

LookTel is merely the first augmented reality application we will produce in partnership with Ipplex. We’re combining our collective technologies to build commerce, healthcare and industrial apps which will have the same kind of impact in their respective sectors that LookTel is making for the visually impaired.

We are proud to be in partnership with a team who not only stand at the forefront of technological development, but who understand the importance of applying its power to help others. Together we will create commercially standard-setting applications – and we’ll continue to find ways of harnessing the power of mobile technology for the betterment of humanity.

Watch the demo and you’ll see for yourself. And while doing so, take a moment to be grateful that you can – and you’ll better understand why LookTel is such an important development.

To read our press release about the unveiling of LookTel and our partnership with Ipplex, please click here.

dwm
Image Credit: LookTel/Ipplex

In his article “Despite Small Numbers, Magazines are Big on Barcodes” in today’s Advertising Age “The Digital Issue” (on newsstands and online), writer Nat Ives posits the question we ask everyday: “You could be forgiven for wondering why magazines keep adding interactive bar codes and icons, those symbols that let camera phones fetch extra content or special offers, once you realize how few readers use the things.”

Mr. Ives’s article clearly highlights the issue our business partners all know very well – our image recognition software has the ability to recognize barcodes, tags, QR codes or any other symbol – but there is absolutely no need to use them.

As Mr. Ives cites, our barcode-based competitors see only a few thousand (in some cases only a few hundred) consumer responses with their campaigns, whereas in one campaign alone our partner saw over 600,000 consumer responses. Frankly, there is no comparison, nor can there be.

We look at something like this:

and we scratch our heads and ask, “Why would someone do this?” As a CEO, if my marketing department presented this to me, knowing (1) how much money is spent on ad creative and placement, (2) the importance of conveying the optimal message to consumers and (3) how crucial brand image is in the attempt to positively influence consumer behavior, I would seriously question whether I had the right people in my marketing department.

What exactly is the message this advertisement is attempting to convey to potential consumers?

What is that thing which occupies 50% of the page and what does it have to do with the image of the brand or the content of the ad?

Barcodes play a critical role in the supply chain of every product, but have no need to do so in areas which are consumer-facing. No matter how colorful or clever one tries to make them, barcodes of any kind are, simply-put, unattractive. They do not enhance an image in any way whatsoever:

They are also completely unnecessary. We have spent years building proprietary patented technology which works by recognizing the entire image and returning whatever kind of information or experience the advertiser, broadcaster or retailer wants their consumers and users to receive – from special promotions to coupons to videos, augmented reality, games and more.  An enormous amount of time, resources and money is spent on every piece of marketing collateral. Our technology works with it as it was intended to be seen, with no changes to the creative.

Please click HERE to view a recent Case Study about our wildly successful partnership with Woman’s Day referenced in Mr.Ives’ AdAge article.

This is what an advertisement looks like which employs our technology:

Note the absence of any kind of intrusive symbols. Users simply take a picture of the ad with their phone and we allow the advertisers (in this case our partners Coty and Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Lovers fragrance line) to return any kind of information they would like.

Our technology works on any phone with a camera, requires no downloads and works across all carriers. Of course, we also build highly sophisticated and successful apps for smartphones, as an app can provide a much richer user experience, and apps do need to be downloaded. Our Barnes & Noble app, for example, currently has over 1.5 million users and remains a top ten application in Apple’s iTunes App Store, 8 months after launch. However, our technology does not require an app to work – it only requires a phone with a camera.

Mr Ives’ AdAge article addresses the point a rapidly growing number of our new customers have come to realize: barcodes are garnering a lot of attention, but they are really not the best solution. Our technology works because it disrupts neither the creative nor the workflow itself – all that’s needed is the original ad.

Advertisers and retailers continue to experiment with the various alternatives, and we see some customers moving amongst the different competitors in response to artificial pricing or corporate pressures. Our results speak for themselves –Recognition accuracy in excess of 96% – Conversion rates of 25% – and more than 600,000 users interacting with a single campaign.  These are the kind of results we want to help you achieve.

To find out how, please contact us! We want to ensure your ads don’t turn out like this:

Image Credits: (1) STA Travel/JagTag (2) Esquire Magazine (3) Coty/Harajuku Lovers & (4) Mad Magazine (in order)

Like most of the world, we watched this morning’s launch of Apple’s iPad with great interest. Not surprisingly, Apple has once again delivered a stunning piece of technology, and, in keeping with Google’s new approach, have taken another step towards resetting the relationship with the carriers. Launching on AT&T — who are already struggling to keep up with network demand for the iPhone — may prove problematic, but offering two pre-paid data plans at dramatically reduced rates is a great move.

