The idea is simple but powerful - using OCR to feed image data (containing text) captured by camera into a TTS engine (via translator optionally), then render it out to audio - a nice neat application on Android Magic. We both agree that there is a set of very good use cases for this application which empower blind to read, illiterate to understand and automatic language translation. Admittedly, I was also working on ideas to utilise TTS engine on mobile platform but could not be convinced so far about the use cases I came out. I am sure you will find this app on Android market very soon but before then, for privacy reason I am not going to expand on the implementation. What matters here is my expectation on the awareness has changed.
It is easy to assume that to write couple of hundreds lines of code using existing APIs will not carry enough weight as far as innovation is concerned, at least that is what I thought so. For this reason, I started to cast my eyes on those where some ground-breaking concepts could possibly be generated. That's the reason I spent many years of my professional career in fundamental research. Having said this, the dilemma is in areas where domain specific knowledge is required for making such breakthrough, scarcely we would see great product just come straight out. As a matter of fact, many of great products took a different path - good understand of people's needs, a piece of requirement, a set of good use cases (existing or brand new while justified ones). We have iPhone, iPod, Wii, Blackberry, Search engines, Google Maps, Netbooks, Hadoop, Google wave and so many more. To maintain a high awareness level, ability to identify the problems and consequently establish links between problems and known techniques is certainly a good start to be innovative, so congratulate to Jon, who is on the right path. Next step, I think is to be brave, and think big, get out of our comfortable zone.
This blog is inspired by Jonanthan's work, to whom the credit goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment