So I have been the lucky owner of a iPhone 4 for some time now and I make sure to check the app store regularly for apps that could enrich my on-the-go lifestyle I have several apps that help me Plan, Play and let me keep in touch with my People.

Last week the Honda Jazz app caught my attention. It is the first app that lets you interact with a tv-commercial by swinging your iPhone. There are several characters in the commercial that you can catch with your iPhone and play with.

Wait, that sounds cool. I want to give it a try!

1. Download the Honda Jazz iPhone app (free!)

2. At the very moment the Honda Jazz commercial is being broadcasted at your television, start up the app OR watch it over at YouTube and open the app.

Screenshot of the Honda Jazz app

3. When you see one of these characters in the commercial, swing your iPhone. As you can see I still need to catch the pussy cat

4. Bring the characters that you caught to live! Play with them, sing to them, blow a balloon, you name it

How it works

The Honda Jazz app makes use of so-called “screen hopping” that uses audio recognition to establish which character you just caught. So when the song of the commercial is being played and you swing your iPhone to catch the puppy, the app listens to the audio and knows where in the movie you swung your iPhone and which character was shown at the time. It enables you to interact with the commercial in real time!

Since I am very interested in image recognition I am curious to see if eventually there will be apps that actually recognize the content in the commercial (by using the built-in camera) and let you interact with it.

For more information about the creators behind this commercial and app, click here.

So which character is your favourite?