LUIZSANTOSMUSIC: December 2010

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Moodstocks iPhone Apps Scan the World Through Photos, Not Barcodes

Moodstocks iPhone Apps Scan the World Through Photos, Not Barcodes: "

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Moodstocks

Quick Pitch: Moodstocks makes iPhone apps that let people scan the world using their smart phone camera.

Genius Idea: There are a slew of applications that let you scan product barcodes to glean more information about them. Moodstocks makes iPhone applications with the same general purpose, but they function in a radically different fashion, scanning items through image recognition instead of barcodes.

All three applications — Moodstock Notes, Contacts and Shopper — work the same way: You snap a photo, Moodstock processes it and you get content associated with the object in the image. Basically, it works a lot like Google Goggles.

In Moodstocks Notes, object scanning is also applied in a social fashion. So you could snap a wine label, book, poster, piece of art or soda can, add your note, and then see what users are saying about the same items. The application aspires to make all objects, with or without barcodes, interactive in nature.

Moodstocks Contacts is an interesting reimagining of the business card application. Once you’ve added your vCard to the application, other users can snap a photo of your business card and use the app to instantly get your contact information. It works without a hitch and makes for a super useful networking tool. The downside here is that business cards are only scannable if the owner has added their contact info to the application.

The Moodstocks Shopper application is exactly what you’d expect: a price comparison application. Just as is the case with the other apps, products are identified via image recognition technology, not barcodes. Since the startup is based in France, however, its database is currently comprised of mostly French products.

All the applications are powered by proprietary image recognition technology. It’s technology that, if perfected, could make the interactive qualities or barcodes and QR codes obsolete.

CEO Denis Brulé says his startup ultimately aims to make sense of images and link them to real world products. Brulé doesn’t view the competition as such just yet. Instead, he finds that all scanning applications are working toward the same purpose of convincing smartphone owners to use their devices in this fashion.

While Brulé seems ready to overlook the competition, we should point out that Moodstocks apps do overlap in purpose with the likes of most QR code apps, Stickybits, MyShopanion, RedLaser and even Barcode Hero. On the function side of things, there are most certainly direct parallels between it and thingd, which seeks to enable the discovery of things and people through photos.

Moodstocks has raised around $650,000 in seed stage funding and plans to develop a business model around licensing its SDK and API.

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Reviews: Shopper

More About: barcode scanning, bizspark, moodstocks, Photos, spark-of-genius, startup

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