Google Goggles: Books

  Just by chance, while studying Numerical Methods with friends, I discovered a few functions of Google Goggles that completely blew our minds, I just wanted to share them, so that you know they exist, because they can be really useful (if you're not familiar with Google Goggles, click on the logo below).

  One of my friends found this book in my university's library. I took a look at it, and I really liked it, everything seemed clear and I felt it was better than the one I had on my Kindle, so I took a picture of the book's cover with my phone, just in case someday I could get my hand on it (for less than 100 $ ...), a few seconds later, Google Goggles that I had installed a few weeks before, sent a notification saying that the picture analysis was done:

  Google Goggles apparently realized that it is the picture of a book, and is proposing a result concerning that book, so I clicked, and surprise, I was immediately on the Google Books page of that book! I didn't even need to search for it, and if the book is available for online reading, you've got it, and if it's possible to get a sample (or even the whole book), just click on the right button and it's right in your Kindle.

  Since that day, I have been using Goggles a lot to remember books I'd like to read later for example.

But the even more mind blowing situation was when I took a picture of a proof from a book I was interested in, I actually took the picture because I wanted to read it later on my phone, but, again, Goggles surprised me:

  I was quite astonished that, with just a picture of the proof's text, Goggle found the name of the writer and the book, so, I clicked on it, and then... surprise! You directly land on Google Books, with the book you just took a picture opened, at the right page! 

  This means that Goggles actually recognizes the text (OCR), scans the Google Books database and tries to find a match for your picture, kind of a book Shazam ! No wonder live translation using the camera is already available... 

Download Google Goggles