Thrrum MMS Search brings Mobile Visual Search to Sprint Camera phones
23half Inc., has announced the availability of Thrrum MMS Search to Sprint wireless subscribers. Thrrum MMS Search enables camera phone users to find and browse information related to their physical environment using the Picture Messaging service integrated into their phones. Users can capture a picture of any text with their camera phone and send the picture as a picture message to m@thrrum.com. Relevant search results are then sent to the users’ phones. The Thrrum MMS Search service is presently in beta and is available free of charge to Sprint wireless subscribers in the United States.
“The Thrrum MMS Search service was first introduced last month,” said K. Gopalakrishnan, CEO of 23half. “Now, Thrrum MMS Search is also available to Sprint subscribers. Sprint subscribers can point their camera phone at a book, a product label or any printed material, take a picture and send a picture message to get relevant information right on their phone. With Thrrum, any text that you see around you becomes a hyperlink that can be “clicked” upon with your camera phone.”
With more than 500 million camera phones sold annually, Gartner Research predicts camera phones sales to exceed 1 billion by 2010. Combined with ever increasing adoption of MMS usage, the connected camera in phones presents a new platform for innovation.
What we think?
This is different. You take a picture of text or a book or a label. I suppose there could be a market for that kind of thing. I mean mobile visual search is such a developing market. Barcodes, images, physical goods. Who knows what people will want to use visual search for?
A recently poll I ran on GoMo was telling though. Less than 30% of readers had actually used mobile visual search?
But I do think calling it MMS Search is a huge mistake. This doesn’t define clearly what it does – it sounds like a greeting card or image gallery search rather than a direct link to a URL.
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