Use your smartphone camera to take a picture of text in a newspaper, a magazine article, or a book, and if it’s available online you can access it electronically. Take an image of a print advertisement and you may be able to visit an online transaction page to make a secure transaction.
Snap a shot of a phone number and click on it to make the call. Capture an address and you can pull up a map showing you were that address is located. In addition to Web documents, you can use Exbiblio to access your own documents on your computer.
Looking through the USPTO assignment database, I noticed that Google had been assigned a majority of the pending and granted patents assigned to Exbiblio this past February. The video below describes some of the features and functionality that Exbibilio’s technology offers, and notes that their intellectual property is available for licensing.
Did Google acquire the company, or did they just license Exbiblio’s technology? I’m not sure at this time. Oddly, the videos that were available on the Exbiblio website no longer work, but they are available on the Exbiblio YouTube Channel.
These are the pending and granted patents that have been assigned to Google:
Pending Patent Applications
- Document enhancement system and method
- Aggregate analysis of text captures
- Search engines and systems with handheld document data capture devices
- Applying scanned information to identify content
- Association of a portable scanner with input/output and storage devices
- Portable Scanning and Memory Device
- Method and System For Character Recognition
- Adding Value to a Rendered Document
- Archive of Text Captures from Rendered Documents
- Capture and Display of Annotations in Paper and Electronic Documents
- Content Access With Handheld Document Data Capture Devices
- Interacting with rendered documents using a multi-function mobile device, such as a mobile phone
- Identifying a document by performing spectral analysis on the contents of the document
- Processing Techniques for a Text Capture from a Rendered Document
- Automatic Modification of Web Pages
- Automatically Providing Content Associated with Captured Information, Such as Information Captured in Real Time
- Processing Techniques for Visual Capture Data from a Rendered Document
- Adding Information or Functionality to a Rendered Document via Association with an Electronic Counterpart
- Secure Data Gatherinr from Rendered Documents
- Publishing Techniques for Adding Value to a Rendered Document
Granted Patents
- Archive of text captures from rendered documents
- Methods, systems and computer program products for data gathering in a digital and hard copy document environment
- Data capture from rendered documents using handheld device
- Triggering actions in response to optically or acoustically capturing keywords from a rendered document
- Capturing text from rendered documents using supplemental information
- Content access with handheld document data capture devices
- Information gathering system and method
- Processing techniques for visual capture data from a rendered document
- Processing techniques for visual capture data from a rendered document
- Adding information or functionality to a rendered document via association with an electronic counterpart
- Handheld device for capturing text from both a document printed on paper and a document displayed on a dynamic display device
- Processing techniques for text capture from a rendered document
- Publishing techniques for adding value to a rendered document
- Automatic modification of web pages
The many features described in the patent filings and in the video add considerably to the capabilities that Google is working upon in offerings such as Google Goggles or as described in their patents on Visual Search.
If you have an iPhone, you can try out Exbiblio’s PhoneQi for free.