Looktel Recognizer a big! disappointment?

Hello I fully agree with you. The app misses usefulness completely. The app to me is a big disappointment too. I didn't find the app to be that useful in real life situations, The barcode scanner is much faster then Digiteyes though. That was the only saving grace for the app, they dropped the ball on this one as far as usability goes, I won't be using this app in every day life. dissapointedly, Ed

I think you may be missing the angle that Look Tell was going for with the Recognizer. I'm assuming you were expecting it to be like a barcode scanner that uses object recognition instead to find any object whatsoever. So you could, say, go into a grocery store and pick a can off the shelf and immediately tell what it is by pointing the camera at it. Recognizer, however, is marketed more as a solution to personal labeling items for the blind - at least as I can tell. You won't need the huge database of images of every product on the market that users have submitted - you only want the ones you periodically need to recognize or discern between when you are at home. They also make you record your own message to tell what something is - usually something seen in a labeling system. Also, object recognition using images is likely a lot more resource intensive than merely searching for a UPC number in a database, as well. Thus, it'd be impractical to stuff the app full of images when someone using it isn't going to even use half of it or even a quarter of it. Think of how many images it'd have to compare against - it'd lose the snappy recognition that we've come to expect from the Look Tell software. I rather like the fact it's got very fast recognition and in real-time - no having to search a database over wi fi or data plan. The image repository is obviously meant to hold your personal cache of products you need to recognize on a daily basis or that you purchase a lot. Also, Look Tell is a small company focused solely on apps for the blind - not a huge market. They can't afford to keep a database of images even if it was user-maintained like Digit Eyes' database of UPC codes and labeling. Or at least I am assuming that. Yes, you do have to have sighted assistance to start your image repository but it's a personal labeling thing - you need to personalize it. It doesn't take that long to do, either, if you sit down in one session of maybe a half hour to an hour and have a sighted friend or family member capture the unique aspects of products you commonly need to discern. It even works with logos on t-shirts as well as cans and packages. I personally find it a lot more convenient to use than Digit Eyes as I don't have to struggle to find the barcode every time. Hopefully the ability to share images with other users will fill the gap that the lack of a huge database has opened up. That way you can pick and choose images you may actually use to prevent the app from slowing down with too many images to compare against. Anyhow. Long story short - it's version 1! And it's an awesome app, in my opinion, to use for personal labelling of packages, t-shirts, CDs, DVDs and the like - much easier than sticking braille or button labels on everything. The barcode scanner part of it is sort of an after thought addition - it's not meant to be used as an all-around ID Mate kind of scan-everything deal. The software would slow down too much with millions of images to sift through - but it's great as a personal labeler.

Hi Nancy, what do you do with user entries for non-english products? Can you check them, too?

Dear All, After reading all the comments on this subject, I am amazed that most people forget the past, unless the USA was vastly different than for us in the UK... I remember back to the late 1980's when it was either Braille or plastic sew-on shapes to recognise your clothes and a plastic card to identify the difference between a £1 and £5 note! The app's we have now, like the Look-tel products and Digit Eyes are a revelation to me as a blind person of over 23 years. I would rate these apps alongside the screen readers I was using in 1990 like Outspoken and a bit later, an early version of JAWS. For example, I can now recognise the whole of my CD collection of over 2,000 CD's with only about 7 hours work and I didn't even need a sighted supporter, as my CD collection already had Braille labels. Indeed, my wife commented last night; 'look how far we've come in 20 years, from a Braille embossed label to a digital alternative' and she's sighted! Digit Eyes too is a brilliant app. I only purchased it yesterday because before, my impression was that it was too expensive but I only paid £13.99, which is a little more like it. I spent a couple of hours checking it out and was able to recognise about 20 products with no failures. I was using Red Laser, which is okay but doesn't recognise non-standard products very well but Digit Eyes was excelent. I was able to recognise about 7 products from Sainsburys own range and 5 from Tesco's own range and Red Laser couldn't do that. Indeed, Digit Eyes could even recognise the bar codes on the CD's I tried like Genesis Seconds Out, Yes, 90128 and Asia, Omega, so for me, this is a great app. When I get home from work tonight, I'm going to try the print label part of the app to see if that works. In summary then, Don't forget the past, our lives are much easier now, use these app's in combination to get the best results and look at the relatively low cost of these app's compared with buying lots of sew-on labels and miles of Braille dymo-tape! Many thanks, Steve.