How to Use Your Smartphone Camera to Search

Searching with words is so 2010 —searching with images is the wave of the future. Whether you’re trying to identify something you’d like to buy, checking for deals or looking for information on what you see in the world around you, visual search apps can help. Armed with a smartphone and one of these apps, all you have to do is snap a photo and the app will try to identify the object or landmark and find information on it. Ready to get started? Here are our favorite visual search apps. Google Best app for searching for anything and everything: Google Goggles No matter what kind of information you want, Google Goggles — not to be confused with Google Glass — can help. This is a stand-alone app for Android, but it’s built into the Google Search app for iPhone (tap the search bar and then the camera icon to search by image). Take a picture of whatever you want to know more about, from a place to a work of art to a barcode or text (even in a foreign language), and Google will bring up more information. If the item is for purchase, you’ll also find shopping links and reviews. If you just have one visual search app on your phone, this multipurpose search is the way to go. Price: Free on iTunes and at Google Play Amazon Best app for all kinds of shopping: Amazon Mobile If shopping is what you’re interested in, Amazon Mobile makes it easy for you to find anything they stock using your smartphone camera. Just fire up your Amazon app and click search, where you have the option to search by text, barcode or “flow,” which searches based on what your camera can see. Though flow has difficulty recognizing some items — we found it identified a paperback book immediately but couldn’t figure out a Jawbone Jambox was — its overall image recognition is pretty good. If you want to shop on Amazon, this is the perfect helper. If Amazon isn’t your thing, however, you may be better