Should Yahoo Be Looking At SnapTell For Mobile Marketing Solution?

SnapTell, a Physical World Connection player, allows brands to turn their DVD covers, logos or any other image into an interactive mobile marketing advertisement.

SnapTell, an image recognition based mobile marketing company, turns any billboard, magazine ad or product packaging into a Physical World Hyperlink. Consumers get valuable information with a snap of their camera phones and marketers get to create a targeted brand conversation in the process.

It's easy. Take a picture of a DVD cover (or any other image in their database) and send to dvd@snaptell.com.

SnapTell's solution today can hold up to 1 million images in the database for recognition. Soon they expect to be able to handle 10 million or more images.

Keep in mind Google acquired image recognition based company NevenVision recently. Microsoft launched their image recognition application called Lincoln.

I am thinking that if Flickr (owned by Yahoo) wanted to become a player in the image recognition space, SnapTell would be a great fit.

Upload the Flickr image database and offer the SnapTell image recognition solution. Does it make Yahoo a mobile marketing player overnight?

Led by CEO Gautam Bhargava, (his last two ventures were acquired by Cisco and Oracle), is turning an everyday camera phone and SnapTell's innovative image recognition technology, into a powerful mobile marketing solution.

Try the SnapTell demo

Until every camera phone can read bar codes and 2d codes are placed on packaging, sometimes the easiest solution is the best.

Physical World Connection Used In Fight Against Terror

Makes sense why Google bought NevenVision

From USA Today Face recognition next in terror fight

Homeland Security leaders are exploring futuristic and possibly privacy-invading technology aimed at finding terrorists and criminals by using digital surveillance photos that analyze facial characteristics.

The government is paying for some of the most advanced research into controversial face-recognition technology, which converts photos into numerical sequences that can be instantly compared with millions of photos in a database.

Scanning a photo/image (machine readable identifier) that has been linked to an online database, is physical world connection.

The ability to establish quick identities will "turbocharge video surveillance," ACLU privacy expert Jay Stanley warns. "It turns 'dumb' camera lenses into 'smart' observers that not only capture images but attach an identity to the image. That could increase the attractiveness of surveillance cameras."