Read the paper. Snap. Share. It's digital!
Jinfo Blog

By Jan Knight

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We’re all used to seeing phrases like “digital versus print” or “digital or print” and more recently “digital to print”. However, that last phrase often refers to digital printing of publications or printing of photographs from a digital file. A new smartphone app, Paperboy from Kooaba, takes the concept one step further and in fact reverses it, and brings the benefits of digital to print publications.

This new product from Swiss company, Kooba, allows smartphone owners to share digitally something they are reading from a printed publication. The product currently works with printed titles in 16 countries around the world.

I first heard about this product from a Springwise article  which discusses how publishers now have a process to allow printed content to reach a much wider audience, quickly and easily. The app allows the reader to snap a photo of the printed piece, and then somehow not only does it recognise the page but also allow sharing via email, Facebook and Twitter. It will also suggest related articles, images and videos.

So, if you’re in the situation as a publisher or information/news provider where your print audience is declining, this type of image recognition technology might be in your future. Note: currently it appears the app is only available for Android and iPhone.

Check out the Paperboy app at the Kooaba website, not only because their video demo is in English, in contrast to the one in the Springwise article, but it might also be worthwhile looking at Déjà vu, a product that helps you remember things visually. This iPhone app snaps pictures (visual memories) and then integrates image recognition software to label those snapshots automatically for easier retrieval.

It’s a form of tagging so that a “memo” can be created for that image. It’s another very cool product that can help information and graphic retrieval potentially much more easily than maybe using our own fading memory!

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