Sony’s Info-eye Xperia camera app has been revolutionary. When it was first introduced, Sony had little to show. We knew it’s a smart social camera that could do more than just take photos. It’s a smartphone camera being reimagined to make “socializing” faster and easier.
Sony collaborated with LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network, to turn the smartphone camera into something that will make business networking a cinch. With the updated Info-eye app, a user can take a picture of a business card. The app then scans the card and automatically searches LinkedIn for matches. This way, the user can quickly connect with the contact. Even if you lose the card, at least, you already found the person and connected with him on LinkedIn.
The app seems like an easy project to do but it was not. Sato Takasi, a member of the Info-eye developers, said that they had a hard time matching up fonts. He said: “The inherent difficulties in matching up different fonts, different fields and then integrating all that into a reliable LinkedIn search posed a huge challenge but we’re really happy with the result.”
Takasi also noted that ‘immediacy of the contact’ is very important in business networking. Snapping a photo of the business card and connecting to LinkedIn is a great solution to socialize with another professionals while it is fresh.
The Info-eye is considered as the “smart eye” of the phone. This may be the first app but we can expect more similar programs to be developed. After LinkedIn, maybe Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Instagram integration? All these are possible with face recognition.
Actually, the Info-eye team earlier mentioned something about food recognition. That seems useless but you know, taking photos before every meal is the norm these days. Maybe food recognition will make it easier for people on Instagram to tag a certain restaurant or meal….or not. What do you think?
SOURCE: Sony Mobile
