WhereIsHere: Sign Translation Mobile Service and Social Network

Justin Oberman on mopocket has written up a friendly site, whereishere.net, "a mobile social service that wants to make the world a little smaller, one street sign at a time".

If you're in a foreign contry and you need to translate a sign - and if you're not in too much of a hurry- take a picture of a sign with your camera phone, upload it, and someone from the community will translate it for you. It's not clear so far how you get the translation, hopefully by SMS.

This article reminded of one of the Navy's high tech gadgets, written up in 2004 which wasan instant translators for documents and street signs.

"Take a picture of an Arabic newspaper, a Chinese menu or a Farsi instruction pack, and send the image to the servers of SpeechGear, an ONR-backed company based in Northfield, Minnesota.

SpeechGear processes the image and text and sends back an English version to the phone in about 15 seconds."

emily | 4:53 PM | How people and businesses are using cameraphones |
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