A can of worms.... opened...

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Now they have decided we want the number of stars on the cover, and a little more information on the inside page.

Or, that's what they had time to make it do in order to get a 5 minute demo video ready for the TED conference. I'm making the assumption that we're capable of applying a little imagination here (i.e. what features could be programmed into such a device?) and you are proving me wrong.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

...I'm thinking it more likely that my phone can scan the UPC code than this device can flawlessly recognize a book cover.

And that is the crux of the technological hurdle here that they haven't explained:

Originally Posted by Flint

But they don't explain how the visual recognition engine works, i.e. how does this thing know who or what it is looking at?