I wasn't active on HN then, but I thought the community may enjoy seeing some very early real world applications of real time object recognition.
We are working on bringing this to all kinds of objects as well as landmarks, and incorporating some really interesting things to make this useful for consumers. Think of it as live search.
I'll keep the community updated with interesting milestones as this progresses.
By the way, we need a few hackers in Los Angles to help us with this! http://www.ipplex.com/careers