Sekai Camera (World Camera in Japanese) is an iPhone-exclusive social tagging service developed by Tokyo-based mobile application provider Tonchidot. The company’s TechCrunch50 presentation (and following Q&A) was pretty hard to understand because of the language barrier but Sekai Camera turned out to be a crowd-pleaser nonetheless.
The key idea is to use the iPhone as a mobile information terminal, linking the real world with tags generated by Sekai Camera users, Tonchidot itself, and information scraped from other web services. Users walk around town looking at the iPhone’s display to get information on their surroundings. If you walk through a mall, for example, Sekai Camera tags will show you where you can find something to eat, additional information about a certain product tagged before, or how many are calories in a chocolate bar.
The video shows additional examples of what Sekai Camera is able to do. Asked what kind of technology is actually used by Tonchidot, Marketing Director Peter Anshin said the company doesn’t want to talk about details at this point. But it is obviously using either GPS or cell-tower triangulation, and the iPhone’s accelerometer seems to be measuring the angle of what’s in view. Anshin does say that no image-recognition technology is being used.
Sekai Camera was surely a fan favorite and CEO Takahito Iguchi delivered a funny presentation, repeatedly imploring the audience to “Look up, don’t look down!” But he left many questions open: The panelists criticized they didn’t hear anything about the underlying technology and how Tonchidot, from a strategic point of view, intends to tag the whole world for all iPhone owners, which is the company’s ultimate goal.
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So we don’t even have to look around anymore, we can just look at our iPhones and find out what’s right in front of us. I wonder if it will warn us when we are about to fall down the escalator.
Ok, it is pretty cool technology, just not sure how practical it is.
That is really amazing. All sort of possibilities.
I found the demo annoying and they just side stepped difficult qestions hiding behind translation issues. I felt the guy could of sat there and just answered feck to every question and everyone would of laughed an hooted just as much.
also this product was way to futuristic, the problem is there will be no data points so people will just stop using it after an hour and they realise that there is no information for their surrounding area.
Darren, it is not that they were side stepping questions, but a language barrier. Yes, maybe they should have had a translator assisting. As for the technology being too futuristic, yes in the US you would have a hard time getting people to use it, but in Japan I feel this could take off instantly. The culture and the way phones are uses are completely different. The average cell phone user in Japan probably sends more text message, takes more pictures/video, and sends more email on their phone than hardcore US iPhone and Blackberry users.
For a second take step back and think how this tagging a different way. It could be us for associating other information. Menu’s and specials for restaurants, information on houses that are for sale, and so on. It doesn’t have to be end users tagging, it could be companies providing a service or product. On part of the demonstration showed that there were categories and filters, so you could find what you want and what you find useful.
This is truly visionary stuff; you pea-brained naysayers who are left guessing, so what?
If it is patentable (of course it is, did you see that??) then it would be devastating for them to reveal what’s under the hood.
Bottom line is they BLEW YOU AWAY, they blew ME AWAY, and hell, you are an American who knows nothing about Mobile!
They are JAPANESE BEE-ATCH!
Take that from their mobile ninja eat-your-lunch blade!
Hi-Ya!
lol I guess this is directed at me the non american who currently is contracting at a mobile company :p
no it didn’t blow me away, it was cool but I think its pointless tech at the moment. I stand by my comment it was a dreadful demo. They should used a better speaker. Still the questions they failed to answer were pretty fundamental.
finally i don’t have to see the real world directly anymore and can use my phone as a filter
Where is the presentation video for this?
only major downside I see it that it’s going to seriously EAT the battery and we all know how great the battery is in the iPhone
Did anyone here saw Wall-E? This product will get us closer to that hover chair with the screen in front of us.!! w00t! ahah
Someone has already IMPLEMENTED this on android, video: http://www.enkin.net/
I can’t find the UStream video of this presentation. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Sounds great.
quick question, if i made a comment on certain tag, or write anything about the tag, would other people who owns i-phone see my comment?
So many issues with something like this:
How to moderate content?
xxx?
Spamming?
honesty?
idiot usage problems (what it has 1 billion calories!)?
is it accurate?
battery life decreased dramatically?
why can’t you read a bar to see how many calories it has?
i guess this is a stunt - and you need to read barcodes or special data points which need to be implemented around the local area. it’s not magic thats for sure.
pretty sure this won’t catch on for another 5 years especially in other countries.
Japanese spend years looking at their phones anyway … this gives them an excuse to be totally dependent on their phones for everything.
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I want to see dating recognition … oh look there is that hot chic from that dating website i was on a minute ago … lets go chat to her.
SERKAN/MIKE, WHERE IS THE VIDEO OF THE PRESENTATION?
This is my favorite startup so far!
Amazing stuff. Just wait until it starts to mesh with other people. Say each phone reports their GPS location so you could walk down the street and see other people running the same thing. Get info about them, maybe even say ‘hi’ to the person by their first name. Basically wearing your Internet profile on your virtual sleeve as you walk down a real street, visible to only those who are running the same thing as you.
There’s a lot of potential here, from GPS based advertising to military usages (shoot this guy/tank, don’t shoot this guy/tank). It’s early stage but I think this will roar into public acceptance when it launches a beta.
The Q&A with these guys was the most hilarious and funny thing I have seen on any conference in a long time.
Here is the video recording of the Q&A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbcO46ELZ7A
My report on this performance from tonchidot on my blog:
http://www.begemann.org/tonchidot-sekai-camera/
Check this out. MediaPower and Getfugu already have this running…
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2cvkNcZ9s
The idea is to use location-based data to tag real-world objects
http://oetztal.startkabel.nl/
I just wonder how long the battery would last.
You can only do this with a jailbroken iPhone. The official SDK doesn’t allow that kind of camera access, which makes one wonder how useful this really will be and how long it will take to get to market.
Technically, the concept is simple, you load in tags based on GPS position and the rest is based on the angle and position of the iphone.
As cool as it is, good luck bringing it to market.
Hello,
what title sound use this video
what title sound use this video?