Born to be Wireless

Camera Search! is an interesting mobile marketing service developed by Bandai and Japanese mobile marketing agency D2C using an image recognition system developed by US based Evolution Robotics. Consumers take pictures with their cameraphone of different forms of advertising and labelling (such as pictures in magazines, CD covers, wine labels) and send them to a server using the Camera Search! application on their phone. The server then analyses the image using image recognition technology to identify the product in question, and returns information such as the url of the product’s mobile site, a link to download music or a mobile shopping site selling the product.

Since the product’s launch earlier this year, Bandai and D2C have been adding new services such as outdoor poster advertising and TV commercial recognition. This week, Bandai announced that they will start using Camera Search! with “Crayon Shin-Chan”, a popular children’s cartoon.

Fans of Crayon Shin-Chan can download a free wallpaper for their phone from the cartoon’s mobile site using Camera Search! To access the freebie, all you need to do is snap any scene in the opening credits of the show and send it to the service.

It’s not quite aggressive marketing yet, but parents may have to beware of the mobile as a new tool to enhance nag power in the future.

Source: Wireless World Japan

• You're in a hotel room on business. Armed with a Bluetooth keyboard (come on, you know you've got one in your desk drawer), you connect the N93 to the room's TV using the composite cable or a SCART adapter. You can then word process, respond to emails and type in Notes, using its full size keys and the large TV screen as your monitor:

• You're at your mate's house and the two of you are bored with his old PlayStation games. But hey, you've got Snakes and System Rush and half a dozen other titles loaded on your N93. Again, just plug in via composite lead or SCART to his TV, switch the N93 to landscape mode and use the navigator key as your in-game d-pad, watching and playing the games together on his 24" wide-screen TV:

• At your 21-year-old daughter's flat, you feel an overwhelming desire to demo to her what real music sounds like. Whipping out your N93, you plug it into the phono sockets on the back of her midi system and start Pink Floyd/Chopin/Sinatra (delete where applicable, depending on age) playing in Music player. Decent music fills the room, driven from your N93:

• At home in your living room, your partner wants you to look something up on the web but your PC's upstaairs in the office and it's turned off. Rather than wait for it to spin up, you plug the N93 into your TV and you're off, instantly, surfing on the largest web browser screen you've ever seen:

• At work, your team are trying to liase with another team on the other side of the country. Progress over a landline speakerphone is proving slow, so you set up your N93, plugged into the meeting room's TV, and establish a 3G video call to your opposite number with a 3G phone at the other end. The TV image fills with the scene at the other site and you can all see and talk to each other - the meeting ends far more successfully.