SnapNow is dedicated to linking the physical and online worlds. We bring the interactivity of conventional web browsing and search to the physical world, by using camera cell phones and image recognition.

SnapNow is Mobile Visual Search…

  • Mobile:  Using mobile devices, which are quickly becoming the predominant Internet access point around the globe, we can reach over ½ the world’s population.
  • Visual:  SnapNow recognizes images much the same way humans do, associating them with specific websites, like a picture might recall a memory.
  • Search:  SnapNow connects physical objects to relevant web pages.  Up until now, we have thought of the physical and digital universes as separate, distinct places.  But this is only because the Internet could only be accessed in a fixed location, the PC.  With the mobile internet, and the ability to input information visually, we can finally see that they are one and the same, each enriching the other.

We were founded in 2001 by engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That’s right...it’s rocket science. We got started when one of our founders got involved in barcode-based linking for mobile phones in Japan. He realized that there was a better way than defacing objects with barcodes. His dream was that mobile phones would be able to recognize objects the same way humans do, based on their appearance. Technology development began, patents followed, and the rest is history.

We are based in Los Angeles, with offices in Tokyo, London, and Guangzhou.