Listen Up!  AG Podcast #6 On Demand
Tue, 30/06/09 – 10:35 |

Last night was another great roundtable podcast with Scott and Jamie chatting Android with guests Nick and Taylor.  The gang gets together about once a week to talk about recent Android announcements and other relevant …

 
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Enabling the Ecosytem: ABBYY, Part Two
Fri, 3/07/09 – 11:25 |

ABBYYEnabling the Ecosystem is a series of interviews with those people and firms that are helping to build the overall Android ecosystem.

Today we wrap up the interview with Rick Pierson of ABBYY’s Mobility Group.

AG: How accurate are the recognitions?

RP: The accuracy rate depends on two factors; the camera and the photographer.  The camera has to have autofocus if you want to OCR magazine and business card sized print, the megapixels are not as important as the autofocus.  ABBYY does recommend a 2+ megapixel camera with autofocus.

The person taking the photograph does have to take a good quality picture, the better the photo the higher the OCR accuracy.

When I’m demoing one of ABBYY’s applications like business card reader on a Nokia n-95 (5 megapixels with autofocus) my recognition is usually 99% or better.

AG: How fast are those recognitions? After all, mobile phones do not have screaming-fast CPUs.

RP: This depends on the size of the image being OCR’ed and the quality of the picture.  On a Nokia N-95 it takes about 12 seconds once the photograph has been take to OCR the card, parse the information from the card and place it into the correct field in the handset contact list.  The OCR engine running on the handset was designed for smaller OCR applications; business card reader, poster, placard, paragraph from a magazine, etc.

ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine is a flexible and convenient technology that allows you to change its setting depending on the objective and the set of goals. You can select one of the two mobile recognition modes:

  • Fast mode of express recognition – it is most convenient when the image is of good quality and allows cutting down the time required for its recognition and processing
  • Full mode for accurate recognition – it is best for low-quality images, when more time is required to achieve the optimal result

The applications that will use the mobile OCR are not targeted for multiple full page OCR applications, if you want to build an application for that then we strongly suggest using ABBYY’s server based OCR solutions.

AG: If a developer wanted to deploy MOCR in their application, how much of a footprint will it require?

RP: The ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine is a compact code OCR technology and is optimized to work with small memory size systems such as mobile phones:

  • ROM: 2.5 – 3Mb for program installation plus 0.5-1 Mb per recognition language; CJK requires 10 Mb per language.
  • RAM: 2.5 – 3Mb for program storage plus 0.5-1 Mb for each recognition language used; 1.5 – 5Mb for program operation; 1 – 3Mb for storing the input picture/image file.

Exact memory requirements vary depending on the operating system and specific recognition tasks (e.g. multilingual recognition requires more memory).

We have a new algorithm for memory management which allows the system to determine the exact memory size required to process an image. This eliminates the necessity to allocate significant memory segments in advance, which has an impact on the recognition speed and the application’s capability to work reliably, ensuring efficiency and fast performance speed.

AG: Is it truly standalone, working on a disconnected device? Or does it communicate back to a server to perform the actual OCR function?

RP: The ABBYY Mobile OCR engine does the OCR on the handset without any connection to a network, it is truly stand alone.  ABBYY does however also offer a server based OCR solution, this is our “full” OCR engine called FineReader 9.  FineReader has more functionality however it is also 10 times the size of the Mobile version.

Illusion Labs Releases Full Version of Labyrinth
Fri, 3/07/09 – 9:46 |
Illusion Labs Releases Full Version of Labyrinth

Illusion Labs has announced the full version of their popular Labyrinth game with over 1,000 levels. Also available is a feature that gives users the ability to create custom levels using an online level …

Motorola Aiming For Low-End with Android
Thu, 2/07/09 – 11:09 |
Motorola Aiming For Low-End with Android

The smart phone market is getting more crowded all the time as handset makers are expanding the product lines.  Every carrier now has at least one smart phone hovering around the $200 price point.  How …

