So what could be a good use for this technology? There’s plenty but here’s one that would ease the pain of billions of people: A plain language translator.

Wouldn’t it be great to point your iPhone at a Chinese sign while visiting Hong Kong and BAM! get an automatic translation of what the sign says? Restaurant menus, bus routes and all these signs everywhere could be instantly translated.

Now THAT’S augmented reality to me.

And while we’re at it, I don’t understand why Google isn’t doing Optical Character Recognition in Street view to allow “super local searches” (i.e. bread store on St-Laurent). Yes, businesses open ad close but it could be useful if Google were to drive around the busiest streets… Then again, it might explain why they bought ReCaptcha..? Will we see street-view-style captchas soon?