’Point & Search’ Part II

Search Engine Journal covers the recent GeoVector/Mapion announcement about "point and search" mobile local technology in Japan.

From the GeoVector announcement:

With Mapion Local Search, users can now walk down the street anywhere in Japan and point at over 700,000 objects such as buildings, shops, restaurants, banks, historical sites and instantly retrieve information on what they are looking at or find what they are looking for just by pointing their phone. Just like one uses a mouse to click on an object on a computer screen and retrieve information, now users can Click on the Real World® using their mobile phone.

There’s a company called NeoMedia, which has similar technology, that I wrote about awhile ago. And my colleague Mike Boland previously wrote about "point and search" mobile-local/visual model last year.

What’s interesting — and exciting — about this is the way in which this kind of model potentially accommodates the limitations of current cellphones and is relatively "passive" for users.