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

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)

This info is particularly useful for mobile shopping, and can include everything you’ve ever wanted to know about a product: from photos to price comparisons, mobile coupons, special deals, store locations, amazing campaigns and more — you can even make a purchase right from your phone!  Right now, the best example of LMM’s mobile search technology in action in the United States is Barnes & Noble’s bookstore app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. Get it here.  More than one million people have downloaded the app since its release just a few months ago!  Due to the patents on our technology and our unprecedented 96% image matching rate, it is the most successful bookstore app ever created — check out the rave reviews on Apple’s iTunes website.  We have other amazing apps and campaigns across the globe in Japan, China, Canada and the UK — each of these uses our patented technology.  No other company in mobile search has been around longer — or has the patent portfolio we do — and we’re very proud of it.

To learn more about our patents and exactly how they work, please click here.

If you have any questions about our patents or our technology, please connect with us. We love to hear from partners, users and fans!

Image Credit: U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

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