This Summer a friend pointed down and asked me “…Do you know the name of that flower?” and I replied “No, I don’t…” we looked at each other and then looked down at our hand-held devices, an iPhone and a BlackBerry. Both have internet capabilities, but what can we do? Search the Encyclopedia Of Life (which exists by the way and is a tremendous ongoing project that is creating the first ever complete encyclopedia and index of every organism that exists on this planet)

Then the idea of a “visual search” came into our minds, what if we could take a picture with our phone and search for the name that way… This has to be something that Google is working on we assumed.

A month ago I was watching Inside The mind of Google that was on CNBC. And there it was – Google was working on Visual Search.

Enter Google Goggles

It’s quite amazing… A picture is worth a thousand words ( as any good web designer would say) No need to type your search anymore. Just take a picture. Find out what businesses are nearby. Just point your phone at a store.

Google says that this is just the beginning – and that it’s not quite perfect yet, it works well for some things, but not for all. And it looks like they are not yet recognizing items from the Encyclopedia of Life quite yet, as it works for landmarks, Books, Places, and Wine to name a few.

Oh yea… It’s available for Android – Of Course.