Our world is being hyper-linked at a rapid speed. Soon there will not be an object in the world we can not photograph from our cell phone and bring up information on. Google’s new Android mobile application “Goggles” promises to bridge the gap between our physical and virtual web worlds. “Goggles” is an image recognition technology that is more sophisticated than the augmented reality apps like Wikitude which allows you to point a cell camera at a landmark and pull information from maps. While “Goggles” does use maps to gather information it takes the visual search a step further by analyzing the image next to the vast “cloud” data of information. At this time the technology is still experimental performing best with images that are easily identifiable. But, it isn’t hard to see the future commercial application for this technology.

There are many lives being touched by interesting mobile application developments. Yesterday I was reading about some professors from Carnegie Mellon University and their mobile project aimed to help rural children in India understand English. Led by Professor Mathew Kam the “Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies” (MILLEE) is developing a series of mobile games modeled around games the rural children find familiar in order to teach them English. “Goggles” photo search could provide an interesting enhancement to this education project.

How long will it take for Google to index the world’s objects and leverage all those street view images? With all those consumers out there walking around with those killer apps in their pockets – their cell phone equipped with GPS and camera – it may be sooner than you think.

Actually we are not far off from the development of tiny implants or devices to add to our glasses that would enable our own eyes to connect and retrieve the vast data available on a viewed object. I am talking about new designer glasses equipped with tiny cameras capable of connecting to the “cloud”