Here is the first practical use of Google Goggles that I have seen. Gimmicky lookups have nothing on the power of actually harnessing technology for a purpose.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to “Goggles-enable” their permanent collection of paintings.

How tremendous could this be… Right now, Googles uses the visual reference to return websites with related information on the paintings, but what if we could flip that paradigm? What museums held the visual, verbal, and text repositories of curated information and if person somewhere else in the world could take a picture of an image in a book, or a likeness, and have Goggles return that curated information (opposed to random references to information or Wikipedia links (not that there is anything wrong with Wikipedia). How about digitizing the Library of Congress, where Goggles could return full accurate biographical information from an image of the Lincoln Memorial? or the flight plan and video archives of Charles Lindberg when someone takes a picture of The Spirit of St. Louis? How totally cool would that be?

Image Credit: Google Mobile Blog