Image recognition technologies

Il Tirreno Social

How the printed newspaper may come alive ...
HomeIl Tirreno Social

 

Tirreno Social is an innovative application of image recognition and mobile technologies targeted to printed newspapers. Visual Engines has made available the framework VeMIR to build an iOS and Android App empowering printed newspaper readers by augmenting the newspaper with digital assets such as online articles updates, videos and discussions on social networks.The partner in this experience is Il Tirreno, an Italian regional newspaper featuring sixteen local editions around Tuscany. It was founded in 1877 under the name Il Telegrafo it is currently part of the Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso. Logo App Il Tirreno Social

 

Try it now!

  The “Tirreno Social” App is freely available on App Store and Google Play. Once downloaded and installed on your mobile device it is immediately ready for use. You only need a printed copy of the “Il Tirreno” to scan it and enjoy. To try the app, if you do not live in Tuscany and do not have a printed copy of the newspaper at hand, we suggest you to open the daily front page image of the “Il Tirreno” on your computer and use your phone to scan the image on the screen.  
 
 

how it works

 

 

load-recognizer

 

Newspaper pages images  loaded on the VeMIR Recognizer Repository

 

 

BEHIND THE SCENE

 

The VeMIR recognizer need to be instructed to recognize the newspaper pages. Every morning the newspaper editors prepare an archive file with the images of the pages and the reference to linked digital assets. The archive is loaded on the VeMIR repository and properly processed.

 

 

TIRRENO SOCIAL APP STARTS

 

When the user launches the Tirreno Social app it immediately checks if it is updated and, if necessary, download the daily data from the server.

 

 

splash_screen

 

Tirreno Social splash screen

 

 

scan

 

Mobile device is ready to scan the newspaper

 

Ready to scan

 

When the device is ready, tapping the “Scan” button will open the video cam and start the scanning process. The app would take fraction of seconds to get an image, check if it knows it (it tries 6 times for each image). If the image is recognized, it jump to the digital asset linked to the recognized part of the newspaper page, otherwise it restart the process.

 

 

Found something …

 

When the app recognizes the newspaper page we are looking at, it immediately stop scanning and load the associated digital content.

 

 

foto2

 

Front page was recognized. It is linked to the Facebook account.