Neven's first campaign for iScout was for Coca-Cola in Europe. Advertisements began showing up in teen magazines in mid-October, asking readers to take a picture of a Coke can and send it to an SMS address to receive something back. Kids were sent a Java-based soccer game that they could play on the mobile phone.
Mobot, founded in 2003, also has a mobile visual search application. It licensed and developed software that can map the visual features of an image using its edges, shapes, textures and colours. In the US, it has deals with companies such as the teen magazine ElleGirl and Warner Electric Atlantic, the music arm of the movie studio.
ElleGirl recently ran print advertisements for cosmetics company Loreal that offered readers samples, beauty tips and a sweepstakes entry for a trip to Paris if they took a photo and sent it in to its SMS short code.
"It's a way to take something ubiquitous — the mobile phone — for the teen girl and make the magazine interactive," said Deb Burns, publisher of ElleGirl, who added that thousands of girls — between 5 percent and 10 percent of its readership — have participated in "Mobotised" ads in the magazine.
"Advertisers are always looking for something different and this is very accountable," she added.
Perfecting pictures
Neven Vision's technology is also being used in digital cameras and for security applications.
Docomo, Japan's largest mobile operator, and Vodafone, whose Japan unit also is a big player in that market, licensed Neven's software for their winter phone models, which will include facial recognition software designed to allow secure payment transactions. Right now, some Docomo phones with integrated cash-card functionality allow users to pay for items by passing their phone over a radio-frequency payment point. The Neven-embedded phones will store pictures of their owners that serve as network passwords.
Neven Vision is developing a similar application for mobile security. The company has built a "ruggedised" handheld device for police forces and military use. The device can store as many as 2GB of data, or 200,000 images, with biographical information such as name, licence number and crime history.
Once a photo is taken with the device, its embedded software will launch a search for a match in its database. Because such information is regularly updated, the device can be synchronised to and brought current with a network database whenever it's being charged or connected to the computer.
The Los Angeles Police Department has been testing the device for the last year to aid in the capture of wanted gang members. It has made arrests with the device every day, according to Neven.
He expects the police department to eventually get cameras with resolution high enough to analyse the iris of a suspect's eye. "As image resolution increases, we can squeeze more and more information out of a facial picture, such as skin analysis and iris analysis," he said.
