Everything is secondary to compelling usecase. Word Lens has strange company name (QuestVisual), no logo, crappy landing page, and no PR preparation. But its darn cool! And that's what matters.
Assembly innovation is really cool. Every piece of Word Lens was here, but nobody made a perfect combination before today. Academic researchers will never do another Word Lens, as they are overfocused on novelty and hate just-assemble-the-pieces work.
Clever freemium business model. Word Lens is free, but you have to buy language packs. "erase words" and "reverse words" are free demo modes to prove that the app really works. Note, that you can even turn it into subscription model with dictionary updates.
BlendBack is the heart of this invention. Word Lens goes like this: (1) detect and recognize characters, (2) translate, (3) produce text in similar colors and shape and blend it back to the picture. The last step is the most innovative and can be used beyond Word Lens. E.g. one can do "Bar Code replacer". Turn your phone on any barcode and see some picture there. Can be used as a cheap replacement for road signs and ads.
No connection required. This is extremely important. 3G is unstable. WiFi is not everywhere. 4G has not really arrived yet. When you travel, your carrier can not cover you perfectly. I can see more and more essential apps that will not require connection. "Yelp in a box" anyone?
Global appeal. This is not another geek's app. It is mom and pop's app. It is an app for every country and and every village. We need to spend more time outside Silicon Valley to find needs like this one.
Science fiction inspiration. Part of the reason for press craziness is that Word Lens matched the science fiction story (Babel fish from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"). We love seeing SF concepts turning into reality. Let's reread old classic and implement all other concepts from there :)
What I would do next
Obvious: add more language packs. Asian languages can be a bit of a challenge (recognition is harder).
Brainstorm pricing. A lot of options are available: different price for the first month, bundle prices for several languages, one-time price discount (a la 23andme), subscription model, enterprise package.
Put on hold all talks to investors and potential acquirers.
Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android, Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo). Hire another person to do just that.
Run a contest: iPhone for the best "Word Lens in the wild" video.
> Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android, Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo)
I disagree. I strongly believe this is close to the 1st successful iteration of a killer app for mobile devices (the Babel Fish). One that other platforms might not have for a while. I would be surprised if Apple has not already reached out to invite them to One Infinite Loop to talk about their future plans (not acquisition, but Android).
I just read a bunch of reviews in the app store and there are plenty one star reviews that say something like "what a rip off! This isn't free at all! You need to buy the language packs to do anything", a lot of those reviews even add that if it just cost $10 instead of falsely claiming to be free it would sell like crazy. So maybe the freemium model is a little too clever.
Assembly innovation is really cool. Every piece of Word Lens was here, but nobody made a perfect combination before today. Academic researchers will never do another Word Lens, as they are overfocused on novelty and hate just-assemble-the-pieces work.
Clever freemium business model. Word Lens is free, but you have to buy language packs. "erase words" and "reverse words" are free demo modes to prove that the app really works. Note, that you can even turn it into subscription model with dictionary updates.
BlendBack is the heart of this invention. Word Lens goes like this: (1) detect and recognize characters, (2) translate, (3) produce text in similar colors and shape and blend it back to the picture. The last step is the most innovative and can be used beyond Word Lens. E.g. one can do "Bar Code replacer". Turn your phone on any barcode and see some picture there. Can be used as a cheap replacement for road signs and ads.
No connection required. This is extremely important. 3G is unstable. WiFi is not everywhere. 4G has not really arrived yet. When you travel, your carrier can not cover you perfectly. I can see more and more essential apps that will not require connection. "Yelp in a box" anyone?
Global appeal. This is not another geek's app. It is mom and pop's app. It is an app for every country and and every village. We need to spend more time outside Silicon Valley to find needs like this one.
Science fiction inspiration. Part of the reason for press craziness is that Word Lens matched the science fiction story (Babel fish from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"). We love seeing SF concepts turning into reality. Let's reread old classic and implement all other concepts from there :)
Obvious: add more language packs. Asian languages can be a bit of a challenge (recognition is harder).Brainstorm pricing. A lot of options are available: different price for the first month, bundle prices for several languages, one-time price discount (a la 23andme), subscription model, enterprise package.
Put on hold all talks to investors and potential acquirers.
Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android, Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo). Hire another person to do just that.
Run a contest: iPhone for the best "Word Lens in the wild" video.