‘Bloo’ Gets Ready to Grab the Title for Best Facebook App [VIDEO]
Wed, 1/07/09 – 23:17 |
‘Bloo’ Gets Ready to Grab the Title for Best Facebook App [VIDEO]

Ask anyone you know to name a social network and Facebook will most likely be the first one out of their mouth.  With 200M members, it’s a juggernaut that shows no signs of slowing.   People …

Unboxed and Demo’d - The HTC Hero [VIDEO]
Wed, 1/07/09 – 12:10 |
Unboxed and Demo’d - The HTC Hero [VIDEO]

One of the guys from CoolSmartPhone was able to get a demo model of the HTC Hero to play with over the course of a week.  The video below is the first day of playing …

YouMail’s Visual VoiceMail Plus Lands on Android
Wed, 1/07/09 – 10:59 |
YouMail’s Visual VoiceMail Plus Lands on Android

YouMail has launched their Visual Voicemail Plus (VVP) app in the Android Market, allowing users to play and see their voicemail right on their handset.  Further, there are all kinds of other features that come …

Enabling the Ecosytem: ABBYY, Part One
Wed, 1/07/09 – 8:11 |
Enabling the Ecosytem: ABBYY, Part One

Android devices typically have a camera. Cameras can be used to read text via OCR. Want to do OCR on Android? Read the first part of our Enabling the Ecosystem interview with ABBYY, makers of the Mobile OCR Engine, in today’s episode of Building ‘Droids!

Waze Announces Public Beta For Android Users
Tue, 30/06/09 – 22:44 |
Waze Announces Public Beta For Android Users

Palo Alto, Calif. - June 29, 2009 - waze, Inc., the first free provider of driver-generated maps and real-time road information, today announced the public beta of its mobile application for Android users, who are …

Flurry Launches Channel Partner Program
Tue, 30/06/09 – 22:36 |
Flurry Launches Channel Partner Program

Top Mobile Development Companies Add Flurry Analytics to Solutions for Key Clients
San Francisco - June 26, 2009 - Flurry, the leading cross-platform mobile application analytics provider, today announced the establishment of a channel partner program.  …

Adobe Flash Officially Ported to ARM-based Android Devices
Tue, 30/06/09 – 17:06 |
Adobe Flash Officially Ported to ARM-based Android Devices

Bsquare has officially announced that a plugin for Adobe Flash will make its way to ARM-based Android devices.  This means people who own the T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic could see Flash on their phones …

SuperHERO Rom on G1/Dream [VIDEO]
Tue, 30/06/09 – 12:26 |
SuperHERO Rom on G1/Dream [VIDEO]

The user interface/experience of HTC’s Hero is a definite thing of beauty.  Formerly known as Rosie, HTC’s Sense has people all over saying that Android is showing extreme promise when it comes to just how …

Wattpad Announces Android eBook App
Mon, 29/06/09 – 16:13 |
Wattpad Announces Android eBook App

Wattpad, a top ebook community website, has announced the launch of their Android app.  They’ve been rather successful with other  (BlackBerry, iPhone) versions of their app sitting at or near the top spots in their …

Open Gestures Goes Beta
Sun, 28/06/09 – 16:03 |
Open Gestures Goes Beta

If you are looking for a cool Android home screen replacement, we recommend checking out Open Gestures by Hollowire. It’s a great alternative to your basic 3 screen setup without being too much of …

AndroidTapp Review Recap
Sun, 28/06/09 – 8:26 |
AndroidTapp Review Recap

Here at AndroidGuys, we try hard to bring you the software reviews and announcements that we think are the most relevant. Even with all of the press releases and early looks we offer, there are …

GeeksPhone Debuts ONE in Spain
Sat, 27/06/09 – 17:07 |
GeeksPhone Debuts ONE in Spain

The team at Geeks Phone just debuted their ONE handset at an event held in Barcelona.  In case you have no idea who they are, their the small startup group who promise root access on their …