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(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

(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. thanks for the link, cheers!

Sephr 16y ago
Do you plan on creating an Android version anytime soon?
- mey 16y ago
  An android or SDK version that could be used with a heads up display system would be impressive. If you can do more then Spanish, you should consider talking to the US Military.
- GeneralMaximus 16y ago
  For the love of FSM, do it! I speak for a vast majority of Android users here on HN when I say I'd buy this even if it cost five times what it does now.
  - jamii 16y ago
    Absolutely. Android is really popular in Korea, a Korean-English pack would make a killing with all the english students and expats.
  - jamii 16y ago
    Absolutely. Android is really popular in Korea, a Korean-English pack would make a killing with all the english students and expats.
macrael 16y ago
Definitely put up a non-flash version of your promo video on your website; your target audience won't be able to watch it, as is!
- Raphael 16y ago
  iOS can't play YouTube videos?
  - stevelosh 16y ago
    I just went to the site, tapped the video, and watched it on my iPhone. OP has clearly not tried this.
- bootload 16y ago
  "... Definitely put up a non-flash version of your promo video on your website ..." Agree I can't read it, pretty simple request.
tassl 16y ago
From the technological point of view I can just say wow! Congratulations, this is a great app. Aside from that, and as a Spanish native speaker, the translated text sounds really weird to me. Even without knowing English I would be able to understand the translated text (at least the example that you gave) but it can be improved. But this is the only con that I see to your application. Probably you're already working on that, but I thought that you might like this input. Great idea!!
jonursenbach 16y ago
Glad to see this finally out there in the wild and to have demoed it a while back at my house. Grats!
scg 16y ago
How long was this app in development?
- tortilla 16y ago
  TechCrunch article says 2 1/2 years. http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/world-lens-translates-words-inside-of-images-yes-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/world-lens-translates-words...
revorad 16y ago
Please, do NOT sell this to Yahoo. Or anyone for that matter. Make a business, be king of the world. You deserve it.
middlegeek 16y ago
Please port it to the Android platform!
DanielN 16y ago
Have you guy's explored at all how difficult mandarin translations will be? If it is possible this would be a huge market for you.
- elblanco 16y ago
  spot on! I can usually muddle through Spanish and French signs when I travel, but I'm terrified of traveling to China or Japan where the signs are quite a bit more impenetrable.
- darren_ 16y ago
  Depending on how their OCR works, Mandarin/Japanese->English(/spanish/&c) could be a _lot_ more difficult (thousands of characters to distinguish) and in the case of Japanese the translation a lot trickier (completely different grammar, Mandarin's not so bad though). This could just be a case of needing to optimize and train their recognizer to deal with a much larger set of possible characters, or it could require implementing kanji-specific OCR techniques like attempting to decompose the characters into their constituent strokes, and recognize based on classification of those strokes (orientation, position, direction).
  - DanielN 16y ago
    This is what I was thinking. I don't know about Japanese, but sentence structure in mandarin is pretty much reversed from what it is in romance languages. And so much of character meaning is based on context that outside of common phrases it might be nearly impossible. On the other hand, an English to Chinese translator might be more doable, and might also be more commercially profitable.
    - masterj 16y ago
      Even an app that converted characters into the most direct meaning could provide insight in a large number of cases into the intended meaning and would be valuable. An app that converted from characters to pinyin (a much easier problem) would be gold to someone trying to learn mandarin. I'd easily pay $50 for something with that functionality without it even making an attempt at the english. It's a much smaller market than those trying to understand chinese signs on a vacation, but it's one with a much larger stake and interest in the result.
kmfrk 16y ago
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.
- staunch 16y ago
  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.
  - elliottcarlson 16y ago
    Doesn't look like it... Different registrar, different DNS and the obvious spam landing page. sigh
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    I thought better of HN. Shame. There are many trends for using domains similar to what you would desire: get<product> being the best, and <product>app being one of the other choices. I have very bad experiences with finding an app's site, if it models <product>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 <use>product would be a very interesting domain that makes much more sense than <product>app. It also mirrors the imperative <get>, although it may not be as popular and known to users - yet. I think it's a shame they didn't secure a regular <product>.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).
- pchristensen 16y ago
chime 16y ago
You guys have made Doctor Who's Tardis translation-in-the-brain come one step closer to being real. I just tried it and it works perfectly. In my minimal experience, it works great on medium sized text so you may want to advice users to get closer/further from the text if your app can't find anything to translate (i.e. OCR fails).
random42 16y ago
Awesome stuff. I assume you guys have the patent on this technology, if not, please get it ASAP.
iskander 16y ago
Have you guys yet tried adding grammar models to the translator? Can a full-language bigram model run in real time?
darren_ 16y ago
As a language learner I'd love the ability to capture and export (in some fashion) the pre-translated text, as text not an image, to import into SRS learning software. This especially applies to the Japanese/Mandarin support that I hope you guys are working on.
nathanlrivera 16y ago
1. The logo seems similar to the United Nations logo. What was your inspiration for the logo? 2. In the video, who is holding the camera? And who is holding the signs? 3. Did you use an ad agency to make the video, or did you put it together yourselves? The first card says "welcome to the future" which I thought was perfect :)
- otaviogood 16y ago
  The designer who made the logo said he was going for a passport look. My brother made the video. He also did the music in the video. He's pretty good with that stuff.

