What Tree Is That? Leafsnap Tells You In Seconds
by DM
May 9, 2011
Here's something I thought we'd never see: leaf recognition, via the iPhone's camera. Take a picture and LeafSnap does a bit of clever processing in order to isolate the shapes, search through a database, and present you with the most likely matches. It's being called an "electronic field guide."
So, uh, remember that time you went outside?
Now you can learn what kind of leaves you saw out there - and even start reading about them on Wikipedia. Technology really is something, isn't it?
All kidding aside, Leafsnap is a very cool new app, and the team (made up of researchers from the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institute, and Columbia University) even managed to beat Google in building a solid leaf recognition engine.
Leafsnap is 100 percent free, and is iPhone-only for now. Android versions are coming "soon" (one source claims this summer).
Unfortunately for those of you living in warmer climes, Leafsnap's database is still somewhat limited; it apparently has full recognition of trees from Washington D.C. and New York City, though it also claims to find trees of the "northeast." That's a pretty broad range, though still of no help if you live in Colorado. In any event, the plan is to have a full database of the entire US as soon as possible.
It's free, so go check it out-- and see if it works as well as it claims!
