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Blippar's car-identifying app is like SeeFood for cars

Blippar's car-identifying app is like SeeFood for cars

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In the HBO show Silicon Valley, an app is pitched to some credulous VCs called SeeFood that's “like Shazam for food.” Weeks later, Pinterest announced that exact functionality for its own app, and now, less than a month after SeeFood's initial parody of tech culture, we have a Shazam for cars: Blippar.

The app can recognize any car made after the year 2000, and show you the make, model, and year of the car, along with customer reviews, a 360 panorama of the interior, and a price quote. It also works on moving cars if they're traveling under 15 mph.

Blippar has been Shazam-ifying the world for a while now. The app can already identify flowers, pets, food, and bunch of other objects, in addition to offering promotional augmented reality experiences for brands and products. But specific car recognition is nice addition to the app's skill set, and probably a lot easier to monetize.

To that end, the company is also launching an API, so other companies can add Blippar's object-identification tech to their apps. Next up for Blippar? Fashion, reports Tech Crunch.