Charismatic CEO Takahito Iguchi
delivered a memorable demonstration,
making the audience go crazy by fending off questions of TC50 judges
such as Tim O’Reilly if Sekai Camera really works with the words “Join
us!” or “We have a patent!”. The reason for the skepticism: Iguchi’s
on-stage show mainly centered on a pre-produced video clip, not an
actual product demo. This left people wondering if Sekai Camera isn’t
just vaporware for almost half a year during which it seemed like
nothing happened. But today I saw the app is real and working - on an
iPhone.
Tonchidot organized an invitation-only event at an exhibition in
Tokyo today, showcasing a working prototype for the first time. Sekai
Camera’s basic concept is still intact: Use the iPhone camera to
overlay tags and information onto any object in the real world. Users
then need to look through the camera to see icons pop up that contain
information on buildings, stores, sightseeing spots or objects.
The prototype I tried out today was a bit buggy but worked as
promised, showing tags with information (sounds, pictures and text) on
other booths installed in the exhibition hall. Many people speculated
how Sekai Camera works technically. The answer is simple: The user’s
location is identified through GPS (no cell-tower triangulation or
image recognition technology is being used). As the iPhone doesn’t have
an internal compass, the direction of where the viewfinder is pointed
at can’t be measured: Users need to flick fingers left or right to find
relevant tags that are around them (as demonstrated in the video I took
below). Tap a tag and the information it contains appears in the form
of a window, for example a picture with a comment box below it or a
voice message someone left earlier.
Tonchidot today showed they were rightfully chosen as a TechCrunch50
finalist. Sekai Camera is incredibly cool technology even though the
prototype version didn’t look as flashy as the previous one shown on
video. For a massive land grab, Sekai Camera will have to come up with
a viable business model, achieve a critical mass of tags to make the
app worthwhile and optimize the technology.
But Tonchidot is working on it. Iguchi said he is in talks with
companies interested in contributing commercial tags that could contain
anything from ads, coupons to product information for a fee. Tags are
also being scraped from various web services such as Yahoo Japan’s Wai Wai Mappu
(a community-style map information service). But Sekai Camera also
needs user-generated tags - lots of them. While a compass built into a
future iPhone model might solve the directional alignment issue, GPS
within buildings will most likely remain a problem for quite some time.
(For tagging the exhibition hall today, locations were measured through
Wi-Fi signals an external service called PlaceEngine provided.).
According to Tonchidot, Japan will be covered with social tags
first, followed by the rest of the world. Asked when Sekai Camera will
be available for everyone to buy, Tonchidot fellow Masayuki Akamatsu
told me: “In 2009, sometime when it’s warm!”. We will stay tuned.
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