Word Lens

File:WordLensDemo5Feb2012.jpg|thumb|left|Screenshot from the official Word Lens demo by Quest Visual, Inc. Word Lens is an augmented reality application that recognizes printed words using its optical character recognition capabilities and instantly translates these words into the desired language. This application does not require connection to the internet. In its default mode, Word Lens performs real-time translation, but can be paused to display a single frame or to look up alternative translations of each specific word in that frame. It is also possible to use the built-in dictionary to manually type in words that need to be translated. Word Lens 1.0 was released on December 16, 2010, and received significant amount of attention soon after, including Wired, The Economist, CNN, the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, and ~2.5 million views on YouTube in the first 6 days. Since the application held a No. 1 position on the lists of Top Free Apps and Top Grossing Apps on iTunes for the few days following its release, it is currently described as Top In App Purchases. In 2014, Word Lens was featured in the Apple ad for iPhone 5S Powerful. This application is currently available as Word Lens 2.2.3. == Supported devices ==

Word Lens requires iPhone 3GS+, iPod Touch with a video camera, iPad 2+, or any iPad Mini . In 2012, Word Lens was released for a selection of Android smartphones. In 2013, Word Lens became available for Google Glass, even though Google Glass itself is not yet freely available. == Supported languages ==

At the release, only English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English were supported, but other language dictionaries were planned, In 2012, English-to-Italian and Italian-to-English were added, followed by English-to-German / German-to-English and English-to-Portuguese / Portuguese-to-English in 2013, and English-to-Russian / Russian-to-English in 2014. Since the acquisition by Google in May 2014, all previously released language packs can be downloaded for free. == Accuracy ==

According to its description, Word Lens is best used on clearly printed text and was not designed to translate handwritten or stylized fonts. This application was created to help tourists understand signs and menus, and it is not 100% accurate. The developer Otavio Good commented: "I will be the first to say that it's not perfect, but perfect was not the goal". However, testers who took the app to other countries said it had been useful. Further, even though the application was not designed to read books, the Wall Street Journal journalist Ben Rooney managed to understand a page from Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban. == Developers ==

Word Lens was developed by Otavio Good, a former video game developer and the founder of Quest Visual, John DeWeese, who previously worked on the Electronic Arts game Spore, and programmers Maia Good, Bryan Lin and Eric Park. A U.S. patent application on the technology was filed by the company in 2010 (based on a year-earlier provisional patent application), naming Good as inventor, but went abandoned for failure to respond to a Patent Office action. The application was published as US20110090253. == Reviews ==

Articles in the Wall Street Journal and ''Tom's Guide'' cited Clarke's third law describing Word Lens: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". The New York Times App Smart columnist Kit Eaton included Word Lens into his list of favorite apps. == History of updates ==

Table updated on April 23, 2014 based on refs. == See also ==