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Measure Anything with a Camera and Software
Kevin C. Tofel writes "Using a simple concept, iPhotoMEASURE software can measure any objects you can take a picture of. Include a printout of a 7.5- or 15-inch square in the photo and the software can measure any distance or object in the pic to within 99.5% accuracy. Although geared towards contractors, there's any number of consumer usage scenarios as well. Enough to justify a $99 price tag? Jury's still out on that."
Honestly, I could see almost every contractor getting into this...
I think people need to realize that this will be it's major market as surveying costs run in the $20~30/hour range for a single trained surveyor... this is skilled work. If companies can instead send out untrained (or barely trained) individuals at $10-$15/hr with much less time spent in calculation and only a $100 sunk cost into the software there is no reason they wouldn't choose this method. Very good news for contractors, bad for surveyors.
The price is almost low enough for consumers with a need to calculate distances relatively regularly to purchase this software.
The original generic sig.
All it does is count pixels. Take the picture with the known size block in it, then count how many pixels the block takes up: that's your dots per inch -- for objects the same distance away as the known size image. I read somewhere that the Japanese (I think) used to do this at musical instrument trade shows, by wearing a 1 cm square tie tack and taking photos of each other holding instruments. They could get the dimensions of the instrument from the photos that way, and make great cheap knock-offs.