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Comment by revorad | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those times you have to admit it's not ALL about the execution. Good ideas do matter. And they are rare.

And I see the opposite. Anyone could have had this idea, but very few could execute on it. In fact all that will determine whether this is a big success or not is whether the thing really works or not (execution).

No kidding... I was just sitting down to research open-source Java OCR software to do this exact thing on Android. My dreams are dashed but I'm glad someone did it...

I was also thinking about this recently. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be an Android version yet...

I admit I was just thinking about reading foreign language books and translating some parts, this app takes it much further.

A lot of people must have thought of making OCR iPhone apps. But the idea of using OCR to do real-time language translation superposed on the original background image? That's genius. I hadn't thought of it. Did you?

At least in my limited experience, deciding what to work on is really important.

Acknowledging great ideas doesn't take away anything from their superb execution.

I hadn't thought of it. Did you?

I did: "One that I've mentioned in almost every post here for ages, a service that I can take a photo, it does OCR and feeds the text into Google translate. Bonus points if it does source-language-detection. More bonus points if it is actually usable in a foreign country on real live things like signposts, menus, timetables, advertisements, book covers, leaflets, etc." - me, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569838

Nearly two years ago, travelling in a foreign country with an iPhone, knowing Google Translate existed, knowing OCR existed, and not being able to do anything with that knowledge.

(It's so rare that I hit this kind of advance view on things I'm going to be shamelessly happy about it. NB, I'm not claiming anything here - I couldn't write it and didn't try).

My work colleague also had this exact idea, and told me about it in the hopes I could code something to do the job. There was just no way I had the time/resources/skill to make something like this.

Of course it's execution, you need to be able to write a very good and fast algorithm, not everyone can do it.

This idea has been around for decades. It is a prototypical futurist application. Difference is that these guys nailed it.

I disagree. There is a comment higher up suggesting that this app could change the way people live their lives. I read this and it occurred to me that this was likely true. With the caveats if they market it correctly, if they handle competition correctly, if they expand and the proper pace, etc.

The creators will likely see a payoff from this whether or not they do any of these things correctly. But the magnitude of that payoff is entirely dependent on those ifs and the difference between executing correctly and not is humongous.

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