Sephr 16y ago

Do you plan on creating an Android version anytime soon?

mey 16y ago
An android or SDK version that could be used with a heads up display system would be impressive. If you can do more then Spanish, you should consider talking to the US Military.
GeneralMaximus 16y ago
For the love of FSM, do it! I speak for a vast majority of Android users here on HN when I say I'd buy this even if it cost five times what it does now.
- jamii 16y ago
  Absolutely. Android is really popular in Korea, a Korean-English pack would make a killing with all the english students and expats.
- jamii 16y ago
  Absolutely. Android is really popular in Korea, a Korean-English pack would make a killing with all the english students and expats.

macrael 16y ago

Definitely put up a non-flash version of your promo video on your website; your target audience won't be able to watch it, as is!

Raphael 16y ago
iOS can't play YouTube videos?
- stevelosh 16y ago
  I just went to the site, tapped the video, and watched it on my iPhone. OP has clearly not tried this.
bootload 16y ago
"... Definitely put up a non-flash version of your promo video on your website ..." Agree I can't read it, pretty simple request.

tassl 16y ago

From the technological point of view I can just say wow! Congratulations, this is a great app. Aside from that, and as a Spanish native speaker, the translated text sounds really weird to me. Even without knowing English I would be able to understand the translated text (at least the example that you gave) but it can be improved. But this is the only con that I see to your application. Probably you're already working on that, but I thought that you might like this input. Great idea!!

jonursenbach 16y ago

Glad to see this finally out there in the wild and to have demoed it a while back at my house. Grats!

scg 16y ago

How long was this app in development?

tortilla 16y ago
TechCrunch article says 2 1/2 years. http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/world-lens-translates-words-inside-of-images-yes-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/world-lens-translates-words...

revorad 16y ago

Please, do NOT sell this to Yahoo. Or anyone for that matter. Make a business, be king of the world. You deserve it.

middlegeek 16y ago

Please port it to the Android platform!

DanielN 16y ago

Have you guy's explored at all how difficult mandarin translations will be? If it is possible this would be a huge market for you.

elblanco 16y ago
spot on! I can usually muddle through Spanish and French signs when I travel, but I'm terrified of traveling to China or Japan where the signs are quite a bit more impenetrable.
darren_ 16y ago
Depending on how their OCR works, Mandarin/Japanese->English(/spanish/&c) could be a _lot_ more difficult (thousands of characters to distinguish) and in the case of Japanese the translation a lot trickier (completely different grammar, Mandarin's not so bad though). This could just be a case of needing to optimize and train their recognizer to deal with a much larger set of possible characters, or it could require implementing kanji-specific OCR techniques like attempting to decompose the characters into their constituent strokes, and recognize based on classification of those strokes (orientation, position, direction).
- DanielN 16y ago
  This is what I was thinking. I don't know about Japanese, but sentence structure in mandarin is pretty much reversed from what it is in romance languages. And so much of character meaning is based on context that outside of common phrases it might be nearly impossible. On the other hand, an English to Chinese translator might be more doable, and might also be more commercially profitable.
  - masterj 16y ago
    Even an app that converted characters into the most direct meaning could provide insight in a large number of cases into the intended meaning and would be valuable. An app that converted from characters to pinyin (a much easier problem) would be gold to someone trying to learn mandarin. I'd easily pay $50 for something with that functionality without it even making an attempt at the english. It's a much smaller market than those trying to understand chinese signs on a vacation, but it's one with a much larger stake and interest in the result.

kmfrk 16y ago

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.

staunch 16y ago
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.
- elliottcarlson 16y ago
  Doesn't look like it... Different registrar, different DNS and the obvious spam landing page. sigh
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I thought better of HN. Shame. There are many trends for using domains similar to what you would desire: get<product> being the best, and <product>app being one of the other choices. I have very bad experiences with finding an app's site, if it models <product>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 <use>product would be a very interesting domain that makes much more sense than <product>app. It also mirrors the imperative <get>, although it may not be as popular and known to users - yet. I think it's a shame they didn't secure a regular <product>.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).
pchristensen 16y ago

chime 16y ago

You guys have made Doctor Who's Tardis translation-in-the-brain come one step closer to being real. I just tried it and it works perfectly. In my minimal experience, it works great on medium sized text so you may want to advice users to get closer/further from the text if your app can't find anything to translate (i.e. OCR fails).

random42 16y ago

Awesome stuff. I assume you guys have the patent on this technology, if not, please get it ASAP.

iskander 16y ago

Have you guys yet tried adding grammar models to the translator? Can a full-language bigram model run in real time?

darren_ 16y ago

As a language learner I'd love the ability to capture and export (in some fashion) the pre-translated text, as text not an image, to import into SRS learning software. This especially applies to the Japanese/Mandarin support that I hope you guys are working on.

nathanlrivera 16y ago

1. The logo seems similar to the United Nations logo. What was your inspiration for the logo? 2. In the video, who is holding the camera? And who is holding the signs? 3. Did you use an ad agency to make the video, or did you put it together yourselves? The first card says "welcome to the future" which I thought was perfect :)

otaviogood 16y ago
The designer who made the logo said he was going for a passport look. My brother made the video. He also did the music in the video. He's pretty good with that stuff.