Google’s visual search tool has a new trick up its sleeve: solving Sudoku puzzles. Google Goggles 1.3 for Android scans barcodes much faster, recognizes print ads from the major U.S. magazines and newspapers, but most people will probably ignore those useful features and will try to see if Goggles can actually solve Sudoku puzzles. The nice thing is that this feature also works in the latest version of Google Mobile App for iPhone, along with print ads recognition.
“Now, Goggles on Android and iPhone can recognize puzzles and provide answers to help make you faster than a Sudoku champ. So if you ever get stuck, take a clear picture of the entire puzzle with Goggles and we’ll tell you the correct solution,” explains Google.
Maybe providing a hint would also be useful, especially if you want to solve the puzzle.
The new features show that Google Goggles has a lot of potential, but it’s still not useful enough in the real world. An interesting article from Xconomy quotes Hartmut Neven, Google’s technical lead manager for image recognition, who says that Goggles is not yet an universal visual search tool. “What keeps me awake at night is, ‘What are the honest-to-God use cases that we can deliver,’ where it’s not just an ‘Oh, wow.’ We call it the bar of daily engagement. Can we make it useful enough that every day you will take out Goggles and do something with it?”