The iPad appears to make the most of the best features of the iPhone and iPod touch, but seems to have neglected some lessons we all thought they had learned. Perhaps this is simply a way of keeping options open to deliver new features with subsequent versions, but I think everyone was disappointed to see the absence of multi-tasking. For a device which is clearly targeted at the heart of Netbooks — complete with a 10 inch display — not providing the ability to seamlessly multi-task is likely to prove a serious short-coming.

The other missing feature — which most interested us here at LinkMe Mobile — was a camera. Notwithstanding the impracticalities of using a device of this size to take pictures, given its obvious video and image superiority, the lack of a camera was a surprise. We would love to see Apple add a camera feature, and would especially love to build our technology into the device. Given the aggressive thrust into the print world, having the ability to interface directly between printed medium and the virtual iBook store and Newspaper partners would be an obvious — and significantly value-adding — feature.

We’re going to try to convince Apple of the merits of this idea and demonstrate how it could enhance the user experience (and their sales!). We’re also going to keep working with our partners at Barnes & Noble to do exactly the same thing.  If you haven’t seen our Barnes & Noble bookstore app for Apple’s iPod, iPhone and iPod touch, download it now.  In the first 6 months since its release, it has already passed the 1 million download mark.  Rave reviews from customers on Apple’s iTunes website continue … “So easy!” … “Fun to use!” …”Recognizes every cd cover I’ve tried!” … “This is so cool. Why don’t all apps have image recognition?”  We strongly agree with this last satisfied customer.

So what’s a dramatic way that Apple’s iPad and Barnes & Noble’s Nook can enhance sales?  Why not add a camera?  Allow users a way to directly interface with — and ultimately purchase and download information — simply by taking a picture of their favorite book, CD or DVD cover — or any product they see in their world.  With higher than a 96% accuracy rate, our image recognition technology is the best on the market — and as holders of the patents in this space, we have the solution.  We’d be happy to discuss adding image and voice recognition to any Apple or Barnes & Noble device.

Well done to Apple for the iPad – they’ve added a beautiful new device into the fascinating — and growing — world “in the middle” between PCs and mobile phones. We look forward to watching their next step.

Image Credit: Apple

These are exciting times for anyone in the mobile sector, but especially for us. In the US with LinkMeMobile, and with our global brands in Japan, China, Canada and the UK, we’re signing new contracts with some of the most significant retailers around the world on a weekly basis. Our patented image recognition and voice recognition technologies have allowed us to create an approach to mobile search that dramatically changes mobile advertising, couponing and therefore mobile commerce. While most others rely on the guess-work provided by GPS, we allow our partners to respond directly to specific inquiries consumers make from their phones, and to interact in real-time with those consumers. This is ideal for both – retailers can directly influence the “buy” decision the very moment that decision is made and consumers can leverage that to get the best possible deal. The only other way to accomplish this would be to have someone standing next to each consumer as they make a purchase.

We see an increasing number of competitors in this sector — mostly companies attempting to use bar code scanners or some form of QR codes or other odd, unattractive symbols. The problem with every one of these is that no matter how clever the symbol, ultimately they are very ugly and they alter and ruin all the efforts put into brand creativity and advertising. They’re also completely unnecessary. Besides the fact that nearly all of these infringe upon our patents, our technology consistently achieves over 96% accuracy recognizing any naked image – without the need for adulterating symbols or embedded watermarks. Again and again, ours is proven the best choice for both retailers and consumers.   In Japan — where QR codes originated and are ubiquitous — we’re now constantly being approached by people telling us they no longer want to use them and much prefer the flexibility and results we can provide.

All of this has taken us to the point where we felt it time to start reaching out directly to consumers, as more and more of them are downloading our applications and using our technology every day. We’ve therefore added this blog into our site — and integrated Facebook, Twitter, RSS feed and Share This options — to better serve our customers and consumers. We’ll be using these social media outlets to keep the dialogue open and flowing in both directions — most importantly, to ensure we provide the best service we can. We believe every mobile phone should be a Discovery Device ™ and with your help and ideas we’ll continue creating, learning and growing our technology and our apps to answer your needs. I invite everyone to connect with us and let us know what we can do with our technologies to make your life better.

All the best,

dwm

President & CEO

Image Credit: Paul Rumohr, www.prpic.com