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Find-on-Paper app

 Like GPS, smartphones should be a supplemental tool.
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Using your smartphone's camera and a simple OCR (optical character recognition) program, it shouldn't be prohibitively difficult to produce an app that allows you to point your smartphone at a physical paper page in an actual (gosh, really!?) BOOK (or magazine, newspaper, etc) and perform a Find-on-Page action. You know, for folks who still enjoy the feel of an actual paper book. Rather like using GPS simply to find your location on a paper map. That is all.
—21 Quest, Oct 23 2012

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       With Google Goggles you can point your camera phone at a page of text and translate it into english. It shouldn't be too hard to search the text.
—DIYMatt, Oct 23 2012
   

       I'd use this.
—AusCan531, Oct 23 2012
   

       Is "actual (gosh, really!?) book" the official 2010's retronym for "book"?
—phundug, Oct 24 2012
   

       Indeed it seems to be.
—21 Quest, Oct 24 2012
   

       To be official, the last 4 characters have to be capitalised.
—pocmloc, Oct 24 2012
   

       I'll never look for Waldo again!!
—Voice, Oct 25 2012
   

       Unless you're looking at something like the OED, the actual amount of text on a given page is fairly low. A PDF or e-book search checks the whole text, this checks a page (or two at most) at a time. This means finding a given word or phrase in a work is still not going to be quick.
—MechE, Oct 25 2012
   

       Quick enough for text-dense novels like those by Stephen R. Donaldson, or perusing a hardcopy encyclopedia, or college textbooks.
—21 Quest, Oct 25 2012
   

       ...but give it some Ayn Rand and watch it implode.
—Alterother, Oct 25 2012
   


 

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