Google Goggles now analyzes your pics continuously

Google Goggles, the app that first enabled mobile picture searching on Android, has an upgrade available in the Android Market.  Version 1.6 has been released that enables the feature that will make Goggles useful to the masses who had no use for this app before: automatic picture scanning.

If you so choose, you can now have Google Goggles scan pictures as you take them and notify you if and when it can match a result with your picture.  If Goggles does match up your picture to a landmark or artwork of some kind, you will be notified and you can then share the results with friends and family from your search history.

Google Goggles already had interesting use cases.  Imagine you are travelling and walk into a museum filled with famous paintings.  Too cheap to purchase the audio guide, you snap a picture of a painting, Google Goggles will match that painting and provide you with all the information you could want about it.  Now, with this update, you can have that information about pictures you take automatically.  You might have snapped a picture of a product you wish to purchase.  Goggles will scan the item and if it's able to match it, provide you with a link to information.

You can imagine future use cases where you could have words in your pictures automatically translated, buildings in the background identified, should you forget where you were, etc.

Try it out yourself by downloading Google Goggles 1.6 from the Android Market.

[SOURCE]