Shazam recently announced that it will no longer focus solely on recognizing music and that the app will also allow you to “Shazam” objects in the future.
Shazam is a mobile application that, by using the microphone of your mobile, recognizes “that one song” within a few seconds. For this purpose, it seems a logical choice to use the camera to recognize objects. Now it is relatively a lot easier to recognize a song via your microphone than to recognize an object with, for example, your camera. Music is made up of sound waves that can be compared to the sound you just recorded with your mobile phone.
Sound waves are relatively easy to compare with each other.
However, a newly taken photo can be much more difficult for a computer to compare with other images. Colors and shapes can of course be compared, but the object you are photographing at that moment may be in a different environment, has a different light (colors) and you see it from a different angle (shapes). The colors and shapes do not always match well enough for a match.
By using iBeacons you can eliminate this problem. iBeacons are small Bluetooth transmitters that can detect where you, with your mobile, are at that moment. In an environment with many small objects that are close together – such as a store shelf – iBeacons will have difficulty distinguishing individual objects. A camera would be a better solution here. However, if it concerns larger objects, with at least one meter between each object, then iBeacons make it possible to recognize an object much faster and more accurately than Shazam can currently recognize even a song!
Van Ons and iBeacons
At Van Ons we are also constantly working on new technologies and so also the iBeacon technology. In collaboration with Beeld en Geluid we have made an iBeacon case this year for during the queue of the Top 2000 café.