Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Word Lens

questvisual.com

241–250 of 298 posts

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#241
Very cool implementation :-)

So what they have is

- an OCR function that reads a few words from an (easy) image

- a (simple) translator that translates the words into a different language word for word

- and then paints the translated words back using the same font/size

...continuously and quickly !

Don't get me wrong, this is cool and all, but it would be much more useful with a single snapshot that translates better, instead of focusing on doing it "realtime" (but the video wouldn't be as cool :-) )

The idea is nice, so I expect Evernote and Google to implement this ASAP ;-)

Good luck !!!

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#243

And when they get Swedish, I'm in! The awesome thing is that once the platform is there, they could easily open it up to other languages and get them rolling too--though they might have to really think before diving into languages with a different character set, such as Japanese.

Another vote for Swedish. I'd pay a lot more than 9.99 too ;)

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#245
post #97

I just caught myself thinking: "I hope they got a software patent on this, they deserve it." But I usually hate software patents unequivocally. So, yet again, a real-world use case reminds me that nothing is so black and white.

I hope they got a software patent if only to help protect themselves against trolls who are filing patents for this right now.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was traveling to japan or china, I would gladly pay $50 per language to translate. That's probably too high for an in-app purchase but I think $29 would be a no-brainer for languages that don't use English characters.

True, but you are not necessarily representative of the market as a whole.

But if they're aiming for maximum $$ as opposed to maximum customers, that price still might be worth pursuing.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

omg.. please no "click here"

Please explain?

He's referring to the fact that "click here" tells nothing about the link itself (for SEO purposes). But in this particular case, it's just added to the text "Try World Lens for FREE", so I don't know what's so wrong about it (or why you get down-voted for just asking that question..)

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#248

Re-posting here from my blog http://yurylifshits.com/lessons-learned-from-the-launch-of-w... The lessons I learned today from Word Lens Everything is secondary to compelling usecase. Word Lens has strange company name (QuestVisual), no logo, crappy landing page, and no PR preparation. But its darn cool! And that's what matters. Assembly innovation is really cool. Every piece of Word Lens was here, but nobody made a p…

> Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android, Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo)

I disagree. I strongly believe this is close to the 1st successful iteration of a killer app for mobile devices (the Babel Fish). One that other platforms might not have for a while. I would be surprised if Apple has not already reached out to invite them to One Infinite Loop to talk about their future plans (not acquisition, but Android).

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#249
post #58

(hola, i'm john deweese, one of the creators) good to hear the early positive response, and we look forward to your insightful feedback (support@questvisual.com) -- mention this site so we pay some extra attention. i hope this app will be nice and disruptive, and we'll be looking carefully at what people expect and how they actually use it. it's a platform, and we're really excited about the directions it opens up. t…

You should register wordlensapp.com or something of the like. I'm not sure hosting nothing but the app promotion on a site with a completely different URL is beneficial. With such a product, you should perhaps brand yourself more on your product than your company name. :) Just throwing it out there.

Since you mentioned this, I registered wordlens.co and set it to redirect to their website. I emailed the info and asked them if they want it. That's how awesome I think this app is - I'd rather spend my own money to make sure they get a good domain.

otaviogood or johndeweese, if you're reading this, my email is in my profile.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#250
post #94
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should register wordlensapp.com or something of the like. I'm not sure hosting nothing but the app promotion on a site with a completely different URL is beneficial. With such a product, you should perhaps brand yourself more on your product than your company name. :) Just throwing it out there.

For future reference: never mention registering a domain in a public forum. Some douchebag will always register it and try to sell it to you. In this case someone has already registered wordlensapp.com. We can only hope it's the Quest Visual people.

I thought better of HN. Shame.

There are many trends for using domains similar to what you would desire: get being the best, and app being one of the other choices.

I have very bad experiences with finding an app's site, if it models app. Maybe it's just bad SEO on their part, but I imagine that it'd be an awful hassle for any normal user who don't know the conventions.

Then it struck me that product would be a very interesting domain that makes much more sense than app. It also mirrors the imperative , although it may not be as popular and known to users - yet.

I think it's a shame they didn't secure a regular .com domain for such a great product - but, on the other hand, I'm sure all the press will forgive them (hell, they're trending on Twitter, and 80% of my social media digest today was about the bloody thing).

I've registered usewordlens.com, usewordlens.net, and usewordlens.org and will be happy to hand it over or point it to a domain of their choice (if someone tells me how the hell to do it using name.com, because I'm a complete idiot in that regard. I guess I have to mess with some DNS).

Post reply on HN