Yet another surprise being unveiled for our 2014 issue is the use of Kooaba’s visual recognition platform to bridge the gap between the printed page and a visitor/reader’s smartphone. This is once again our investment making Maui Hawaii’s premiere golf magazine the best of the best when it comes to reader experiences and information exchange—anywhere. By using Kooaba’s image recognition technology we are delivering one of the most innovated and advanced magazines in America, not just Hawaii. The Kooaba image recognition technology is being used both in Fortune 500 companies to power large deployments of visual recognition systems, and also to power apps like the one we are using called Shortcut, which is mated perfectly with this technology to make our static print pages come to life.
Many Maui Golf Review sponsors and supporters are aware of our best-efforts to move readers from print into the digital realm, but it is a bit of a cultural evolution of sorts. Many say print is ‘dying’ and it is, but when the visitor gets off that plane they are still reaching for those visitor guides. We know this and so do our sponsors, which is why the Maui Golf Review remains in print. But change is inevitable and while we make every attempt to stay with the times, we know the mobile model will ultimately be the new paradigm. Our adoption of Shortcut to use ultra-fast image-recognition technology to connects real-world objects, such as our printed page, with a new mobile online experience is what we have done in 2014.
Readers can now scan our pages with smartphones
Any reader with a smartphone can download the Shortcut app for free. Android, Apple it doesn’t matter. From there they can scan just about all 100 of our printed pages and they will be sent to surprise content, like our new mobile-friendly Cover Jigsaw Puzzle game, our new mobile-friendly Cover Face Match game, and yes, our all-new mobile website, where readers can tap a button and automatically receive our exclusive SMS Golf Specials Alerts; call our automated discount booking hotline; find courses within our site on Google maps; watch our 100s of new videos and more!
Shortcut seamlessly combines image recognition so our readers can just point the camera at the page and Shortcut will recognize the enabled image and bring them directly to the dedicated online experience we have created.
