NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[ss9173]

Google's acquisition of Neven Vision could be huge for this space.

Banks posted PP's related blog earlier this morning - here is the link: http://theponderingprimate.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-acquires-physical-world.html

Scott Shaffer believes ActiveSymbols will be their next acquisition. You can extract that assumption by clicking on his "visual google" reference and link.

Who's next on the shopping list?

There's one company I expect to be courted shortly.

I have to think Jeff Reed and what he calls his "visual Google" are the next likely target. There's a reason they just partnered with these guys .

Here is the link for "visual google": http://theponderingprimate.blogspot.com/2006/03/activesymbol-debuts-camera-phone.html

Friday, March 24, 2006
ActiveSymbol Debuts Camera Phone Mobile Marketing Tool
Another physical world connection company and another great mobile marketing campaign.

ActiveSymbols lables it a visual "Google" for customers.

From CBS Marketwatch ActiveSymbols debuts MobilePromote

Racing fans attending this weekend's Toyota Indy 300 at Miami's Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 26 will be invited to "Take a Mobile Test Lap" with MobilePromote 1.0, a fun, new service for mobile consumers.

Cell phone users will be able to subscribe to live race-day alerts and download rich content using this brand-new mobile imaging technology service offered by ActiveSymbols , a Logicalis Company and a sponsor of the Rahal Letterman Racing IndyCar team.

View the demo

The MobilePromote service enables mobile consumers with popular camera phones, from manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Hewlett-Packard, to send text messages or pictures to an online ActiveSymbols database.

A unique and patent-pending key attribute of the ActiveSymbols technology is its ability to interpret a photograph taken with an auto-focus camera, intelligently match it with an image in its database, and return a response appropriate to the photograph and the time it was taken.

ActiveSymbols works with:
Text Messaging, 1D Barcodes, 2D Barcodes, Branded 2D Symbols, any Branded Image (logo)

Once the message is received, it is matched against a sponsor's promotion and a rich content message link is returned to the caller.

What can ActiveSymbols do?
posted by Scott Shaffer @ 5:17 PM

4 Comments:
At 7:32 PM, March 24, 2006, Anonymous said…

These guys get it....quite an opening salvo to potential competitors in the PWC space. Thanks for posting.


At 7:49 PM, March 24, 2006, Larry said…

Scott
Does this seem to use the same IP as another company which has been around for a long time?
Larry


At 5:41 AM, March 25, 2006, Scott Shaffer said…

I expect to meet with them this weekend and get more information.

To quote their site "It is one thing to create a system that allows a consumer to save his or her camera phone images to an online album.

It is an entirely different problem, with unique IT challenges, for multiple users spread across an enterprise or throughout the world to categorize, save, and search for images "real-time" for business process automation or consumer uses"

What is unqiue with this application/company is they are backed by powerful Logicalis, an international global provider of high tech solutions.

Here's the demo

I said there are a few companies that are not ready to release their PWC mobile applications.

Stay tuned, the space is heating up.

Here is the demo


At 5:55 AM, March 25, 2006, Scott Shaffer said…

ActiveSymbols, a Logicalis Company, is bringing mobile consumers together with brand marketers via a unique and patented brand image database technology.

ActiveSymbols&trade Enterprise Server (patent-pending) is an enterprise-class scalable platform enabling image and object recognition (computer vision), text recognition (OCR), biometrics (facial recognition), and linear (1D) and 2D barcode decoding from everyday consumer devices such as camera phones and PDAs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have got to believe Google has talked with Neomedia as surmised by TS. I bet Microsoft has as well. But what about Yahoo...regarding search - Google and Yahoo are the two major competitors IMO. And we know Yahoo has had several links that appear to work in the Go Window.

Regardless, this Google purchase of Neven Vision should lead to some interesting future events in this space...perhaps to the benefit of Neom.

SS9173