A couple of weeks ago, I ran a story about Nokia’s desire to augment physical reality with virtual info on a mobile phone. Well, it seems that idea is starting to come to fruition, with the first stage of their plans: the new Point & Find service. Basically, you just point your phone’s camera at whatever it is that takes your interest, press a button, and it runs a kind of visual search, matching up the image you see with one in its database, to bring you info about whatever it is you pointed at.
However, at the minute, it’s limited to film posters, but to be fair, that ain’t a bad thing to start on. Just snap a pic of the poster, and your phone gives you local showtimes and lets you view the trailer online.
And as an example, check out the pic I’ve whipped up with the ever-so-classic Weekend At Bernie’s…
There’s also talk of being able to scan barcodes, finding the product the barcode refers to, then the phone finding where it’s in stock nearby, or letting you buy it over the internet, something that the T-Mobile G1 does, and which is one of the coolest features to crop up on mobile phones for a good many years.
Now, the good news is… it’s available as a downloadable app, so you can get it for your existing Nokia Symbian phone (provided it’s compatible… I couldn’t find a compatibility guide anywhere), and if you want to try it out, download Point & Find here.
And since the Nokia N97 hasn’t been released, ten quid says it comes with Point & Find included as standard…
[EDIT: There's now a proper video demo of it in action...
Yup, that could turn out to be one of the most essential apps Nokia have ever made!]
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