Science Park, Hong Kong – O2O technology developer, ConnectAR is proud to announce the release and immediate availability of SnapPop 1.1, an important update to their crowdsourced image search app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. Using SnapPop, anyone can interact with their surrounding environments by simply snapping a photo of a poster, billboard, business card, product packaging, or other materials, and SnapPop will quickly deliver related multimedia or AR (Augmented Reality), right on their smartphones.

In the latest release of the app, SnapPop users can now attach their own singing video onto any of the four US 2017 Christmas Carols themed stamps, so that other SnapPop users who snap or scan that stamp can discover it. Besides singing, users could also upload a video of their loved ones, or of their dancing to the Christmas Carols.

With these 4 songs as this year’s theme: Silent Night, Jingle Bells, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, and Deck the Halls, SnapPop users can scan the stamps to hear those same Christmas songs, or watch a video of the song, while also seeing a virtual 3D Santa waving while standing on top of the stamp. Recipients of the stamp, even if located in Hawaii, Florida, or Australia, would be able to see it snowing on the stamp, when viewing the stamp using SnapPop’s AR (Augmented Reality) mode.

“SnapPop allows anyone to use their iOS device’s built-in camera to interact with printed materials such as product packaging, magazines, ads, posters, and more. The typical interactions through SnapPop are already rich in variety, e.g. entering a lucky draw, viewing videos, taking selfies, play AR games, to name a few.” says ConnectAR COO Ricky Lui. “But for the 2017 holiday season, we would like to celebrate Christmas by taking this year’s US Christmas Carols stamps, and sprinkling some digital magic dust on them. Furthermore, we want to get the global community involved to ‘attach’ more holiday spirited videos and songs onto these stamps.”

Using SnapPop is literally a snap. Anyone can simply snap a photo of a package, a page from a magazine, or even a business card. SnapPop goes to work, and searches for a matching “pop” in in its extensive cloud-based image database. If a match is found, the user can then access other users’ videos or other contents. This allows everyone to share their opinions and other information about products, magazines, books, movies, products, and more, while finding out what others have to say about the same subjects. The user can then leave their own comments, sharing them with everyone, or only friends. If no match is found, a new entry can be made, and an audio message can be shared, along with other information.

Enhance not only stamps, but also children books and products. Looking beyond stamps, SnapPop is also working on its collaborations with children book publishers and also product brands.

For children books, publishers can let readers, with a quick snap of the children’s book:
* Enjoy a fun and educational interactive experience via read-along and sing-along
* Trivia quiz
* 3D / AR contents for immersive visualization
* Further purchases of digital goods
* Get sneak peeks of interesting content with just a quick scan of a book cover

Similarly, the product brand could let shoppers, with a quick snap of a product’s packaging:
* View product videos, testimonials, recipes, etc, with just a snap
* Visualize products in 3D
* Enter lucky draw
* Stay updated on products they’re interested in

“SnapPop is the first crowdsourcing platform designed to facilitate near-realtime creation and consumption for linkages between physical world and digital world using images,” said Leo Lau, CEO of ConnectAR. “In other words, a user can use the camera as his/her eyes, and SnapPop as his/her extended intelligence, and rely on SnapPop to retrieve relevant and interesting information in just seconds!”

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
* iOS 8 or higher
* 264 MB

Pricing and Availability:
SnapPop 1.1 is free, and is available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Lifestyle category.

SnapPop 1.1
Download from iTunes
YouTube Video (Demo)
Screenshot 1
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App Icon

Based in Hong Kong, ConnectAR Limited helps its customers actualize tremendous business opportunities in the smartphone era. ConnectAR has developed cross-platform mobile phone software, such as iPhone/iPad and Android apps, and related cloud based systems. The company leverages its experiences in AR (Augmented Reality) and their founders’ experiences in innovations that resulted in over 18 patent filings, to bring innovative mobile solutions to the world. All Material and Software Copyright (C) 2017 ConnectAR Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPad and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.