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Ever been out site-seeing and wished someone could tell you more about the place? What if you could just take a picture of the place or monument with your camera phone and have more information pop up right on your handset?

Making this happen is a smart image recognition software - Snap2Tell, that can tell you what an image “means.” Developed by A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research, this technology was displayed at the CommunicAsia 2009 tradeshow held at the Singapore Expo. The software can be tweaked to work with GPS-enabled mobile phones so the server can detect your location and send you the correct data.

Snap2Tell technology

Snap2Tell is an image recognition engine that recognizes scenes / objects without the need of labeling or putting barcode on the Point of Interest (POI), associating it with relevant information.

This technology to be implemented into:

• Mobile devices
• Ultra mobile computers (UMPC)
• Regular mobile phones with camera

Snap2Play

Snap2Play is an interactive mixed reality mobile application. It employs Snap2Tell’s image recognition engine as well as GPS and accelerometer sensors to enhance the mobile application.

This technology can serve the tourism industry, where tourists can simply “snap” pictures with their camera phone and get information on various places of interest.

This technology can be used for:

• Immersive mobile learning
• Interactive mobile guide
• Mixed-reality mobile gaming
• Marketing tools

How does it work?

• Activate the application
• Take a picture
• Send it on to the system’s server
• It will return with the relevant information.

In today’s world, mobile phones have become an everyday gadget for most of us. Recognizing this growing trend, even governments and industries around the world are working on integrating mobile devices into areas such as tourism, education, and entertainment, with an effort to enrich users’ experience.

Snap2Tell relies on MMS technology for now, however, A*STAR is considering options such as Wi-Fi and 3G as well. The server has only limited information at this point, but the option of opening up the platform to users is being considered so that people can contribute pictures and information to the database as well.

News flash: your wrist is lonely and needs some good bling to spruce it up. Or so the folks at Yanko Design are telling us, anyway. Yanko is always thinking of new innovations in the mobile market, and they feel the LG Watch Phone shouldn’t have the whole wrist spotlight to itself.

Today they offered up an idea. Instead of having an entire phone on your wrist, why not just have a secondary LCD screen attached to a bracelet that also happens to tell time? Have this bracelet vibrate when a call comes in, and use the LCD screen to show who is calling. When the call is over, it goes back to telling the time. This way, it’s still technically a watch and a handy phone accessory at the same time.

The screen would be touch-enabled, so you can accept or deny the call directly from your bracelet.

Here are some conceptual images detailing the vision behind the wrist accessory.

The On Time system would include a Bluetooth headset also with a LCD screen with similar capabilities. Both screens would be touch-enabled.

Would this idea ever fly though? Will the wrist-phone concept catch on at all? I think it would all depend on the cost. It wouldn’t ever catch on if there is a $1,000 price tag involved, that’s for sure.

Kelly Bremer is the designer for Motorola Nest, which is a concept of mobile phone. This device has been equipped with multiple features to make the users happy. Through this mobile, you can stay touch with your beloved one as it has been built with a built in applications. Especially this application has been designed for those who want to stay in touch with their friends or family members always.

Moreover, this application can act like a scrapbook for the users to make an interaction with the people in his network. To use this feature you have to create a group of people then you will be able to add these people in the network of Motorola Nest.

Ever wondered how would a Mozilla phone look like? If you have, a possible answer to this question can be seen below.

The Mozilla phone that we see here is a concept designed by Billy May. It’s created by mixing the old BlackBerry 7130 with an Optimus keyboard, thus it’s not exactly the pretties handset around.

However, it is, definitely, an interesting concept. In the creator’s vision, the Mozilla phone should come with a set of OLED keys, which can change their appearance and usability according to your needs. For example, now you have a SureType QWERTY keyboard, and the next minute you have shortcut keys for the websites and web-services you use the most.

The question is: would Mozilla really want to be involved in developing such a handset?