This is a picture many of you will be aware of - it is the car currently running around the USA for a company called Immersive Media, and being licensed by Google for their 'Streetview' project.
I had a little lightbulb moment the other day when I found out the supposed G-Phone, and put that together with an article about the string of mobile patents that Google have got. It Looks like they are looking to integrate search with the camera phone:
- Image-based Contextual Advertisement Method and Branded Barcodes
- Image Base Inquiry System for Search Engines for Mobile Telephones with Integrated Cameras
i.e. take a picture of what you are doing or where you are and get information back from Google’s search engine, effectively overlaying the real world with a world sized map of virtual data.
Given that the new version of Google Maps Mobile will already tell you roughly where you are to within 100m or so, this is pretty cool, but when you match this up to a Google index of photographs of everywhere in the world, you then have the most powerful search engine the world has ever seen (cue maniacal laughter)...
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