Comments on: High-tech photos give new meaning to 'talking pictures'

Italian start-up develops a technology that lets photos speak; concept apparently catches HP's eye.
Images: Adding sound to pictures

[skeptic024]

What's next?

ooh... ooh... magnetic tape that records voice on a piece of paper?
What will they make next? A VHS tape, and 8-track tape player,
maybe even encode account information on the back of a plastic
card? No way... (((sarcasm))) It is amazing that this crap is even
considedered news. I feel dumber for having read this article.

[advs89]

exactly

Come on C|net, get a real story... this person who decided to print this article has a few too many chromosomes...

[mapluv]

I had this idea and a design 17 to 18 years ago

I agree that the idea is old. I had it 17 to 18 years ago when I was in high school. In fact I had sketches of a prototype in my design log book.

I think the design is a bit out-of-date for now. In the digital age, one can probably come up with a better design without a magnetic strip. The voice data itself can probably be 1. encoded and hidden within the image itself or 2. stored in the image as meta data or 3. stored as code printed at the back of the picture. If you were to go with design 3, then potentially grandma can use her cellphone to snap a picture of the back of the photo which contains the voice data and the phone would then play it out loud - I haven't tried to figured out how much data you can encode on a photo size paper.

- Mr. ezAtlas
www.ezAtlas.com

[georgejblair]

www.speeky.net ??

I see this project in an other web site -www.speeky.net. Is it the same think?

[TV James]

Flashbacks

I'm having CueCat flashbacks. Silly useless technology that will never gain widespread adoption.

People have enough problems swiping the credit card and it's smaller, inflexible and the reader is bolted to the counter.

[georgejblair]

Top secret HP audio technology

Please take note to the following URL.

http://news.com.com/High-tech+photos+give+new+meaning+to+talking+pictures/2100-1041_3-5954367.html?tag=cd.top

and

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5954367.html?tag=zdnn.alert

Is it an HP technology?

George Blair

[Peter Halmos]

Using sound to search for pictures

Another good use case is to use the sound recording which describes the picture to actually search for pictures. If the sound contains some describing words you can use Phonetic Index Search technology (e.g. ACTNow of Compure, www.compure.com) to instantly find the words or phrases in the sound file and hence to find the picture you look for.